Another
name for this blog post could easily be the ten worst elections for US
president. But I think that this might be more accurate. Not all of the
elections have been smooth and we might not have a good one again. One may
argue that we’ve never had one that wasn’t bad in some way. But I will say that
when I look back at all the contentious presidential elections, there are ten
that stand out more than all the others.
#10
1880: I wasn’t entirely sure if this should be on the list, but maybe there
wasn’t enough for this list. Still, this election is known as the one with the
closest popular vote for president in US history. James Garfield won this
despite splinters in the Republican party and was president for a brief time
before a religious nut shot him and poor medical practices of the time lead to
his death. This was after a long nomination process that he was stunned he won.
#9
1992: This was actually the first election of my lifetime. Bill Clinton beat
the challengers of both the incumbent president and a third party candidate who
got a surprising turnout in the race despite having not been in it for a while.
I feel like somehow, the country as a whole lost a lot during and after this
election when it started the process of it being a media circus instead of what
civil ways typically existed in the way before. Mudslinging might have begun
around this time officially in the way we see it now where there is a lot of
negativity pointed at the other one in the race but not much positivity pointed
at oneself.
#8
1828: Here’s a shocking fact: the longest election cycle for a presidential
election was this one lasting nearly four years long after Andrew Jackson, the
loser in the last election, declared that he would challenge the incumbent in a
rematch. He won that rematch after one of what has to be the nastiest campaigns
ever even by modern standards. From his side attacking John Quincy Adams over
the controversial way he got into office to Adams’s side plaguing Jackson’s
wife over issues with whether or not they were really married which might have
lead to her dying before her husband took office, this was quite an uncivil
campaign by both sides and what’s sad about it most is that it would hardly be
the only presidential campaign like it.
#7
1960: John F Kennedy won this election, but it remains controversial to this
very day due to all of the people who are wrongly convinced that it was rigged
in favor of him as if Nixon wound up being the best president ever later. The
election was close in terms of the popular vote and the Electoral College vote
with a third party candidate getting enough votes to win two states. The
weirdest part is that Ohio didn’t pick the election winner, something that no
election since then has done thus far.
#6
2016: I can’t do a top ten contentious elections without including the most
recent one. We kind of got two sucky choices as the two main candidates and
somehow, many were convinced that the clearly worse person was the best and he
fucking won. With a Supreme Court vacancy looming on the minds of many, the
Republican’ts gained leverage they shouldn’t have had if they were decent human
beings who did their jobs. While both candidates were clearly liars, so many
people were focused on Hillary Clinton’s to the point of ignoring Trump’s worse
and more frequent lies. Plus his bullying was so horrible that I’m shocked that
people like him for it is what is contributing to the further degradation of
society at hand. Newsflash: Trump has missing emails too. All the protests
after the election and the fact that he had 3 million less votes than his
opponent make this one for the hall of infamy.
#5
1800: This wasn’t the first election, but it was the first one where there was
more than one candidate and things got a bit confusing as a result. Despite
being opponents, the person who came in second place became vice-president
instead of simply a failed candidate. The law was then changed later as a
result, but only after the next election had happened was it set up so that the
second place person didn’t become vice-president. John Adams won and Thomas
Jefferson was now second in command. They hated each other for a long time.
What if Hillary Clinton was the vice president under Trump? That’s the type of
election problems that were caused by this and it being the first real election
was simply bad enough.
#4
2000: Bush versus Gore was not just the election but a Supreme Court decision
that also helped decide the election. They had no business taking an already contentious
election and making it even worse by voting along party lines. They arguably
continued the conservative’s harsh reign on the Supreme Court that they’d had
since sometime in the 1970s and continue to have to this very day. Many
correctly believe that Gore should have won since he had won the popular vote.
Some people will never get over the results.
#3
1860: Here we have the worst ever reaction to an election results: states
leaving the union and forming their own confederacy. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t on
many of the southern state’s ballots and there were tons of other issues that
finally lead to the Civil War taking place. It was still something that needed
to happen, but it was contentious beyond maybe all others.
#2
1876: Some people may not be familiar with this one where the election winner
lost the popular vote, but it could have started a second civil war the way it
divided this country again. The way that it went might have been the reason why
the southern states became and remained as horribly racist as they are today.
Samuel Tilden lost by only one election college vote and Rutherford Hayes was
the narrow winner after a bunch of controversial decisions about different
votes lead Hayes to get all of what was in contention. But what made this even
more controversial was the fact that when people needed to decide the election,
it was a narrow party line vote with the conservatives having the barest
majority, picking Hayes by one vote. It was such a terrible decision that was
made by a bunch of people and the compromise made by the people after this didn’t
work out in the country’s long term favor.
#1
1824: Hands down, this will always be the worst presidential election in our
country’s history. It was a four way race and should have pointed out the
issues with the Electoral College to the point of getting rid of it. Andrew
Jackson got 42% of the popular vote and the most votes in the Electoral College,
but he did not get enough votes to cross the magic threshold of winning. We
then get to John Quincy Adams who got 32% of the popular vote. We then have an
Amendment that helped create even more havoc. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the
House, got to proceed over the final decision of the election when the House
decided it in Adams’s favor. Thus, a man who got 10% less votes than someone
and the lowest percentage of the popular vote out of all of the candidates who
became president got to win the presidency. Many believe that Henry Clay went
out of his way to make sure that his candidate won and the states that Jackson
won even had changed in his favor. The ideal party system was gone forever and now
we have two parties that always fight each other instead of one relatively
united one.
That’s
all for this post. Sorry if all of these paragraphs were really long. I hope
that I was able to help education you on all of the contentious elections of
our country’s past. I only hope that we are able to avoid elections like these
in the future. I thought of including 1972’s election on here since it was one
that had relations to Watergate, but thought that it wouldn’t work after all. I
do not know what else might have made it on here so I guess I’ll leave it up to
you to see if I had picked the most contentious ones or not.
