There are many crazy incidents in the history of elections in America. However, the 2020 presidential contest between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden was arguably the most bizarre. President Donald Trump declared victory despite Joe Biden being ahead of him in the projected win. Trump even questioned the integrity of the voting system.
At present, America is again experiencing a déjà vu moment as the 2024 election is approaching. As the ongoing campaigning between current Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is storming the social media, let us revisit some interestingly bizarre moments of elections in American history.
1800: Election Results Lead to Constitutional Amendment
The 1800 election contest between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams was the most dramatic election in American history. This election led to the 12th constitutional amendment. Before that there were no official tickets and federalists were the sole voters. Each of the Electoral College members had two votes for president. The maximum vote scorer was declared president and the second ranker was declared vice-president instantly. However, the 1800 election result declared a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, with each having 73 votes with John Adams having 65 votes.
Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary of the nation and the founder of the Federalist Party was endowed with the responsibility to break the tie. Interestingly, despite not having interest in any of the three contestants he campaigned for Jefferson to be the winner. He wrote a letter to urge Federalists to vote for Jefferson.
The re-election result declared Hamilton as the President and Burr the vice-president on 7th February, 1801. This election outcome created a long-term rivalry between the new Vice-President and Alexander Hamilton culminating in the assassination of Hamilton by Burr after three years from the election.
1824 Election-Famously Known as the “Corrupt Bargain”
In the 1824 election there were both popular votes and Electoral College votes. The election had four contestants and all belonged to Democratic-Republicans party. Amongst the four candidates Andrew Jackson, a statesman and a war veteran, won the popular votes by 39,000 ballots and 99 Electoral College votes. Amongst the other three, John Quincy Adams the Secretary of State got 84 votes, Treasury Secretary William Crawford secured 41 and House Speaker Henry Clay won 37.
Since no candidates won a majority of the votes the House had to arrange a re-election. However, they could only choose between three candidates. They chose to eliminate Henry Clay from the electoral race. Supporters of Clay chose Adams after a month of horse trading and Adams secured a maximum of the Electoral College votes. Andrew Jackson was quite confident that he would win the race since he won the maximum of the popular votes. However, Congressmen in States like Maryland, Illinois and Louisiana where Jackson won maximum of the electoral votes and Kentucky where Adams did not secure a single popular vote, supported Adams.
After Becoming the president, Adams chose Clay as his secretary of state. This infuriated Jackson, making him declare the 1824 election as the “corrupt bargain”. He eventually went on to win the 1828 election and served as the President of the nation from 1829-1837.
1876: Not-so-Independent Tiebreaker
The 1876 election needed a reelection for a tie-break between candidates. Democrat Samuel Tilden had defeated Republican Rutherford Hayes by a quarter-million ballots in the popular vote and 19 Electoral College votes. However, Tilden needed one more Electoral College vote to win the majority of 185 votes and a total of 20 votes including four states, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon. This created a lot of dispute regarding the result or with declaring Tilden as the winner.
To resolve this deadlock the two parties decided to establish a 15-member commission with seven democrats, seven republicans and an independent neutral person. This independent person was initially selected to be Supreme Court Justice David Davis, who had to drop out to serve the U.S. Senate. His replacement was Justice Joseph Bradley. However, he was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. He cast every vote for Hayes winning him the majority of the votes.
Even though initially democrats were against the decision they gave in under the provision that Hayes would remove all his federal troops. He indeed removed all his troops to become the president on 5th March 1877. This had dire consequences for African Americans as all their progress till then came to an end.
1920: Prison Campaign
In the 1920 election Republican Warren G. Harding defeated James Cox by securing more than 60% of the popular votes and 37 out of 48 states. However, the most interesting part of the election was the staggering number of votes garnered by Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs. The most striking fact is that he ran the presidential campaign from prison. This was his 5th electoral campaign and he secured 900,000 votes. Unfortunately, that was not enough to beat Harding, who secured more than 16 million votes.
1972: Death by Electroshock Therapy
The 1972 election in America witnessed a shocking revelation. Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota was nominated to run in the presidential election by the Democratic Party. He wanted Sen. Thomas Eagleton as his running mate in the hope that Eagleton would help him win the Catholic Vote.
However, he was not aware of Eagleton’s medical history. He had been hospitalized thrice and had undergone electroshock therapy to treat depression. McGovern was initially supportive of his running mate. However, he later decided that it would be a liability to have Eagleton as a running mate. Eagleton eventually dropped out of the campaign 18 days after he was selected. This resulted in Richard Nixon defeating democrats by 18 million votes.
Conclusion
As the election is approaching, hope the blog on elections in American history provides an interesting read for you. The current election campaign is already witnessing a lot of strange incidents. Starting with Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, nominating his vice-president, who happens to be women of color, as the next president and the latest being former President and contestant in the election, sustaining a gun attack. No matter how things turn out, let's hope for the best.
