One of the saddest lessons of history is that it does indeed repeat itself — often with the malodorous regularity of an overweight canine.
One of the saddest lessons of history is that it does indeed repeat itself — often with the malodorous regularity of an overweight canine. With the potential of another prolonged post-election battle looming, it does seem logical to take a look in the rearview mirror to ascertain how our nation has dealt with such mishaps in the past, and, maybe more importantly, what if anything we have learned from them.
America’s first experience with a voting debacle came in 1796. Prior to the enactment of the 12th Amendment, electors didn’t cast votes for a ticket or ones that specifically identified their Vice Presidential choice. Instead, they each had two votes with one presumably going to their choice for Vice President. Unfortunately, there was no way to determine whom each elector meant to choose for President or Vice President. As a result, the candidate receiving the second highest number of electoral votes was automatically given the job of second in command. As one can imagine, this created quite a problem when Thomas Jefferson was initially selected to be John Adams’ Vice President instead of Adams’ running mate, Thomas Pinckney.
Strangely, it took our founding fathers two such election failures to address the problem, for practically the same thing happened in the 1800 election. In this case, Thomas Jefferson and his Vice Presidential running mate, Aaron Burr, tied with 73 electoral votes. Now, in reality, this occurred because the electors who voted for Jefferson also voted for Burr, thinking that this would make Burr the Vice President. Unfortunately, at the time, our Constitution had no way to address this, and the opportunistic Burr, now realizing that he had an actual shot of becoming President, refused to yield. As a result, the election ended up being decided by the House of Representatives just fifteen days before the inauguration with Jefferson getting the nod. That said, the beauty of this Constitutional crisis was that it precipitated the creation and signing of the 12th Amendment on June 15th, 1804 prior to the next presidential election.
Our next such crisis occurred in 1824. To a large extent, the Federalist Party was beginning to have problems prior to the election in 1800, and, by this time, was basically extinct. As a result, there were four candidates running for President, all of them from the Democratic-Republican Party. Unfortunately, the country was so confused by this that none of the four candidates received the required 131 electoral votes. The matter was sent to the House of Representatives, and wasn’t decided until February 9, 1825. Oddly, they ended up giving it to John Quincy Adams, even though he didn’t receive the majority of either the popular or electoral votes; both were won by Andrew Jackson. As you can imagine, Mr. Jackson was not pleased by this decision, setting up a huge battle for the White House in 1828.
Potentially the most fascinating of our election debacles prior to this last one in Florida transpired in 1876. On this occasion, there were two different sets of returns certified which disparately awarded 20 electoral votes between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden. After months of wrangling and the creation of an Electoral Commission, a bizarre compromise was reached that averted a Democratic filibuster in the Senate in return for federal troops being withdrawn from the South along with economic considerations being given to them to aid in their industrialization. However, much like 2000, a component of the electorate perceived that Hayes had stolen the election, having tallied significantly fewer votes than Mr. Tilden, and he was dubbed “Rutherfraud.”
What can we glean from these four historic events? Well, to a certain extent, it does appear that there was typically some lasting benefit to the republic as a result of the previous crises occurring. Now, one could make the case that the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) was a beneficial legislative creation precipitated by the Florida Recount Debacle. However, posterity might end up viewing these new election laws and the resulting behavior of our candidates and their henchmen as being rather pathetic examples of political opportunism. In fact, it quite appears that if the worst-case scenario does occur next Tuesday, and America once again spends more than a month of legal wrangling to decide whom our president is, history is not going to be as kind to the current players as it was to the previous ones.
To be more precise, the AP last week issued a list of possible political battles that might be waged starting November 3rd. Here are some of the critical ones in the key battleground states:
COLORADO
The state's top election official told the Associated Press that Colorado could be one of several states that may hold up the results of the presidential election for days or even weeks because of new voting rules and potential legal fights. Political experts have expressed similar concerns about Colorado in recent weeks.
FLORIDA
Attorneys for a coalition of unions and black groups told a federal judge that Duval County needs more early voting sites, but county lawyers said it was too late to consider opening more locations before the election. The county, which includes Jacksonville, began with just one site, but planned to open four more Saturday.
OHIO
The U.S. Justice Department got involved in a court fight over provisional ballots in Ohio, siding with the Republican secretary of state in a legal dispute that could have national implications. The battleground state's handling of provisional ballots could prove key in a close election.
State Republicans filed challenges to about 35,000 voter registrations where election cards were returned as undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service. Nearly half the challenges were in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland.
PENNSYLVANIA:
Republican lawmakers have accused Democratic Governor Ed Rendell of trying to suppress military votes for President Bush by failing to push for an extension of the deadline to accept overseas military and civilian ballots. Democrats said there wasn't a "single shred of evidence" to back up the claim.
Amazing. Clearly, the provisional ballot issue created by HAVA might end up wreaking havoc with election “night” across the country. Basically, this legal edict was designed to allow someone to cast a “provisional vote” if his/her registration was in doubt for any reason. Now, 28 states including Florida and Ohio have created statutes that require the provisional vote to be made at the proper precinct. In reality, a strict reading of the legislation quite suggests this. However, 17 states have declared that they will accept such votes even if they are away from the voter’s designated precinct. As you can imagine, this would allow a person to make as many provisional votes as he/she wanted all around such a state, and the onus would be upon each precinct after the fact to identify the error. How long might it take in all 17 of these states to identify which votes were genuine, and which were fraudulent?
However, potentially even more shocking is a revelation out of Ohio in the same heavily Democrat-laden area of Cleveland previously referenced in the above AP article. Now, I must admit that this was brought to my attention by an Ohio woman (name withheld) who copied me on an email that she sent to a reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Actually, I was quite flattered to be included in this, as she also copied the Bush campaign, Laura Ingraham, Neil Cavuto, and the Swift Boat Vets. What she was alerting us all to was the existence of a very poorly crafted butterfly ballot that was sent to absentee voters in her county of Cuyahoga. As you can see, the ballot is actually instructing the voter to punch a green highlighted hole for George W. Bush that corresponds to absolutely nothing. By contrast, the arrow for Senator Kerry correctly points to his blue highlighted hole. Think Ohio is considered a must win by the Democrats?
Given all this chicanery and legal subterfuge, it seems that our current breed of politician chooses to exploit the failures of the past election and the legislation stemming from it for personal gain in the upcoming one rather than attempting to improve the accuracy and sanctity of the final result. In fact, with every lawyer hired and legal brief filed, Senator Kerry appears to be behaving like a modern day Aaron Burr; hopefully, he’ll be just as ignominiously unsuccessful.
slep@danvillebc.com
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