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Photographs by Zena Holloway / Getty (bird); Nathan Griffith / Getty (mailbox)
Most of you who have been following these posts realize that I have tried to avoid being partisan. Today, I am taking a detour to discuss what is literally keeping me up at nights. While this presidency has been characterized by norm-breaking, on September 23, 2020, President Trump took his disdain for democratic institutions to new and unprecedented heights. Asked whether he would “commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the November election,” Mr. Trump demurred. “We’re going to have to see what happens, [a favorite line of his]” he told a reporter during a news conference at the White House. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
One of the hallmarks of American democracy is that when candidates lose, they depart gracefully. This principle has been tested several times and each time the losing candidate put the country’s stability and principles above personal ambition.
In the 1876 presidential election, three states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina) sent two competing slates of electors to Congress. Their combined votes could tilt the election to the Democrat, Samuel Tilden, or the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes. An informal and infamous deal was struck to resolve the dispute: The Compromise of 1877, which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes.
In return for the Democrats’ acquiescence to Hayes’ election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. The Compromise in effect ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers, who proceeded to disenfranchise black voters thereafter. The election of 1876 is also famous (or notorious) for having the smallest margin in the electoral college (Hayes won 185-184), for being the only election in which the loser won a majority (not plurality) of the popular vote, and for the election which yielded the highest turn-out of eligible voters (81.8%) in U.S. history. The Republican party ultimately won the electoral college by one vote.
Eighty four years later, in 1960, Richard Nixon was an unlikely candidate to put the country above his own interest. The 1960 election was very close. According to a Wikipedia article, some, including Republican legislators and journalists, believed that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas, where his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley’s powerful Chicago political machine. These two states were important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have earned 270 electoral votes, one more than the 269 needed to win the presidency. Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results in both Illinois and Texas, as well as in nine other states. Some journalists also later claimed that mobster Sam Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate “played a role” in Kennedy’s victory in Illinois.
Nixon’s campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy’s victory in several states, especially Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election. But Nixon gave a speech three days after the election stating that he would not contest the election. This story is challenged by David Greenburg, who denies that Nixon decided not to pursue the challenge. He says, “More to the point, while Nixon publicly pooh-poohed a challenge, his allies did dispute the results—aggressively. The New York Herald Tribune’s Earl Mazo, a friend and biographer of Nixon’s, recounted a dozen-odd fishy incidents alleged by Republicans in Illinois and Texas. Largely due to Mazo’s reporting, the charges gained wide acceptance.”
In Illinois, there was a recount which was completed on December 9. It showed that there was some undercounting of Nixon’s total (943 votes), but the increase in votes for Nixon was far short of the 4,500 needed to reverse Kennedy’s victory. Greenburg goes on to write, “Displeased, the Republicans took the case to federal court, only to have a judge dismiss the suits. Still undeterred, they turned to the State Board of Elections, which was composed of four Republicans, including the governor, and one Democrat. Yet the state board, too, unanimously rejected the petition, citing the GOP’s failure to provide even a single affidavit on its behalf. The national party finally backed off after Dec. 19, when the nation’s Electoral College certified Kennedy as the new president—but even then, local Republicans wouldn’t accept the Illinois results.” That may be a harbinger of what awaits us.
In 2000, as most of us remember, the result was not decided until long after the election, which took place on November 7. On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, on December 12, which ended the recount.
The recount having been ended, Bush won Florida by 537 votes, a margin of 0.009%. The Florida recount and subsequent litigation resulted in major post-election controversy, and various people and organizations have speculated about who would have won the election in various scenarios. Ultimately, Bush won 271 electoral votes, one more than a majority, despite Gore receiving 543,895 more votes (a margin of 0.51% of all votes cast). Gore accepted the Supreme Court decision rather than contesting the electors in Congress. Once again, the loser chose country over ambition.
Is there anyone who believes that Trump would follow Nixon’s and Gore’s lead? My next post will detail what may await us in five weeks.