right|thumb|upright=1.10|The 1877 Electoral Commission, charged with resolving the disputed U.S. presidential election of 1876

The Electoral Commission, sometimes referred to as the Hayes-Tilden or Tilden-Hayes Electoral Commission, was a temporary body created by the United States Congress on January 29, 1877, to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes were the main contenders in the election. Tilden won 184 undisputed electoral votes, one vote shy of the 185 needed to win, to Hayes' 165, with 20 electoral votes from four states (Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina) unresolved. Both Tilden and Hayes electors submitted votes from these states, and each claimed victory.

Facing an unparalleled constitutional crisis and intense public pressure, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate agreed to the formation of the bipartisan Electoral Commission to settle the election. It consisted of fifteen members: five each from the House and the Senate, plus five Supreme Court justices. Eight members were Republicans; seven were Democrats. The commission ultimately voted along party lines to award all twenty disputed votes to Hayes, thus assuring his electoral victory by a margin of 184. Congress, meeting in a joint session on March 2, 1877, affirmed that decision, officially declaring Hayes the winner by one vote.

Election of 1876

The presidential election was held on November 7, 1876, and Tilden won the electors of his home state of New York and most of the South, while Hayes' strength lay in New England, the Midwest, and the West. Tilden had won the popular vote by just over a quarter of a million votes, but he did not have a clear Electoral College majority. He received 184 uncontested electoral votes, while Hayes received 165. Both campaigns claimed the remaining twenty (four from Florida, eight from Louisiana, seven from South Carolina, and one from Oregon) votes. As 185 votes constituted a majority, Tilden needed only one of the disputed votes, while Hayes needed all twenty. The returns in several states, including the disputed states of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, were tainted by allegations of electoral fraud, with each side claiming ballot boxes had been stuffed, ballots altered, and voters intimidated.

Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina

Early returns suggested that Tilden had won the election, and on election night Republican Party chair Zachariah Chandler believed Hayes had lost. However, Chandler gave permission early the next morning to William E. Chandler and John C. Reid, managing editor of The New York Times (which had run the headline "The Results Still Uncertain"), to wire Republican officials in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina to hold their states for Hayes. In each state, Republicans controlled the partisan returning boards, tasked with certifying the popular results of the election. In response to Chandler's directive, Democratic Party chair Abram S. Hewitt organized committees of prominent Democrats to travel South and oversee the vote counting. President Grant, in turn, sent Republican delegations to follow the Democratic observers.

In each of the three disputed Southern states, the pattern that followed was largely the same: the returning board invalidated numerous ballots on the grounds of fraud or voter intimidation, delivering a popular majority to Hayes and the Republican candidate for Governor. A dissident Democratic government claimed victory and the legitimate authority to govern and certify the electoral vote of the state. The Republican claimant certified an electoral slate for Hayes, and the Democratic claimant certified a slate of electors for Tilden.

In Florida, the initial count showed Hayes ahead by 43 votes, but after corrections were made, Tilden took the lead by 94 votes. Subsequently, the returning board rejected numerous ballots, delivering the election to Hayes by nearly a thousand votes. The board also declared that the incumbent Republican governor, Marcellus Stearns, had won the gubernatorial election; however, the Florida Supreme Court overruled them, instead awarding the victory to Democrat George Franklin Drew, who announced that Tilden had carried Florida.

alt=Louisiana Returning Board|left|thumb|Louis M. Kenner, Casanave Gardenne, Thomas C. Anderson, James Madison Wells at the 1876 presidential fraud hearings.

In Louisiana, early unofficial tallies indicated that Tilden had carried the state by over 6,000 votes, but the Republican-controlled returning board rejected over 15,000 votes (13,000 for Tilden and 2,000 for Hayes) for reasons of fraud and voter intimidation. As a result, Hayes won Louisiana's eight electoral votes, while Republican candidate Stephen B. Packard was considered to lead the vote count in the simultaneous election for Governor of Louisiana. In response, the Democratic Party instituted a rival state government under Francis T. Nicholls, and this rival administration, in turn, certified that Tilden had won. The Louisiana Returning Board was composed of James Madison Wells, Thomas C. Anderson, Gardene Casanave, and Louis M. Kenner.

A nearly identical scenario played out in South Carolina, where initial returns suggested that Hayes had won the presidential election, while the Democratic candidate Wade Hampton III had won the gubernatorial contest. As in Louisiana, the Republican-controlled returning board rejected several thousand votes, ensuring the election of a Republican governor, Daniel Henry Chamberlain, and legislature. The Democratic Party promptly organized a rival state government, led by Hampton, and this body declared Tilden the victor in the presidential election. However, enough Republicans joined the Democrats to ensure its passage. On January 25, 1877, the Senate voted in favor of the bill 47–17; the House did likewise the next day, 191–86. The Electoral Commission Act () was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on January 29, 1877.

Membership of the commission

Originally, it was planned that the commission would consist of seven Democrats and seven Republicans, with an independent (Justice David Davis) as the fifteenth member of the commission. According to one historian, "no one, perhaps not even Davis himself, knew which presidential candidate he preferred." Just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, the Legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the Senate, with Democrats in the Illinois legislature believing that they had purchased Davis' support for Tilden, but this was a miscalculation: Davis promptly excused himself from the commission and resigned as a Justice in order to take his Senate seat.

The tribunal began hearing arguments on February 1, 1877. Tilden's lawyers argued that the commission should investigate the actions of the state returning boards, and reverse those actions if necessary. Conversely, Hayes' counsel suggested that the commission should merely accept the official returns certified by the state governor without inquiring into their validity. To do otherwise, it was argued, would have violated the sovereignty of the states. The commission voted 8–7, along party lines, in favor of the Republican position.

Subsequently, in a series of party-line votes, the commission awarded all twenty disputed electoral votes to Hayes. Under the Electoral Commission Act, the commission's findings were final unless overruled by both houses of Congress. Although the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives repeatedly voted to reject the commission's decisions, the Republican-controlled Senate voted to uphold them. Thus, Hayes' victory was assured.

thumb|right|upright=1.5|The final results of the presidential election of 1876 are shown above.

Unable to overturn the commission's decisions, many Democrats instead tried to obstruct them. Congressman Abram Hewitt, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made a spurious challenge to the electoral votes from Vermont, even though Hayes had clearly carried the state. The two houses then separated to consider the objection. The Senate quickly voted to overrule the objection, but the Democrats conducted a filibuster in the House of Representatives. In a stormy session that began on March 1, 1877, the House debated the objection for about twelve hours before overruling it. Immediately, another spurious objection was raised, this time to the electoral votes from Wisconsin. Again, the Senate voted to overrule the objection, while a filibuster was conducted in the House. However, the Speaker of the House, Democrat Samuel J. Randall, refused to entertain dilatory motions. Eventually, the filibusterers gave up, allowing the House to reject the objection in the early hours of March 2. The House and Senate then reassembled to complete the count of the electoral votes. At 4:10 am on March 2, Senator Ferry announced that Hayes and William A. Wheeler had been elected to the presidency and vice presidency, by an electoral margin of 185–184.

==Aftermath==<!-- This section is linked from Thomas Brackett Reed -->

Many of Tilden's supporters believed that he had been cheated out of victory, and Hayes was variously dubbed "Rutherfraud", "His Fraudulency", and "His Accidency." On March 3, the House of Representatives went so far as to pass a resolution declaring its opinion that Tilden had been "duly elected President of the United States." Nevertheless, Hayes was peacefully sworn in as president on March 5.

To prevent a repetition of the farce of 1876, the 49th Congress passed the Electoral Count Act in 1887. Under this law, now codified in , a state's determination of electoral disputes is conclusive in most circumstances: the President of the Senate opens the electoral certificates in the presence of both houses, and hands them to the tellers, two from each house, who are to read them aloud and record the votes. In the event of a state sending multiple returns to Congress, then whichever return has been certified by the executive of the state is counted, unless both houses of Congress decide otherwise.

The end of Reconstruction

One major outcome of the electoral commission and the Compromise of 1877 was the return of the South to "home rule" via the removal of federal troops, effectively ending the Reconstruction era.

With the end of federal government's enforcement of post-bellum equality, takeovers of the Southern legislatures by the Southern wing of the Democratic Party were quick to occur, often involving fraud and/or violence.

These new "Redeemer" governments implemented Jim Crow laws which imposed a system of racial discrimination, reversing the gains of Reconstruction and disenfranchising black people in the South until 1965.

See also

  • Bush v. Gore, a case relating to the disputed presidential election of 2000
  • Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

References

Notes

Further reading

  • U.S. Electoral Commission. (1877) Electoral Count of 1877. Proceedings of the Electoral Commission and of the Two Houses of Congress in Joint Meeting Relative to the Count of Electoral Votes Cast December 6, 1876, for the Presidential Term Commencing March 4, 1877. 44th Cong. 2d Sess. Washington: GPO.