Here's an interesting bit of historical perspective about the 1960 election, and it's relevancy to the perseption of GWB as an illegitimite president by many democrats. http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110004320 -- JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL A Minority President George W. Bush "lost the popular vote." So did JFK. Thursday, November 20, 2003 12:01 a.m. Momentous historical events have a way of putting political spats in perspective. The bitter debate over whether George W. Bush actually won Florida largely ended after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. By the time media recounts, which found that Mr. Bush's victory was indeed legitimate, were released, they seemed like an afterthought. A similar argument about the photo-finish 1960 election effectively ended with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Until his death, some had plausibly argued that Richard Nixon actually should have had a plurality of the popular vote, even if JFK was legitimately chosen by the Electoral College. A half dozen historical retrospectives are airing this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination. Several of them mention the contested nature of the 1960 election, which Kennedy won, 303 electoral votes to 219. That margin is deceptively large; the race was so close that the election would have been thrown into the House if Kennedy hadn't won Illinois and Texas by excruciatingly narrow margins. If Nixon had won both states, he would have been elected president. The results in both states were disputed because Mayor Richard J. Daley and Sen. Lyndon Johnson both had long histories of encouraging voter fraud. A series in the New York Herald-Tribune after the election documented dozens of examples of possible fraud. But Mr. Nixon had already conceded the election, and Democratic judges in both Illinois and Texas struck down lawsuits demanding full recounts. The effect of potential vote stealing on the outcome of the election was not the only historical argument cut short by Kennedy's assassination. Kennedy's edge in the nationwide popular vote was the equivalent of less than one vote per precinct. The Associated Press reported that Kennedy's plurality was just 112,827 votes nationwide, a margin of 49.7% to 49.5%. But was Kennedy, like George W. Bush, actually a "minority president," elected without a popular-vote plurality? It's uncertain because in Alabama, JFK's name didn't actually appear on the ballot. Voters were asked to choose between Nixon and a slate of "unpledged Democrat electors." A statewide primary had chosen five Democratic electors who were "loyalists" pledged to JFK six who were free to vote for anyone. The Democratic slate defeated Nixon, 324,050 votes to 237,981. In the end, the six unpledged electors voted for Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia, a leading Dixiecrat, and the other five stuck with their pledge to Kennedy. When the Associated Press at the time counted up the popular vote from all 50 states it listed all the Democratic votes, pledged and unpledged, in the Kennedy column. Over the years other counts have routinely assigned all of Alabama's votes to Kennedy. But scholars say that isn't accurate. "Not all the voters who chose those electors were for Kennedy--anything but," says historian Albert Southwick. Humphrey Taylor, the current chairman of the polling firm Louis Harris & Associates (which worked for Kennedy in 1960), acknowledges that in Alabama "much of the popular vote . . . that is credited to Kennedy's line to give him a small plurality nationally" is dubious. "Richard Nixon seems to have carried the popular vote narrowly, while Kennedy won in the Electoral College," he concludes. Congressional Quarterly, the respected nonpartisan chronicler of Washington politics, spent some effort in the 1960s to come up with a fair way of counting Alabama's votes. Reporter Neil Pierce took the highest vote cast for any of the 11 Democratic electors in Alabama--324,050--and divided it proportionately between Kennedy and the unpledged electors who ended up voting for Harry Byrd. Using that method, Kennedy was given credit for 5/11ths of the Democratic total, or 147,295 votes. Nixon's total in Alabama of 237,981 remained the same. The remaining 176,755 votes were counted as being for the unpledged electors. With these new totals for Alabama factored in with the vote counts for the other 49 states, Nixon has a 58,181-vote plurality, edging out Kennedy 34,108,157 votes to 34,049,976. Using that calculation the 1960 election was even closer than we thought. Remember this the next time a Democrat complains that President Bush "lost the popular vote." As Mr. Southwick told me in 2001, "Camelot was made possible by the Electoral College. The same is true of George W. Bush's presidency. Both were legitimate." Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Not quite. The results showed that under some ways of counting Bush would have won and with other ways of counting Gore would have won. Gore would have won under Bush's preferred method of counting and vice versa. Gore also won under more scenarios. None of the recounts addressed the screwed up ballots or the post-dated counting of military ballots. Fact is, more people went to the polls in Florida intending to vote for Al Gore and, the Supreme Court ruling that gave Bush the WH was made at a time when conventional wisdom held Gore would win the recount. HArdly legitimate in my eyes. And by the way, can't the right just leave Kennedy alone and quit trying to spin his history into something favorable for themselves.
I really don't want this thread to be come yet another rehash of florida 2000. i think you've got your facts wrong, but i know i'm not going to change your mind, and in any case it's besides the point. as the article makes clear however, 2000 wasn't the first time someone lost the popular vote and was still elceted by the electoral college.
Correct, but what they failed to mention was that 2000 was the first time the Supreme Court ultimately decided who the President was going to be.
Me either, but you brought it up. And yes, when I cite the results of the media recounts, it is correct. I think there were nine ways they did the recounts and Gore wins in 5 of them. (Somewhere there's a post of mine that documents this more fully.) Of course 2000 wasn't the first time someone won the presidency with less than the majority of popular votes. We all know this. Sam Tilden ring a bell? It was the first election in which the SC played a role that no matter how you slice it, looks partisan to the hilt. It was also the first election in which a court ruling held that legitimate votes should not be counted. And to try and deflect the criticism and prop up Bush by saying he's like Kennedy when the real issue of 2000 had little to do with any disagreements over the electoral college is repulsive. Apples and oranges and this piece, like somany from the right these dyas, lays an egg.
i think you misunderstand the role of the supreme court in bush v gore. the court actually struck down by a 7-2 vote the decision by the florida supremes to allow recounts, using differing standards of determining whether a ballot was a vote (dimpled chad issue), in only certain districts. the 5-4 vote had to do with the remedy. had gore followed a strategy of pursuing a statewide recount with true standards from the very beginning, he might have won the case, and had time to complete the recount before the vote had to be certified. he still would have lost, however.
I'm pretty sure that's not true. I remember Gore winning only 1, under one of the more extreme standards.
the only scenario where gore won was using the most permissible standard of counting marred ballots, something note even the electors in palm beach county advocated.
Rimrocker: I don't think we ALL know this wasn't the first time that someone had won the electoral college without the popular vote. i didn't -- but then i'm not fully up on US politics. I expect many (most?) Americans didn't either. We frequently see articles identifying Bush as illegitimate (personally, i'd just call him a b*stard -- but that has little to do with Florida ) and commenting that he 'lost' the election. As basso's preamble notes -- interesting bit of perspective. RMT's quite right about the supreme court, but with 5 of 9 possible recount methods going Gore's way (meaning 4 of 9 went Bush's?) , I think we can safely say this election ended in a tie -- with a possible bad call by the ref in overtime. Please continue to criticize Bush for his policies (it's well deserved), and question the amount of cash he spent getting elected -- and who gave him the cash -- but after 3 years and media recounts i think the whole 'lost the election' bit has played its course. Makes a cool sound bite -- but i don't think it's accurate. The 'screwed up ballots' by the way, were approved by both democrats and republicans as far as i recall. I don't think we should start projecting how voters meant to vote rather than counting the ballots as they were cast. Lots of messed up stuff back in Florida in 2000. The rest of the world had a good laugh at your expense...but it seems that Bush is as legitimate as Gore unless you want to change the whole electoral college way of doing things. Now about that deficit...
This is important because it gives us historical perspective. SAM FISHER ON THE TRAIL A Minority President JFK "lost the popular vote." So did Rutherford B. Hayes. Thursday, November 20, 2003 2:41 p.m. Momentous historical events have a way of putting political spats in perspective. The bitter debate over whether John F. Kennedy actually won the 1960 election largely ended after the his assasssination. By the time academic and prosecutorial inquiries, which found that Mr. Kennedy's victory was indeed legitimate , were released, such as a 1961 Study by the Universtiy of Chicago as well as several subsequent ones, they seemed like an afterthought. A similar argument about the photo-finish 1876 election effectively ended with the death of Rutherford B. Hayes in January 1893. Until his death, some had plausibly argued that Samuel Tilden actually should have had a plurality of the popular vote, even if Hayes was legitimately chosen by a congresionally established Electoral Commission by an 8-7 margin.
I did mess up... Gore wins in 6 out of 9 scenarios, not 5 as I originally posted. From the Palm Beach Post reflecting the work done by the National Opinion Research Center out of the University of Chicago. __________ The media consortium applied its ballot review to nine scenarios for recounting ballots. The first two attempt to model historical events as closely as possible. The others, while taking court and political party actions into consideration, are more hypothetical. All are based on two out of three reviewers agreeing about whether a mark occurs by a candidate's name. If the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't stopped the counting Dec. 9 count/Counties' own standards -- Bush by 493 What might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't stopped a hand count ordered by the state Supreme Court of all the state's under-votes. Scenario uses the results of the counties that actually finished their hand counts and, for those that didn't finish, applies the standards those counties planned to use. Also counts some over-votes in nine counties. If the four counties Gore wanted to count had finished Gore's four-county strategy -- Bush by 225 What might have happened if the four Democratic counties in which Al Gore sought hand counts had finished in time to be included in the state's certified vote total. Scenario adds the actual results of Palm Beach County and the 139 counted Miami-Dade precincts to the state certified total (which already includes Broward and Volusia). Consortium numbers are used only for the remaining Miami-Dade precincts. Ballots with one corner of a chad detached or better are considered votes. If all counties agreed to use the standard acceptable to most Statewide count/Prevailing standards -- Gore by 60 Applies to all counties the standard a majority of elections officials said they would accept as an indicator of voter intent, based on a survey by consortium members: a single-corner detached chad in punch-card counties and all "affirmative" marks in optical-scan counties. An affirmative mark is any mark that indicates voter intent, including a filled oval, another mark such as an X through the oval, circles or mark around or near the oval, and circles or marks around or near the candidate's name or party. Applied to all under- and over-votes statewide, except Volusia. If the 63 counties ordered to count had used one standard Dec. 9 Dec. 9 count/Uniform standard-- Bush by 430 Dec. 9 again, but this time using the actual hand counts only from Palm Beach, Broward, Volusia and Miami Dade (139 precincts) and applying a uniform standard to only the under-votes in the other 63 counties and Miami-Dade's remaining precincts: one-corner detached on punch cards and all affirmative marks on optical-scan. If the 63 counties ordered to count had used their own standards Statewide count/Custom standard -- Gore by 171 Best guess at what an unrestricted statewide hand recount might have been. Uses actual hand counts from Broward and Volusia and consortium applies each county's own standard in other 65 counties. If all counties had used the Gore standard Statewide count/ Most inclusive standard -- Gore by 107 Any "dimpled chad or better" counts as vote in punch-card counties, and all affirmative marks in optical-scan counties. If all counties had used the toughest standard Statewide count/ Most restrictive standard -- Gore by 115 Counts only so-called "perfect" ballots that machines somehow missed, including fully punched chads and properly marked optical ballots that scanners could not read because of problems such as ink color, humidity and misalignment. If all counties had used the Bush standard Statewide count/Bush standard -- Gore by 105 Applies the standard generally accepted by George W. Bush's lawyers during the hand counts in the three punch-card counties where Gore sought counts: ballots with at least two corners of a chad detached. All affirmative marks accepted in optical-scan counties.v If all counties had used the Palm Beach County standard Statewide count/ Palm Beach dimple rule -- Gore by 42 In punch-card counties, counts dimples as votes in the presidential race when dimples are also present in the U.S. Senate race or elsewhere on the ballot; otherwise accepts only two-corner detached standard. All affirmative marks in optical-scan. Based on Palm Beach County canvassing board's stated aim of accepting dimpled chads as presidential votes if the voter left dimple marks in other races on the ballot.
bnb, I can see your point, but your analogy fails in one critical aspect... the ref didn't just make a bad call. He didn't even belong in the game and he made not only a bad call, but an intentional bad call to throw the game to one side.
Hmm, that's strange. The Miami Herald and USA Today reported differently under another recount: "In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted. The study, conducted by the accounting firm of BDO Seidman, counted over 60,000 votes in Florida's 67 counties, tabulating separate vote totals in several standards categories. ... Under most other scenarios, the papers reported, Bush would have retained his lead. The newspapers' review did not include the approximately 110,000 "overvotes" -- ballots cast for more than one candidate. Both papers are planning a separate analysis of overvote numbers next month." Perhaps it had to do with overvotes. But the study rimrocker posted still had Bush winning if the Supreme Court had not intervened.
well did the popular vote in either election truly caputure the voice of the people? or any presidential election. If I like Candidate X and it is know he should take the state by a wide margin and get all of the elec turn out.. woudln't you think that gives him a lower turn out (and still wins).. then if all the votes nationwide went to one pool that was measured?
Why does the original writer put that Bush "lost the popular vote" in quotes as if it is somehow questionable? Is there any suggestion that he did not? Didn't he lose by a half a million votes or something? But new evidence suggests that JFK may have received less votes in Alabama 40 years ago depending on what method of popular vote counting is apportioned after the fact. Does this mean Bush didn't get a half a million less votes now? I'm confused.
