The American Way of Voting: a Wild History. July 9, 2020

 Copyright © 2020                               John F. Oyler 

 July 9, 2020

The American Way of Voting: a Wild History

 

The Bridgeville Area Historical Society celebrated the return of Allegheny County to the “green” status by returning to its regular program of live presentations this month. Appropriately the speaker was one of the Society’s favorites – Dr. Todd DePastino. His subject was also appropriate for these times – “The American Way of Voting: a Wild History”.

 

Because of my voluntary self-quarantine I was unable to attend the presentation in person; fortunately it was filmed and became available on the “Bridgeville.org” website two days later. I was not surprised to learn that the program was equally entertaining and educational, particularly since we are in still one more highly critical Presidential election year.

 

The Constitution clearly intended that the selection of President and Vice President be determined by electors selected by the Legislatures of the various states. Each state had its own criteria for eligibility of voters to record their preferences.

 

In most of them voters were restricted to adult, property-owning white males. An exception was New Jersey that allowed women to vote up until 1807. In some of the northern states free African-Americans could vote. The property-owning requirement was eventually replaced by the requirement that the voter be a tax payer.

 

Although the Founding Fathers didn’t anticipate the concept of political parties, by 1800 the rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson led to the birth of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties, respectively. The Constitution required each elector to vote for two candidates, a reasonable approach for a concept without parties. The candidate with the most votes would be elected President; the runner-up, Vice President.

 

The invention of parties demonstrated the weakness of this system.The Democratic-Republicans ran a ticket of Jefferson and Aaron Burr against a Federalist ticket of John Adams and Charles Pickney. In each case it was assumed that electors would vote by party. One of the electors from the winning party would abstain from voting, to determine which candidate was President.

 

The Jefferson-Burr ticket won handily, but somehow none of the electors abstained, leaving Jefferson and Burr each with 73 electoral votes. Aaron Burr was not one to honor a “gentleman’s agreement”, so the election was thrown into the outgoing House of Representatives where the Federalists held a majority (60) of the 106 seats.

 

In this election each state delegation had one vote. It is not surprising that this resulted in an eight to eight tie, nor that this continued for thirty-four more rounds. Eventually Hamilton stepped in and brokered a deal that favored what he considered the lesser of two evils – Jefferson.

 

The next particularly abnormal election was in 1824. The Federalist Party had disappeared leaving the field to the Democratic-Republicans, who were splintered into four factions, leading to the nomination of four candidates for President – John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. None of them earned a majority of the electoral votes, so it was back to the House of Representatives. This time Adams won with thirteen of the twenty-four states favoring him.

 

Jackson got even in 1828; his faction adopted the name Democratic while Adams’ faction called themselves National Republicans. The primary difference between a democracy and a republic is the guarantee of minority rights afforded by the republic, contrasted to the lack of same in a democracy. An interesting distinction today when an advocate of states’ rights is considered a racist.

 

By 1828 most of the states had relaxed the requirement that voters be property owners. This resulted in a significant increase in the percentage of the population actually voting and facilitated Jackson’s election despite a campaign replete with defamatory attacks on his character.

 

By 1840 the opposition to Jackson’s Democrats had coalesced into a party they called the Whigs, in deference to the anti-monarchists in England. They held the first ever National Convention, where William Henry Harrison was nominated to run against incumbent President Martin van Buren. For the first time Harrison actively campaigned in public.

 

Once again the campaign was featured with mud-slinging. Despite Harrison’s aristocratic Virginian roots, his opponents painted him as an overly old man who would like nothing better than to stay in his log cabin drinking hard cider. This strategy backfired with the voters in the West, who turned out in droves to support him.

 

Prior to that election the largest voter turnout had been fifty eight percent of the “voting age population”. The turnout in 1840 was an amazing 81.2 %, second only to 81.8% in 1876. The trend for high turnout continued through 1896. It then dropped to the fifty to sixty percent range that has continued until today. It must be acknowledged however that the “voting age population” includes two segments that continue to be high – non-citizens (including undocumented aliens) and convicted felons.

 

The Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island in 1841was an example of the effort to extend voting rights to a larger portion of the public. The state was still being governed by its colonial charter, which specifically limited the right to vote to property owners. By 1841 this disenfranchised sixty percent of the potential voters, primarily factory workers in the cities. Although an armed rebellion failed, the requirement was eventually removed.

 

The 1876 election, with its huge turnout, ended up being one of the most controversial. Originally it was assumed that President Grant would ignore precedent and run for an unprecedented third term. When he elected instead to retire, James G. Blaine appeared to be the front-runner for the Republican nomination. At the National Convention he was unable to achieve a majority of votes on the first six nominating ballots; at that point the party bosses turned to a compromise candidate, Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes.

 

The Democrats nominated New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden on the second ballot. A reformer who had succeeded in breaking up the Tammany Hall political machine and sending “Big Bill” Tweed to prison, Tilden’s candidacy was extremely popular with the party. His polarizing campaign to end Reconstruction in the South certainly contributed to the large voter turnout.

 

Although Tilden clearly won the total popular vote, the electoral college was filled with confusion. By 1876 the Democratic Party had regained its control over all of the “Solid South” except for Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. In those three states the results were close enough to warrant questioning. In addition, a technicality had disqualified a Hayes elector in Oregon.

 

When the Electoral College met, they were unable to declare a winner. The two houses of Congress then established an Electoral Commission, composed of five Representatives, five Senators, and five Supreme Court Justices to resolve the problem. This resulted in a compromise. Hayes was elected President and promptly removed federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction and permitting the return of white supremacy.

 

The method of voting has evolved as well. Originally voters either orally reported their preferences, or, in some cases, voted by dropping appropriately colored balls into a container. The term ballot is derived from the Italian word “ballotta”, small balls. This method was replaced by paper ballots, pre-printed by the political parties and handed out to voters to turn in. Even today the specific method of voting is determined by each individual state.