America’s history of contested presidential elections results

1888: Bribing blocks of five

In 1888, Democratic President Grover Cleveland of New York ran for reelection against former Indiana U.S. Sen. Benjamin Harrison.

Back then, election ballots in most states were printed, distributed by political parties and cast publicly. Certain voters, known as “floaters,” were known to sell their votes to willing buyers.

Harrison had appointed an Indiana lawyer, William Wade Dudley, as treasurer of the Republican National Committee. Shortly before the election, Dudley sent a letter to Republican local leaders in Indiana with promised funds and instructions for how to divide receptive voters into “blocks of five” to receive bribes in exchange for voting the Republican ticket. The instructions outlined how each Republican activist would be responsible for five of these “floaters.”

Democrats got a copy of the letter and publicised it widely in the days leading up to the election. Harrison ended up winning Indiana by only about 2,000 votes but still would have won in the Electoral College without the state.

Cleveland actually won the national popular vote by almost 100,000 votes. But he lost his home state, New York, by about 1 percent of the vote, putting Harrison over the top in the Electoral College. Cleveland’s loss in New York may have also been related to vote-buying schemes.

Cleveland did not contest the Electoral College outcome and won a rematch against Harrison four years later, becoming the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms of office. Meanwhile, the blocks-of-five scandal led to the nationwide adoption of secret ballots for voting.

1960: Did the Daley machine deliver?

The 1960 election pitted Republican Vice President Richard Nixon against Democratic U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy.

The popular vote was the closest of the 20th century, with Kennedy defeating Nixon by only about 100,000 votes – a less than 0.2 percent difference.

Because of that national spread – and because Kennedy officially defeated Nixon by less than 1 percent in five states (Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico) and less than 2 percent in Texas – many Republicans cried foul. They fixated on two places in particular – southern Texas and Chicago, where a political machine led by Mayor Richard Daley allegedly churned out just enough votes to give Kennedy the state of Illinois. If Nixon had won Texas and Illinois, he would have had an Electoral College majority.

While Republican-leaning newspapers proceeded to investigate and conclude that voter fraud had occurred in both states, Nixon did not contest the results. Following the example of Cleveland in 1892, Nixon ran for president again in 1968 and won.

2000: The hanging chads

In 2000, many states were still using the punch card ballot, a voting system created in the 1960s. Even though these ballots had a long history of machine malfunctions and missed votes, no one seemed to know or care – until all Americans suddenly realised that the outdated technology had created a problem in Florida.

Then, on Election Day, the national media discovered that a “butterfly ballot,” a punch card ballot with a design that violated Florida state law, had confused thousands of voters in Palm Beach County.

Many who had thought they were voting for Gore unknowingly voted for another candidate or voted for two candidates. (For example, Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan received about 3,000 votes from voters who had probably intended to vote for Gore.) Gore ended up losing the state to Bush by 537 votes – and, in losing Florida, lost the election.

But ultimately, the month-long process to determine the winner of the presidential election came down to an issue of “hanging chads.”

Over 60,000 ballots in Florida, most of them on punch cards, had registered no vote for president on the punch card readers. But on many of the punch cards, the little pieces of paper that get punched out when someone votes – known as chads – were still hanging by one, two or three corners and had gone uncounted. Gore went to court to have those ballots counted by hand to try to determine voter intent, as allowed by state law. Bush fought Gore’s request in court. While Gore won in the Florida State Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled at 10 p.m. on Dec. 12 that Congress had set a deadline of that date for states to choose electors, so there was no more time to count votes.

Gore conceded the next day.

The national drama and trauma that followed Election Day in 1876 and 2000 could be repeated this year. Of course, a lot will depend on the margins and how the candidates react.

Most eyes will be on Trump, who hasn’t said whether or not he’ll accept the result. On election night, he announced he had won before all the votes had been counted in a number of battleground states.

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Robert Speel is Associate Professor of Political Science, Erie campus, Penn State

Source: theconversation