Chapter 2: Election Anomalies

Most of the elections are completed in orderly fashion, but not all. Despite their best efforts to nail down the electoral process, the Founders miss on a few details.

The first miss springs from the fact that Electors are initially asked to vote for their top two candidates without clarifying which is for President and which is for Vice-President. This approach falls apart with the advent of opposing political parties in the 1797 election where staunch Federalist John Adams ends up with his Democrat-Republican adversary, Thomas Jefferson, as his Vice-President — after Jefferson gets more Electoral Votes than Adams’ Federalist “running mate,” Thomas Pinckney. It takes the 12^th Amendment passed in 1804 to fix this problem.

In the 1800 race, personal and political animus strain the system, as two men, Jefferson and Aaron Burr, end up in a tie for the top spot, with 71 Electoral Votes apiece. This throws the election into the House of Representatives where the rules call for a maximum of three potential candidates, with each state getting to cast one, and the winner needing a simple majority. Thirty-five ballots are taken before Alexander Hamilton decides that “Jefferson is the lesser evil than Burr,” and pushes him to a 10-6 victory on the next round. While Burr becomes Vice-President, he never forgives Hamilton, and kills him in a famous duel only four months after he is sworn in.

Another troubling outcome occurs in 1824 where four candidates run for office and none receive the majority of all Electoral Votes required to win. The leader of the pack is Andrew Jackson who tallies 41% of the popular vote and 99 electors, well ahead of John Quincy Adams’ (31%/84). After much political maneuvering by Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, JQ Adams receives 13 of the 24 state votes and is declared the sixth President. When Adams then names Clay his Secretary of State, Jackson calls this a “corrupt bargain” and swears to get revenge against both men in 1828, which he does.

In 1841 Whig William Henry Harrison (of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” fame) dies after only one month in office, and this throws the intent of the Founders regarding “Vice-Presidential succession” into question. Specifically whether Harrison’s running mate, John Tyler, should become a permanent replacement as President or simply serve in a temporary role until an emergency election can be held. Politics plays a role here, since Tyler is a Virginian, added to the ticket at the last second for “regional balance,” and suspect of being a lukewarm Whig at best. But Tyler brooks no resistance by immediately occupying the White House. He then proceeds to abandon the Whig agenda and is soon bounced out of the party. While those who oppose Tyler will refer to him as “His Accidency,” he puts to rest for good any uncertainty about VP succession.

One other presidential outcome that undermine the voting process occurs in 1860 and it relates to the physical “ballots” used to vote. At the time most of these ballots are either clipped out of local newspapers or handed out at the polls. But each ballot lists the candidates for only one given party and are often color coded. Thus a red ballot might show the Republican ticket while a separate blue ballot would signal the Democrats. Normally voters would have access to either ballot, but that’s not the case in 1860, where the nation’s Slave States refuse to even print ballots for Lincoln. Thus he receives zero popular votes in the 15 Southern Slave States and is elected solely by carrying all 18 of the Northern Free States. His popular vote total at 39.8% will be the lowest for any President other than JQ Adams in 1824.

These exceptions aside, the transfer of power from one president to the next proceeds smoothly.