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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Whist who wrote (70235)	11/11/2000 3:24:21 PM
From: ColtonGang	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Consider the 1876 presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, which was arguably the most unscrupulous presidential election in our history. Tilden received 261,035 more popular votes than did Hayes (out of more than 8.3 million cast) and held an undisputed lead in states with 184 electoral votes, one short of the 185 required for victory. "However," write University of Virginia professor of government Larry J. Sabato and journalist Glenn R. Simpson in Dirty Little Secrets (1996), "twenty electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon were in dispute. Tilden had actually carried the first three of these states, but GOP-controlled election boards disqualified enough Democratic votes, for dubious reasons, to potentially tip the states to Hayes." In January 1877, Congress passed legislation establishing a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the dispute between Hayes and Tilden. The panel was supposed to be non-partisan, but when the dust cleared it was comprised of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. By strict party-line votes of eight to seven, the commission gave each disputed vote -- and the election by a single-vote margin -- to Hayes.