Bizarre elections in American history | E-Neighborhood Advisor

 

Elections always have an element of controversy, with people passionately rooting for their candidate of choice. The 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush is perhaps the craziest, most controversial election in U.S. history with the Supreme Court ultimately deciding the outcome more than a month after the election. But, as shared by CNN.com, there have been many truly zany moments in American elections. 1800: Prelude to a duel The outcome of the 1800 contest between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams was so bizarre, the United States had to amend the Constitution. Pre-12th Amendment, Electoral College members each had two votes for president, and there were no official tickets. Whoever garnered the most votes was president, and second place took the vice presidency. The election of 1800 saw Jefferson tie with Aaron Burr. Both had 73 votes to Adams' 65. Congress would be called upon to break the tie. Enter Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary, founder of the Federalist Party and a man who did not care for Adams, Jefferson or Burr. Hamilton engaged in a campaign to convince the Federalists to vote for Jefferson. The House of Representatives finally voted to name Jefferson the victor and Burr the veep on February 7, 1801. The rivalry between Burr and Hamilton would continue for more than three years before Burr, still the sitting vice president, killed Hamilton in a duel. 1872: Death of a candidate Horace Greeley wasn't supposed to put up much of a fight in his bid to unseat President Ulysses S. Grant, but a schism in Grant's Republican Party made things a little more interesting. Some Republicans defected, becoming Liberal Republicans, and cast their lot with Greeley, a Democrat who would go on to snare 44 percent of the popular vote, almost three million ballots, despite him stopping campaigning to tend to his sick wife, who died a week before the election. Before the Electoral College could cast its votes, the newspaper founder died November 29, 1872, and 63 of his 66 votes were dispersed among other Democrats. Grant attended his rival's funeral. 1920: Prison campaign It was a battle between two newspaper publishers, but the election wasn't terribly exciting. Republican Warren G. Harding handed Democrat James Cox a historic beatdown, taking more than 60 percent of the popular vote along with 37 of the 48 states. Third place is where it got interesting. The Socialist Party of America enjoyed a modicum of support at the outset of the 20th century. Union leader Eugene Debs ran for president in 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912 and secured roughly 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912, more than 900,000 ballots. In 1920, though, Debs had to run his fifth campaign from the most unlikely of headquarters: prison. No stranger to incarceration -- he'd served time in connection with an 1894 railroad strike -- Debs again drew the government's ire in 1918 when he gave an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, in which he pilloried "the ruling class" who made all the decisions to send "the working class" to war. "Yours not to reason why. Yours but to do and die," he said. He was convicted under an espionage law and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Demonstrations protesting his imprisonment evolved into the May Day riots of 1919, and Debs was later moved to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, from where he conducted his presidential campaign. He would again secure more than 900,000 votes -- an impressive tally, but not nearly enough to compete with Harding, who snared more than 16 million. The following year, on Christmas, Harding commuted Debs' sentence to time served. Your Flooring Consultant, Matt Capell Email: sales@capellinteriors.com Phone (208) 288-0151 Fax (208) 917-6160 P.S. Here's a joke for you! Did you hear the one about the Senator who won his election despite not having thumbs? He ran unopposed.