president should be eliminated and his colleague, Uriah Tracy, seconded it. On the other side, Wilson Cary Nicholas was simply worried that Congress would not submit the amendment in time for the states to ratify it before the 1804 election. Despite Nicholas' concern, the Senate would not seriously deal with the amendment again until November 23. Much as it had in the House, debate centered around the number of candidates in a contingency election and the philosophical underpinnings of the Constitution. Again, small Federalist states vehemently argued that three candidates gave too much power to large states to pick presidents. Senator Pierce Butler of South Carolina argued that the issues with the election of 1800 were unlikely to happen again and he would not advocate changing the Constitution simply to stop a Federalist vice president. John Quincy Adams argued that the change from five to three gave an advantage to the people that violated the federative principle of the Constitution. Rather than have the office of the president balanced between the states and the people, Adams felt designation of president and vice president would tip that scale in favor of the people. Federalist senators argued for retaining the original procedure for the Electoral College. Senator Samuel White of Delaware claimed that the original procedure had not been given "a fair experiment" and criticized the proposed amendment for entrenching the two-party system which had taken over presidential elections. In response, the Democratic–Republicans appealed to democratic principles. Samuel Smith of Maryland argued that the presidency ought to be as closely accountable to the people as possible. As such, having three candidates in a contingency election is far better than having five, because it would otherwise be possible to have the fifth best candidate become president. Also, designation itself would drastically cut down the number of elections that would reach the House of Representatives, and the president is then much more likely to be the people's choice. Another of Smith's arguments was simply the election of 1800. William Cocke of Tennessee took a different approach when he argued that the entire small state argument of the Federalists was simply out of self-interest. One last order of business for the amendment was to deal with the possibility that the House would fail to choose a president by March 4. It was the least controversial portion of the Twelfth Amendment and John Taylor proposed that