What History Teaches Us About Stolen Elections
Scott Applewhite, Pool)

The scenario is familiar. A presidential election ends with uncertain results. Millions are convinced the election has been stolen. Congress steps in to reassure the nation, picks a president, and opens a wound that just divides the country further.

Welcome to 1876. That was the year Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and was just one vote short of an Electoral College victory, but somehow lost to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes when the electoral votes of four states were “reconsidered.”

If you think the presidential election of 2020 was controversial,  suffice it to say that if half the irregularities of 1876 had been repeated in 2020, America would have been torn apart.

Not only was an Electoral College majority certified for neither candidate, Congress opted in 1876 to invent a wholly novel “solution.” Instead of following the constitutional mandate putting an unsettled election in the House of Representatives to resolve, Congress improvised, passing a law on Jan. 29, 1877 that formed a 15-member Electoral Commission which was authorized to decide for the entire country who had won the election. Not surprisingly, every decision favored the Republicans on an 8-7 party-line vote, and the commission ended up awarding all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Democrats reportedly allowed Hayes to become president in exchange for his promise that he would end Reconstruction and withdraw federal troops stationed in the South after the end of the Civil War.

Trust me, if there had been an Internet or 24/7 cable news back then, the “Compromise of 1877” probably would have ignited a second civil war instead of putting an unofficial end to the first one. But even without the nonstop blare of social influencers and the Twitter mob, plenty of people knew they were being had.

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