Close and Dipsuted Elections

History of Close and Disputed Elections

The current election is not the first disputed election in American history.

The first election which ended in a dispute was the election of the 1800 our fourth election. In that election the Federalists nominated to be President and the Charles Pinckney to be Vice President. The Democratic-Republicans nominated as President and Aaron Burr as Vice President. The Democratic-Republicans made the mistake of assigning the same number of electoral votes to both Jefferson as Burr. Thus no one had the majority of votes, and the election was turned over to the House of Representatives. The House deliberated from February 11th to February 17th and voted 36 times. The Federalist had decided to support Burr, whom many felt was a lesser evil then the "dangerous" Jefferson. They would have won since they were the majority of the outgoing House. However the constitution called for the election of President by the House to be on a state by state basis, and the Federalist could not carry enough states. On the 36th ballot Jefferson was selected, but the country had come very close to having Aaron Burr as President. In the immediate aftermath of this election, there was a call to amend the constitutional provision requiring double balloting for President and Vice President. It was eliminated by the passage of the 12th amendment, which was approved by Congress in December 1803 and ratified in time for the election of 1804.

1824

The election of 1824 was the second and last election decided by the House of Representatives. The four major candidates were , Henry Clay, William H Crawford, and . When the electors were counted Jackson had 99, Adams 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37. The election was thrown to the House of Representatives with the three leading candidates competing. All of the candidates hoped for support from Clay and his supporters. Before the House met a scandal erupted when a Philadelphia newspaper published an anonymous letter claiming that Clay would support Adams in return for an appointment as Secretary of State. Clay vigorously denied this. Adams won on the first ballot of the House of Representatives, and later appointed Clay as Secretary of State.

1876

In 1876 the Democrats nominated Samuel Tilden and the Republicans nominated . When the election results were in Samuel Tilden had won the popular vote by 250,000 votes out of a total of 8.5 million votes cast. The electoral vote however was tight, and in three southern states the results were hotly contested- South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. All three were strongly divided between Whites and newly enfranchised Blacks, between supporters of Reconstruction and those who wished to bring it to an end. All three states ended up empowering two separate slates of electors. The Congress passed a special law to decided on the disputed vote. That law created a 15 member commission made up of five senators, five member of the House and five Supreme Court justices. Initially the swing, or fifteenth member of the commission was an independent, however when he was appointed to the Senate he resigned, and a Republican replaced him. The commission then met and in each of the three cases of disputed state slates they accepted the Republican. Under the law that the commission had been set up under, the decisions of the commission could be overturned by vote of both housed of Congress. The House rejected the findings while the Senate accepted it. The House Democrats threatened a filibuster to block the resumption of the count of the electoral votes. The Democrats did not go through with their threat when Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from the south thus ending reconstruction when he became President. He was selected.

1888

In the election of 1888 the incumbent Democratic President faced Republican challenger . Harrison won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. This took place because Harrison overwhelmingly won states with smaller number of electoral votes while losing certain key states by only a few votes. Harrison became President but lost to Cleveland in a rematch four years later.

In this century there have been two very close elections. In 1960 a little over 100,000 votes ended up separating and . When it became apparent that Kennedy had won Illinois Nixon conceded. There have been some references made to the similarities between this year's election and Nixon's concession. The similarities are limited. Kennedy held a lead in the popular vote throughout, and in the state most in question- Illinois Kennedy won by 18,000. Even if Nixon had carried Illinois he still would have lost.

The 1976 between and . election was close in the Electoral College, but Carter won by a commanding 2,000,000 votes in the popular votes.

In all of American history no presidential election has ever come down to 300 or so votes and never in this century have we gone more then a few hours without knowing the outcome. Luckily when our founding fathers designed our system of government they did it for a slower time, a time when people did not need instant gratification. Thus our government has the mechanism to endure a longer then expected transition.

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