Random Election Things

This election could get crazy.  It's already predicted to be a close race, close enough that things such as the weather or whose name comes first could sway the vote.  A lot of people may remember the 2000 election, where Bush won only after some shenanigans in Florida, but they may not know about all the crazy, random outcomes of elections throughout US history.  And I don't mean random like when Ford had no knowledge of foreign policy, I'm talking about things like...

James Madison runs unopposed, doesn't get every vote

In the 1820 election, the Democratic-Republican party was the only real party left.  The Federalists had collapsed because of their opposition to the War of 1812, even while we were winning.  This meant that only one (major) candidate was running for the first time since 1792, when Washington ran for his second term.

So when the electoral college has only one person to seriously consider, there's only one person who's going to get any votes, right?  Nope.  Apparently, George Washington is an imposing historical figure.  He was elected by unanimous vote in both his terms, and one elector decided that Madison was no Washington.  So in 1820, a single Delaware elector cast a vote for John Quincy Adams, who wasn't even running, just so Madison wouldn't get the unanimous vote.


We should probably thank that one Delaware elector, because Madison's second term is considered one of the most corrupt in history.  Nice job, Delaware!

Andrew Jackson wins the popular vote and elector college, loses the election

If 1820 was marked by order due to a single-party control, the 1824 election is marked by total anarchy.  So just four years after only one serious candidate ran for office, we now had four serious contenders.  Of the four, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were the two favorites, and that's how it played out on election day.  Jackson beat Adams by 15 electoral votes and 10% of the popular vote, but fell 31 votes short of an electoral majority.  Since no candidate won a majority, by the Constitution, the election then went to the House of Representatives.  Only the top three finishers were allowed on the ballot for that vote (which excluded Henry Clay, who came in fourth), and before it could be held William Crawford suffered a stroke, leaving him in no condition to be president.  So it was now down to just Adams and Jackson.

In the House, something crazy happened.  For some reason, a full quarter of the representatives still voted for Crawford.  And despite being the top candidate in both the electoral college and popular vote, Jackson only received 33% of the electoral college vote.  For everyone keeping score at home, that means that Adams received 41% of the vote.  So it was still a deadlock.

Wait, the individual votes aren't what count?  Each delegation only really gets one vote?  Yep.  So even though he couldn't get a majority of the House, Adams managed to squeak out a majority of the states' votes, giving him the presidency.

Naturally, Jackson was pissed, and came back with a vengeance next election, making John Adams and John Quincy Adams both one-term presidents.


Hayes gets negotiated into the Oval Office

The 1876 election should have its picture in the dictionary next to the word "shenanigans."  After most of the votes had been counted, Samuel Tilden was leading Hayes in electoral votes 184-165, with only 20 disputed votes left uncounted.  If Tilden got a single one of those disputed votes, he would be the president.  Everyone momentarily freaked out, but when order was restored a special congressional commission was assigned to decide who would recieve those votes.

Assuming probability holds true even in Congress, at least one of those ballots should have gone to Tilden.  What happened instead is now referred to as the "Compromise of 1877."  The Democrats agreed to give Hayes every disputed vote, under the condition that Hayes ended Reconstruction.  So we have Rutherford B. Hayes to thank for much of the segregation in the south for the next century.  Not bad for the least guessed president on Sporcle.

Debate Time

Right now, America is at the end of baseball season, the middle of football season, and what was supposed to be the beginning of hockey season.  I wrote off the baseball season a few months ago (the perils of a Cubs fan), the Bears are arguably the best team in the NFL right now, and I'm watching the NHL lockout with awe that it actually happened.  But the one season that I'm watching closest right now won't ever compete for the title of "America's Pastime."  That's right, I'm currently in full-on Presidential Debate mode.

The Presidential Debate League (PDL) is one of the newer sports.  The first true matchup happened in 1960, when Kennedy faced off with Nixon in the first televised debate ever.  This debate had an interesting outcome: to those who watched the debate, Kennedy seemed like the clear winner, but to those who listened to the debate without seeing it, Kennedy and Nixon seemed to have tied.  Kennedy played up to the cameras, making this first PDL season one of the few times that the debate has had a noticeable affect on an election and the first to have a disputed outcome.

The League went on hiatus for the next 3 election cycles, but came back with a vengeance for the 1976 season.  Coming in, Ford looked like the favorite -- the incumbent who was leading in the polls -- and Carter was just trying to make up some ground.  Fortunately for Carter, Ford essentially gave him the election when he stated that "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."  Carter seized on the fact that he wasn't Gerald Ford, and won in a close election.

The next 2 seasons, Reagan ran the table in both the debates and the elections, leading these seasons to be considered by some experts as "boring."

1988 led the league back into the spotlight through an unlikely source: the VP debate.  In this debate, Dan Quayle tried to ease fears of his inexperience by comparing his experience to Kennedy's when he ran for president, leading to the famous quip of "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" from his opponent, Lloyd Bensten, marking the first time that the Vice Presidential debate was actually notable.

Since then, the League has been in something of a slump.  1992 was notable because it was the only time that three candidates were involved when independent Ross Perot was invited to the debate and George Bush was caught checking his watch, which didn't really help his reelection bid.  After that, the League faded out of public consciousness for a while.

This year marks the return of the debates.  After Obama's no-show in the first round, he came back and supposedly came back and trounced Romney in the latest round (I don't personally know, I've got it on DVR and will watch it later).  Even the VP debate was good to watch when Biden went all Joe Biden on Ryan.  This season may be the most important since 1976, which was the last time the debates had a significant impact on the election.

Right now, the PDL is America's 4th major sport (I'm discounting the NHL because of the lockout and putting it ahead of the MLS).  So here's to hoping that the League continues strong for years to come.

So What?

History is constantly happening all around us.  Time marches on, new challenges appear and fade, the world changes.  History is like a TV show that always gets renewed for another season (like a soap opera) but never goes off the air or stops for commercial breaks (thankfully, not like soap operas).

But just like those soap operas, sometimes the writers get lazy.  The new season is going along just fine, and then that one character gets thrown in jail... just like the 8 other times that character has already been thrown in jail in earlier seasons.  Yeah, the circumstances were a little different -- it was the daughter-in-law who caused it this time, not the wife -- but it's pretty much the same story.  It all happened before, and you know it's going to happen again.

But what if the characters actually learned from their past experiences?  You know, like what happens everyday in real life.  Now, history stops playing like a soap and more like a well-written TV show with actual plots.  What happened in the past seasons directly and indirectly affects the current season.

That's where I come in.  I'm going to try to identify which past episodes historical events are affecting modern events, and how.  And sometimes I might just throw some interesting history your way.