Contested elections are nothing new in America

As we approach what will surely be a contentious election, and one that won’t quickly be decided, I am entertained by the stories of elections past that tested the limits of our constitution. The presidential election of 2000 between George W. Bush (AKA “43”) and Al Gore is fresh in the minds of most of us and a bureaucratic mess that involved recounts, hanging chads, armies of attorneys, and no small amount of partisan bickering. Although the election took place on November 7, the recount of votes was halted by the Supreme Court on December 9 of that year and a decision was handed down on December 12, leaving the loyal opposition to claim an illegitimate presidency for the next four years.

2000 was the year that the Red Willow County Republicans rented the Fox Theater for an election watch. We borrowed a big screen TV and a temporary Internet connection. Dave Stout set up a remote broadcast for KICX, and if it wasn’t the first time that the County Clerk’s office uploaded results to their website, it was certainly in the very early, experimental days of the process. Throughout the evening, we learned that it made more sense to send a runner to the courthouse than to wait for the site to be updated. Sometime after CNN reversed their projection of a winner, we decided to pack it in, but it made for a very late night.

As bad as 2000 was, it was by no means the first such challenge to the Constitution. In the presidential election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson successfully challenged incumbent and rival John Adams only to find himself tied in the electoral college with Aaron Burr. The tie was settled in the House of Representatives per the constitutional requirements of the time, but only after several days of wrangling and 36 ballots. Aaron Burr went on to serve as Jefferson’s Vice President and as we all know now, killed former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Politics can get rough.

The 1876 election also challenged our constitution and was, to some degree, an extension of the American Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, his Vice President, Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency. Johnson was a disaster and lost the 1968 Democratic primary to Horatio Seymour of New York, whom Republican Ulysses Grant defeated handily. As a former Union General, he was predictably unsympathetic to the South, ruling it with a firm fist. His administration was also rife with corruption, which led to further division both within and outside his party.

As he departed office in 1876, an extremely contentious showdown occurred between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The Democrat won the popular vote and had 184 electoral votes while Hayes had only 165. 20 votes from four states were undecided, including one elector from Oregon who was dismissed over personal qualifications. In the end, Hayes was elected president with an electoral college vote of 185 to 184, but only after agreeing to withdraw the federal troops that had occupied the south since the end of the war. It’s known by historians as the “compromise of 1877” and is viewed as one of several setbacks to reconstruction.

Now that we find ourselves less than two weeks out from the 2020 General Election, the lawsuits are already flying. Further extensions of absentee voting rights due to the covid pandemic have, of course, raised suspicions between the parties. Both sides view it as being ok for their team, but distrust others with the same privilege. The response in left-leaning media is most telling. They are fond of saying that there is “no evidence” of fraud associated with mail ballots, which is mostly true. What little fraud has taken place in the past was statistically insignificant. What most thinking people recognize, however, is that while there is little or “no evidence” of fraud associated with traditional absentee ballots, the newly implemented use of “Universal” ballots can only increase opportunities for fraud exponentially.

This week, the Supreme Court ruled on a four-four split vote sustaining Pennsylvania’s decision to accept and count votes postmarked by the voting deadline but received after November 3. Their decision ensures that, in a replay of the Bush-Gore election in 2000, we most likely will not know the outcome of the election when we wake up on Wednesday morning. Here we go again.

Of course, a favorite election of mine is the one held for the Florida Senate seat in 1950. It’s taught in school books as one of the dirtiest elections in history. Incumbent Claud Pepper was challenged in the Democratic Primary by Representative George Smathers. History is unclear as to whether the accusations came directly from Smathers, or from his subordinates, but gullible, less educated audiences were told that Senator Pepper’s brother was a “homo sapien,” his sister was a “thespian,” and that prior to his marriage, the Senator practiced “celibacy.” It worked. Claude Pepper was defeated in the primary. From where I sit, it doesn’t appear that we have made much progress since 1950. Let’s hope for better things to come.