A group called the Transition Integrity Project just held a series of “serious games” simulating a variety of catastrophic outcomes for the impending US presidential election. You might have seen the headlines “What if Trump refuses to leave the White House?” or “The Dangers of the Red Mirage.” They also considered the delays inherent in large mail-in voting or what-if Joe Biden were to pass way shortly before or after the election. If you don’t have enough keeping you awake at night, I highly recommend you read the link!
Seriously, there are several factors combining a la “The Perfect Storm” to make this a particularly contentious election in terms of public confidence. But how unusual is that? Consider the history:
The standing record-holder for most contentious election is the 1824 John Quincy Adams’ victory. How bad was it? Well, for starters, there was only one political party at the time (The Democratic-Republicans), so the nominee was guaranteed the Presidency. Several states didn’t hold votes; they so distrusted democracy that the state government simply named electors (which was and still is constitutional!). However, the party leadership was fragmented, and ended up with four different nominees splitting the electoral college so that no one got a majority. This threw the Presidential election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation casts a single vote. Adams, who had come in second in the electoral college, cut a deal with Henry Clay, who had come in fourth, to secure the state delegation votes of Ohio and Kentucky, thus defeating Andrew Jackson (who had the most electoral votes) thirteen states to seven. The deal became known as “the corrupt bargain” (Clay was named Adams’ Secretary of State) and set the stage for Jackson establishing the new Democratic Party and whipping Adams in 1828.
The runner-up for messiest election has to be 1876. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat from New York, easily beat the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes from Ohio, winning an actual majority (not just plurality) of the popular vote. Tilden also held an electoral college victory of 184-165, but twenty uncounted electors from four states were in dispute. Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the controversial twenty votes. This body developed a compromise whereby all twenty votes and the Presidency went to Hayes (!) in exchange for (1) his commitment to serve only one term, (2) the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, and (3) the end of Reconstruction. This might be the most consequential messy-election, but for:
Third place, one with which you might be more familiar: 1860. Jackson’s dominant Democratic Party broke in half over the issue of slavery, and the new Republican Party ran a little known Illinois legislator: Abraham Lincoln. Southern states left Lincoln off the ballot, but he still got an electoral college majority. The possibility of a President who would prohibit the extension of slavery (the Republicans were not then against the continuation of slavery in the South) was enough for seven states to secede before Lincoln took office: the ultimate denial of legitimacy is open warfare.
Fourth place in my rankings goes to the little known vote tabulations after the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest. Everyone knows who won, and that Kennedy did so with a sizeable electoral college advantage: 303 to 219. You may have heard Kennedy’s electoral advantage belied the popular vote, which historians originally thought Kennedy won by just .17%! But subsequent review of contested Alabama votes shows that Nixon probably won the popular vote by 50,000 even though he still lost the election. Nixon’s resentment at pro-Kennedy political shenanigans and favorable press treatment led to his early retirement from politics (He famously said, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more!”). This was of course short-lived, but the lessons he learned in 1960 (i.e., do whatever it takes to win, and take nothing for granted) would tarnish his later landslide victories.
Finally there is the disputed 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote 48% to 47% for Bush, but Bush won the electoral college 271-266. Most everyone here remembers the drama of the “hanging chads” and lawsuits contesting the results of one key state: Florida. Bush originally won Florida by only 537 votes out of six million cast. The popular story is the Democrats pushed for a Florida recount, which would have given Gore the state’s electoral votes and the Presidency. This effort was halted by the US Supreme Court, in effect giving the victory to Bush. There is one small problem with this story. Long after the election, the Florida Ballots Project, a consortium of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the National Opinion Research Center from the University of Chicago did a deep dive into Florida’s ballots. Over ten months, they had 153 specialists examine 175,000 disputed ballots at a cost of one million dollars. All the results, with one exception, show Bush won Florida. The exception? If one counts the overvotes (ballots where more than one candidate is indicated) and assumes all were actually Gore votes, then Gore wins. Of course, candidate Gore never requested a recount of overvotes–nor does anyone–as assuming which of two (or more!) candidates marked was the final choice is impossible. Most people only know the popular story, since the results of the Florida Ballots Project weren’t released until two months after the 9/11 attacks, and were thus immediately forgotten.
Hope you enjoyed (?) this rundown. Here’s hoping this year’s outcome doesn’t merit inclusion in this list! It is (a little) reassuring to see what the country has been through before. I would note that in most cases short of violence, the biggest effect of a messy election has been to cause change in the parties or processes of the election, showing a system capable of changing to correct past errors.
Interesting history. One way or the other, this election will most likely join the above.