The Daily Signal - What You Need to Know About ‘the Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections’

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Today, we’re featuring an interview with our colleagues at The Daily Signal, Jarrett Stepman and Fred Lucas, who co-host "The Right Side of History Podcast." Lucas and Stepman will be discussing Lucas’ book, “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” We also cover these stories: President Donald Trump’s legal team held a press conference Thursday afternoon asserting that Trump won the Nov. 3 presidential election and said that they’re intent on proving that vote fraud stole it. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Thursday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom “lost a lot of credibility” when he chose to dine at an exclusive French restaurant, the French Laundry on Nov. 6 without a mask.  Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are asking the panel's chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., to hold hearings to investigate violence carried out against Trump supporters during the Million MAGA March in Washington on Nov. 14.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, November 20th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. Today we're featuring an interview from our colleagues at the Daily Signal, Jared Stetman and Fred Lucas, who co-hosts the Right Side of History podcast. Fred and Jared will be discussing Fred's book, Tainted by Suspicion, The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. President Donald Trump's legal representatives held a press conference Thursday asserting

that Trump won the November 3rd presidential election and that they are set on proving it. Here's what Trump campaign attorney, Sidney Powell, said during a press conference via the Daily Caller. Being in office, we're allowed to rig their elections. This is stunning, heartbreaking, infuriating, infuriating and the most unpatriotic acts I can even imagine for people in this country to have

participated in in any way, shape, or form. And I want the American public to know right now that we will not be intimidated. American patriots are fed up with the corruption from the local level to the highest level of our government, and we are going to take this country back. We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to back down. We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, said regarding the current cases of fraud they are litigating is more than double the amount of votes to turn the election to Trump. Here's what Giuliani had to say via the daily caller.

of fraud allegations in the state of New Mexico, which is, and we have a significant number of allegations in the state of Virginia. I don't know yet whether the number in Virginia will reach the number that can turn the election. In the states that we have indicated in red, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona, we more than double the number of votes needed to overturn the election in terms of provable, illegal ballots. All you got to do to find out if I'm misleading you at all is to look at the lawsuits. Look what's alleged. Look at the affidavits. Maybe we can supply more affidavits. In order to do it, I have to get permission from the people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released updated holiday guidelines on Thursday,

discouraging people from traveling over Thanksgiving. Celebrating virtually or with members of your own household who are consistently taking measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 poses the lowest risk for spreading, the CDC writes, adding that in-person gatherings that bring together family members or friends from different households, including college students returning home, pose varying levels of risk. The CDC says that more than one million cases, of COVID-19 were reported over the past week. Dr. Henry Walk, a COVID-19 incident manager for the CDC, said per CNN, it's been a long outbreak, almost 11 months now, and people are tired. And we understand that, and people want to see their relatives and their friends in the way they've always done it.

But this year, particularly, we're asking people to be as safe as possible and limit their travel. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Thursday that California Governor Gavin Newsom lost a lot of credibility when Newsom chose to eat at an exclusive French restaurant, the French laundry on November 6th without a mask. On Wednesday, Bell Maligan, investigative correspondent for Fox 11 Los Angeles tweeted, Exclusive, we've obtained photos of Governor Gavin Newsom at the Napa dinner party he's in hot water over. The photos call into question just how outdoors the dinner was. A witness who took photos tell us his group was so loud, the sliding doors had to be closed. McCarthy said of Newsom via just the news.com, what's concerning to me was who was around the table, from the Medical Association, and then to say at the very beginning that they were outside,

they weren't even wearing a mask, McCarthy said, adding, I think he lost a lot of credibility with Californians. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are asking chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, to hold hearings in order to investigate violence carried out against Trump supporters during the Million Maga March in D.C. last weekend. We respectfully request a hearing on the violence directed to supporters of President Trump on November 14, 2020, the GOP members wrote to Maloney on Thursday, adding the failure of the city's leaders to afford basic protections to persons who may hold different political viewpoints from their own, appears to be another concerning example of viewpoint discrimination in the district. Saturdays March was attended by thousands of Trump supporters,

some of whom were violently attacked by what appear to be members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. The Republican leaders also wrote a letter to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser asking her to explain the plan she and the D.C. please have to, quote, ensure the safety of those who seek to peacefully exercise First Amendment rights within the district. Now stay tuned for Jarrett Stetman's conversation with Fred Lucas discussing Fred's book, Tainted by Suspicion, The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear some of the biggest names in American politics speak?

Every day, the Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live. Webinar topics range from ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic to the CARES Act and the economy. These webinars are free and open to the public. To find the latest webinars and register, visit heritage.org slash events. This week, we're going to do something a little different. Instead of having our usual guest, we're going to have Fred be our guest because Fred wrote in 2016 an interesting book that actually deals with what we're seeing here at current events in 2020. His book is called Tainted by Suspicion, The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputal Presidential Elections. And we thought that it was

perfect to talk about this, given all the controversy over the 2020 presidential election, to give a little overview of elections of the past, many of which I think Americans today don't know much about, but had a huge controversy. consequences at the time. It's really amazing, Fred, especially going over your book and an article you wrote for Daily Signal back in 2016. Just how many elections have had a huge cloud of dispute, including your famous phrase, which of course was uttered by Ulysses S. Grant about the 1876 election, that it had been tainted by suspicion. So, Fred, are election controversies like this particularly uncommon in American history?

Oh, well, yeah, I tend to think that the most unprecedented thing about this presidential election is how many times people have said unprecedented. Because you just keep hearing that. If you turn on CNN or MSNBC or probably read the New York Times, you get the impression that a challenge of an election has never been done before. just 20 years ago, literally 20 years ago, that this actually happened with Bush v. Gore in Florida. This year, in a lot of ways, is a lot more, this election is a lot more like the 1876 election, I think, in the sense that it's being challenged in multiple states. This year, of course, it's Georgia where they're doing a recount, Pennsylvania, where they're there's litigation and lawsuits going on,

Arizona, where they dropped some lawsuits. So Michigan, we saw this recent controversy, Wayne County. First, they weren't going to certify, then they decided to certify for a compromise, and some apparent bullying that occurred with the Republicans on the certification board there. But you had similar shenanigans back in 1876, and the states that being contested were South Carolina,

Florida, Louisiana, and this odd predicament, there was one electoral vote being contested out of Oregon. But yeah, in the case of 1876, it didn't go through the courts entirely, though the Supreme Court did have a role in that. There were, on this bipartisan electoral commission, there were actually five Supreme Court justices. And some of the state courts did make some rulings before this electoral commission. So you did have sort of a mix. And I would also say 1876, that was a less litigious time than 2020 when things are typically settled in courts. Yeah, that is very interesting, Fred. I think it definitely is a mark of the times that in the 19th century, most of our political disputes,

it was assumed that the legislatures or Congress would essentially solve those disputes as they basically did in 1876. Nowadays, we are more apt to shovel things through the courts up to the Supreme Court level, which of course shows that the growing power of the Supreme Court. it's such an important issue now in the politics of 2020. But I am very much amused, especially as you said, you know, if you turn on CNN or MSNBC or most of these networks, you know, you have a number of commentaries, like, well, this is so shocking. We have a disputed election. This is this is the end of democracy. And I would say, actually, in some ways, this is very much democracy in action.

I mean, this is, you know, the kind of chaos that you get and, of course, high passion is, very much a mark of democracy. I mean, if we wanted a stable and sedate political system, I mean, we just have a monarchy. We just let the line of succession go to the next in line, the next kin, and have at it. But this has been the case throughout our history, even though the United States has had, I would say, probably the most stable and successful political system in the world. there have been so many disputes, even going back to the earliest days of the Republic. And that's kind of where I want to start with this, Fred. I mean, you have this great piece that you wrote in 2016, about five disputed elections.

And you start off with the 1800 election, which I think nearly led to the end of the Republic. Can you talk about that a bit, Fred? Yeah, yeah. And that's the first election featured in tainted by suspicion. the book on the spirit elections. And it gets into, that's actually the second contested election in American history, contested presidential election, because George Washington was, of course, elected twice by acclamation. But, of course, and it was very close between Jefferson and Adams in 1796.

Adams won the rematch in 1800. Jefferson actually won rather convincingly. He had a running mate pre-12th Amendment. So the president and the vice president did not run on a ticket together. It was presumed that the runner-up, as was the case with Thomas Jefferson, would become the vice president. It was this botched effort where they were supposed to, one person was supposed to withhold his vote from Aaron Burr.

he did not. And so you had Aaron Burr ended up being tying with Thomas Jefferson, 73 to 73 in electoral votes that sent it to the House. Now, the Federalist House members, they got wiped out in that election too, pretty much. But they were still in office well into 1801, and to March, I believe, at the time. And then this was a lot of them were, believe that they could make mischief. Aaron Burr seemed like a very unprincipled guy, and they thought that he would be pretty malleable, especially if the Federalists were the ones who put him in office. And they really seriously thought about this. Ended up by Alexander Hamilton, basically, talked the Federalist members of Congress out of this.

He, of course, did not like Aaron Burr that contributed to his ending demise, I would say. But yeah, Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in costing Aaron Burr the presidency and later the governorship of New York as it happened. So that was an odd election. It was different from the others, I would say, in that the others that are covered and tainted by suspicion because you had 1824, which we'll talk about also, 18276 and 2000. or all elections where you had basically competing candidates. 1800 was this odd situation where you had two candidates of the same party, and the election went into overtime, and basically had it went from being Adams versus Jefferson to Jefferson versus Burr.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Of course, had the rules stayed the same, the 12th Amendment never been passed. It's like having, you know, 2016, we have Donald Trump, Trump is president, Hillary Clinton as vice president. It was definitely a big state problem. It was, I think, very necessary, especially in the rise of political parties, that that distinction be made. So it does create, you know, of course, you know, the Constitution, you know, I don't think anybody would say it's absolutely perfect.

They went about changing it in the way that it's supposed to be changed. It was a pretty, I think, universally supported constitutional amendment to change it. But it is quite a dramatic election, even though it's very. different to a certain extent than modern elections that are much more partisan. You know, this first time in history you really had one party basically replace another one in power and had that peaceful transition of power. So there was definitely a lot of passion at the time, despite the dispute, which led to, of course, Jefferson's famous inaugural where he said, you know, we're all Republicans, we're all federalists,

trying to unite the country, even though the country was in many ways very much divided the idea that, well, we're all Americans, we're going to stick by this election no matter what. So definitely set in course the United States that we would ultimately resort to ballots instead of bullets to resolve our disputes, even if those disputes were very ugly and fraught and contentious. So certainly I think it's reasonable to say that's one of those consequential elections in our history. Yes, and I mean, to people who aren't happy about this going into the courts, yeah, I mean, what's the alternative, right? It's, yeah, I mean, it either gets litigated or people will fight it out in the streets. I mean, we've seen some, we did see some violence from Antifa and so forth after the election, but, I mean, nothing at any kind of grand scale like you might see in some other countries where things spill out into the streets and people have power struggles over.

who gets to lead the country. Absolutely. So let's get to the second election you had in your list, which an election I find incredibly interesting, the 1824 election, which again was actually unique in American history in that the election went to the House of Representatives because there was no official winner of the electoral college. There were so many different candidates who got just enough votes to actually get into that running.

three of course three candidates who made into electoral college. The election did not go to the person who had won the most boasts during the election. Actually went to the guy second line. Can you describe the 1824 election, Greg? Yeah. Yeah, it turned out Andrew Jackson actually won a pretty good, I think something like 43% of the popular vote in a three-way or, you know, actually a four-way race, sorry. It became a three-way race after the election when it went to the House. William Crawford was still technically a candidate. He got enough electoral votes to be the top three, the House of the fight among. It shows a very different time. William Crawford, by the way, actually suffered a stroke during the campaign. It was nearly an invalid.

And yet he was still running for president. Obviously, he wasn't going to have any chance at that point. but shows a lot of people around the country had no idea that he was as sick as he was. Yeah. Well, Martin Van Buren was running his campaign. It shows you what a political mastermind Martin Van Buren was. He was like a Carl Rove or David Axelrod or something of his time before he became president, before he ran for office on his own.

But also it was interesting about 1824 is that the Federalist Party, by this point, well, it was in its death throw. It was not entirely eliminated, but it was basically a non-entity. There were a few members of Congress that identified themselves as federalists, but it was almost irrelevant. Most everyone, John Quincy Adams identified himself within the Democratic Republican Party of Jefferson, basically, by this point, which shows you how much things had changed over two decades. Everyone was basically of the same party. it was the what was called

the era of good feelings you had three consecutive just given the setting here you had three consecutive two-term presidencies Jefferson, Madison and Monroe that didn't happen again by the way until you had

Clinton Bush Obama three consecutive two-term presidencies and but yeah but the era of good feelings kind of turned into a sense that people were, became angry and frustrated with Washington.

They thought Washington was out of touch. Washington had become corrupt, a good old boy system. And along came Andrew Jackson, who, he was a military hero. But in a lot of ways, I say, and in tainted by suspicion, I say that he was, Andrew Jackson was in many ways the Donald Trump of his day, because he was, He ran against the Washington machine. He used very colorful language. He was able to get away with things politically that a lot of people never could.

The public was willing to give him a pass on a lot of things. And he ended up winning, seemingly winning, and pretty well, this popular vote. He had a plurality of the election. doctoral college votes, but not a majority. That's why I went to the House. And that's where Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, from the great state of Kentucky, he pretty much threw it to John Quincy Adams. Now, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay are known to have met. This was called, people said this was a corrupt bargain. There's a lot of doubt about that since that day.

There's almost, given the amount of power Henry Clay had as House Speaker, he had a lot of influence, he did not like Jackson from the beginning. He was no fan of Andrew Jackson. He didn't like his style. He didn't like his policies. John Quincy Adams was pretty much in line with Henry Clay's views on infrastructure, the American system, getting a sort of national economy. and so forth. So it was almost inevitable from the beginning that Henry Clay would send the

election to John Quincy Adams. However, this was a rallying cry for Jackson and Jackson supporters. This was a corrupt bargain. This is just further proof of how disgustingly corrupt Washington is. And it became the Tennessee legislature nominated Jackson for president in 1825. which was three years before the actual presidential election. And it was basically a three-year campaign in which his supporter, galvanized support. That's when the aforementioned Martin Van Buren became an Andrew Jackson guy. He saw where the political winds were blowing.

And he jumped on that bandwagon, basically. And then you had Andrew Jackson's victory and what was basically the, basically the birth of what became known. as a Democratic Party. Yeah, it really is a fascinating stuff, especially, of course, the political fate of Henry Clay, who was one of the most powerful been in America, was Speaker of the House,

was the youngest Speaker of the House in American history. As you said, he really had no reason politically to vote for Jackson. Jackson was basically a much more, I guess in the terms of the day, a limited government guy he did not support. the national system of tariffs and infrastructure projects that Henry Clay supported. And Clay, in fact, I think he had a speech after Jackson took Florida, comparing Jackson to Julius Caesar unfavorably. So there doesn't seem to be much of a reason.

I think it seems like Clay really misstepped in that he became John Quincy Adams' Secretary of State, which in those days was considered next in line for the presidency. It's not like modern times where their president's successful, the vice president steps. In those days, the Secretary of State was really seen as the next in line. And because he took that job, which didn't end up very well for him. I think he had a pretty miserable time as Secretary of State. He had this accusation of the so-called corrupt bargain, which from everything I've read from all the historians I've read is not really true, but it smacked of being true to the majority of the American people. It looked bad.

It was not a good look, right. right, right. The fact that he even met with John Quincy Adams was probably not a good look, the fact that he took the job. Now, Henry Clay had said that he did have some reluctance in taking that job because of how he was aware of how that might look. But he also said that he could, he felt that he could hardly turn down the man that he had made president and refuse that job from him. So which I can see that. rationale as well. It is interesting, even in victory for John Quincy Adams, he had basically a terrible presidency. With the four years, he was being undermined. He had essentially a lot of people who were favorable to Jackson working as administration. He was very... It was a copious problem. Exactly. And it seemed to really build when Jackson, when his supporters thought that the presidency essentially had been stolen from them, it allowed them to create a groundswell support for the 1828 election. It's almost as if John Quincy Adams never really got

his fair chance at the presidency because there was such a cloud hanging over it and because he really didn't have a huge amount of backing. I mean, people respected John Quincy Adams, but he didn't have the kind of passionate love or hate that Jackson did. It seemed to what Jackson either loved him you hated him, there was a lot of passion, not so much for John Quincy Adams, which really made him suffer in the 1828 election. Yeah, yeah. Basically, for that time period, when there were no really competing political parties, the nation was essentially divided, philosophically divided based on are you pro-Jackson or are you anti-Jackson? And eventually you did have the the national Republicans and later the Whigs that emerged to challenge the

Jacksonian Democrats, later just the Democrats. But yeah, I mean, it was basically Jackson was just such an overwhelming personality. And that in the sense, he was very much like Trump. But as you said, I mean, there's in some ways you could probably compare the presidency of John Quincy Adams to Trump in some sense, that there was this constant sense of people declaring him illegitimate for his entire time in office, trying to constantly undermine him at every turn. I mean, that's, I think there's a lot of historical comparisons to be made on both sides. Yeah, for sure. So let's get to the 1876 election, because I think actually, if you ask the average American what they think of the 1876 election, I don't think they could maybe even name the

candidates. But this is really one of the most dramatic elections. in all of American history, I believe it still holds the record for highest turnout of voters in American history. I think there was something like 82% of registered voter, which is a staggeringly high, a decade after the Civil War that was probably the most contested in our history and probably the closest to an election being, I mean, you can even say in many parts of the country illegitimate, talked to us about this incredible election. Fred. Well, yeah, this is this election,

I would say, giving some backdrop here as well. This was a little over a decade after the end of the Civil War. There was actually a feeling going in the 1876 that there was going to be sort of this year-long

centennial celebration about America, that America was in some ways sort of coming together after this awful bloody conflict. and that you did have these two candidates. They didn't really disagree on that much. Rutherford B. Hayes was the governor of Ohio. He was a reform-minded Republican, sort of moderate Republican,

but conservative on fiscal and pro-business issues. You had the New York Governor Samuel Tilden, who was sort of a, in some ways, a conservative Democrat, maybe sort of a forerunner to what Grover Cleveland was philosophically. He took on Tammany Hall. He was, he didn't believe in that old machine style corruption, and that's why he became the presidential nominee. He was seen as this sort of heroic reformer.

And so, and then the election happened, and the country was just thrown into division. It looked like Rutherby Hayes went to bed that night, believing he had probably lost the election. And Samuel Tildon thought he had won. But Daniel Sickles, who was a Republican operative, started actually looking at the telegraphs and the results coming in, started telegraphing these other Republican operatives

and governors. Some of them were military governors in states like, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, about if you can hold your state, Rutherford B. Hayes can be president. And this is actually where the book gets its title, which during the heat of the 1876 dispute, President Grant wrote one of his generals to say, quote, no manworthy of the office of president should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the results, but the country cannot afford to have the results tainted by suspicion of illegal or false returns. I basically felt like that was a characterization that may be applied to all these elections because we talked about the, certainly the 18,

24 election, people felt like John Quincy Adams was there because of the crook bargain. In this case, Rutherby Hayes finally did win, as we talked about a little bit earlier, after an electoral commission with five House members,

five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. And then that had to be decided ultimately by Congress. And then also the Bush v. Gore in 2000. I mean, there were a lot of Democrats that felt that Bush was put in office through some sort of chicanery.

I am sure that you're going to have close to half the country. If Joe Biden, which it looks that way right now, ends up being president, will feel that he was put there through fraud. So these were presidencies that were in some ways tainted by suspicion, I think. Yeah, I think it is interesting, especially given at that time, I mean, a lot of ballot security was not fantastic. I mean, there was a lot of accusation of ballot stuffing. I mean, in those days, you had a lot of places where you didn't have official ballots.

I mean, people could just, you know, put on a piece of paper who they're voting for. You had parties, Republicans putting out a Democrat ballot with all Republicans on and vice versa to try to trick voters. There was actually immense voter fraud in those states. And that's where Republican views. You had Republican boards that were appointed, enough cases military appointed in those southern states that threw out a lot of Democratic votes because they were, you had Democrats that were voting multiple times in those states for Tilden. You also had massive, massive voter suppression by Democrats,

and this was real voter suppression. It's not asking someone for a photo ID. This is suppression by violent lynching, violent attacks and so forth. So this was, I mean, this was a major problem. People say that today that the vote totals came in, that Samuel Tilding had a pretty sizable popular vote lead over Rutherford-Bahease. There is no way to know what the real popular vote wasn't out like. It was just so fraught with problems, particularly in those southern states, the former Confederate states, where this was when reconstruction was going on. But, yeah, this was the Electoral Commission basically voted long eight to seven, generally a party line vote to award all those electoral votes to Hayes, and then it went to Congress.

similar to today, if this were to somehow go to Congress, the Senate was controlled by Republicans, the House was controlled by Democrats. But under the bill, the Electoral Commission that was passed, both houses would accept it, but Democrats tried not to. They tried numerous delay tactics. They thought that they could extend it over the deadline,

maybe the Speaker of the House at the time actually thought maybe they could push it over the deadline and force a new election even. Other Democrats in the caucus weren't with him on that. And then you finally had basically right up to the cusp of the inauguration. They decided, they approved the electoral commission's

recommendation and made Hayes the president. This only happened, though, after what was called the compromise of 1877, where you had a group of Republican congressmen, the senators and House members, meet with a group of Southern Democrats at the place, it was a hotel called the Wormley House in Washington, D.C.

And they basically hashed out this deal, worked on it all night. And the bottom line was that Hayes, Democrats would not support the delay tactics in the House if Hayes would agree to withdraw reconstruction for the federal troops out of the southern states. And so that basically happened. A lot of people look to hold Hayes in pretty low regard

for making this deal and Republicans for making this deal. If you really consider what was the alternative, certainly if Samuel Tilden had become president, things would have been much worse in the South. So, I mean, I think this was probably the best alternative they could have turned to. Yeah, another so-called corrupt bargain that to a certain extent, for the sake of the country, especially when you consider what had happened just a decade earlier with the Civil War. You know, it's a case where, you know, both solutions are bad ones, but sometimes you just, you really do have to take the lesser of two evils.

It's hard to see that the political situation at that time, ending up, you know, sparkling. I mean, one way or another, I think Hayes was already considering a drawback of reconstruction policy. So he was already pretty moderate on that issue. Yeah. There wasn't a whole lot that they could have done. And the fact is, I mean, the country went, I mean, basically four months without knowing who the president was going to be, which is kind of, especially what we're talking about in just days after the 2020 election, people are saying, well, this is just ridiculous. You know, the president hasn't conceded and blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is four months after a civil war, which, you know, half the country, nearly half the country split off in the union, we have this incredible dispute. I could see why, you know, especially people who were living in 1876, I thought this was the most momentous election in American history. And obviously today it's, I think, not all that well known, but it seems like that the country was really on edge. Yeah, Joseph Pulitzer, who's, of course, known for the Pulitzer Prize and was in the early stages of building up his vast newspaper empire at the time.

but he was also very active in democratic politics, and he called for 100,000 armed Democrats to descend on Washington and demand that they put Samuel Tilden in the White House, and his phrase to honor the wishes of the people. And you had other people marching through Washington saying Tilden or blood. So, yeah, there were people making these strong, you know, powerful threats if their guy didn't get in office. So, yeah, I mean, you sort of see a little bit of that today.

I mean, with the Antifa movement and so forth. Yeah, if anything, I think that the lessons of 1876 are the importance, of course, of ballot security and trusting the votes that actually take place. I think that's incredibly important. And also the electoral college, too. I mean, you know, there's so many talks about moving toward a popular vote. If there are regulars, we do have a federal system based on the states, if there are regularities and states have done a bad job and there are illegitimate votes or votes not being counted in states, it's basically limited to those states rather than a larger problem. So definitely a lot of lessons learned there in 1876 that was incredibly ugly, but the Republic survived.

the republic survived and went on despite the mess that was created. Let's move on a bit to, well, nearly a century later to the next disputed election you have on your list, which is the 1960 election. More Americans today, of course, remember this one between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon that Kennedy ultimately won. But this was not exactly an undisputed election by any stretch. a lot of accusations, the improprieties had taken place. Can you, can you describe that, Fred? Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean, I do have in this book, and it gets into that this was kind of a,

sort of an under the radar dispute. It's kind of widely, that this was sort of, the post-election here was sort of widely viewed as one of Richard Nixon's finest moments, and in a sense it was, but there he did sort of give the approval for Republican lawyers, Republican operatives, to really dig into this and look into some of the fraudulent things that were happening in Illinois and in Texas. And there were actually a few sort of more minor lawsuits that they were taking place. It, of course, did not go to the Supreme Court or didn't reach the level of anything that we saw in 1870. or 2000. But there was some post-litigation.

There was actually a lot of people know the story about the daily machine, dead people voting. There was actually a reporter with the New York Carroll Tribune at the time who was really digging into a lot of this stuff. And the New York Carroll Tribune at the time was a very pro-Republican newspaper. and they were getting all kinds of scoops on this. And it was starting to get a lot of attention. Richard Nixon eventually asked the reporter not to cover this. And then the reporter said, yeah, sorry, I'm going to keep doing it. And then Nixon actually contacted the Herald Tribune,

and the Herald Tribune newspaper basically killed it. So, you know, we're not going to go into this anymore. Nixon believed that it would make the country look weak and illegitimate in the eyes of the Soviet Union, which was a major deal at the time. If the U.S. elections looked illegitimate, then the Soviets could have a way of saying, yeah, they're not a democratic country like they claim to be. So that was a major, major issue at that time. Yeah, it seems that the election was it wasn't just simply,

in Illinois that you had accusations. It seems like there were a number of other states. Of course, Texas being among them, Lyndon Johnson, uh, being a power broker there, of course, a lot of accusations that, in fact, it seems that there was a little bit of organization from Nixon, his campaign to potentially challenge a number of states. I think New Jersey was on the list too, where you had disputed results. So it seems like Nixon was putting out feelers to possibly challenge this election, but kind of thought better of it, you know, when through his campaign, can you kind of describe that? It seems like Nixon was definitely eventually conceded, but it seems like he was putting out some feelers.

Yeah, he did concede and fairly early, but yeah, he was essentially, yeah, putting up feelers. some lower level lawyers were doing sort of small small level lawsuits making some challenges as you mentioned Illinois Texas New Jersey where there were some irregularities I mean there were a lot of irregularities there what we don't know is whether it really there have been studies and I mentioned this and tainted by suspicion that there have been a couple of studies that sort of looked at what were pretty obvious, fraudulent votes, and the determined Kennedy probably would have managed to win if he took those out, he might have lost a popular vote.

But he might have managed to still win the election, which by an even closer margin than he did. So that was, of course, probably the closest up to that point. I think that had been the closest election, just vote by vote. If one vote per precinct had switched, it would have installed Nixon into office. It wouldn't be fair to say that there was definitely, whether Nixon could have actually pulled this out, definitely some malfeasance taking place. It seems that in Chicago particular. It was quite out corruption.

I mean, the Daily Machine, they were putting dead people on the rolls. I mean, it was discovered that something like 100 people were marked down to have voted, and they lived in one house, and it turned out it was an abandoned house. Yeah, there were just numerous things all across. Similar in Texas, LBJ's stomping ground, where he, I mean, you would think they'd would win Texas with LBJ on the ticket, not so. LBJ had notoriously close elections in Texas. And he won his first house seat by one vote, literally.

So there was immense. And this was a time, this was a time, I mean, a lot of people try to say that there was this dramatic switch in the 1960s. It's important to know here, Texas as an example, this was a time when the second. going back to the 50s, maybe even earlier, certainly with Eisenhower, a lot of southern states are starting to trend Republican, and some even earlier than that. But post-FDR, the South was starting to trend Republican. And that's another story all in itself, though.

But yeah, it was clear. There were problems galore out of 1960. And I also have in the book, it's sort of this incidental thing, but there was this odd situation out of Alabama, while we're talking about the South, odd situation in the state of Alabama, in which people basically could vote for the Democratic ticket or a slate of electors, but they took Kennedy's name off because they didn't support his civil rights stance. So at the same time, the Democratic governor at the time calls for people to vote Democrat in order to make a strong stance against those rescally Republican civil rights positions. So, yeah, it was an odd time. No kidding. It is worth noting that Nixon did quickly concede this election, but he was a fairly young man at this point. It seems that to a large extent, he was definitely trying to set up a future presidential role.

at this time disputing, as he did, and ultimately won in 68, had a lot of political reasons to bow out and then reignite his presidential ambitions for the future. Yeah, it's believed that John Mitchell, who of course went on to be a notorious figure, but at the time, just a longtime Nixon political advisor told him after the 1960 election as they were counting votes, Democrats stole this fair and square, and you just got to kind of move on. There's no challenging it.

So that's something. And Nixon, he did run for Governor of California in 1962, thinking that that could be his comeback. And that didn't work out, but he still managed to come back in 1968. And then, well, made some mistakes after that. But that's a whole other story. So let's get to our final one because we've gone for a long time here.

But of course, one that most Americans today remember, which is the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore, famously coming down to Florida. Of course, the hanging chads became a part of the American lexicon. For those who don't know, could you kind of explain what happened there with the 2000 election, how that ended up ultimately going to George W. Bush instead of Vice President Gore? Well, yeah, that's a very dramatic election in and of itself. I think there are some similarities to the 1876 in the sense that a lot of people viewed there not being that much difference between the two candidates.

George W. Bush was considered a pretty moderate Republican. Al Gore was a somewhat centrist Democrat coming off the centrist Clinton Gore ticket. but on election night, Gore ended up conceding to Bush until his campaign was informed that Florida triggers an automatic recount if it's below 2,000 votes. So he was stopped from giving his concession speech and then ended up calling Bush unconceiting the election. And from there, it went on through courts. The Gore team was actually the first to bring it into state courts. And they fought to have basically, they were saying rhetorically, the Gore campaign was saying, we want every vote to count.

But then they were actually only litigating for recounts in heavily Democratic-leaning counties because they were looking to basically find more and more and more votes. Arguably, you could, a person might say the same thing about Trump today, that he didn't want to keep massive amount of balance from coming in, but it did also seem that he wanted more votes counted in Arizona. So, I mean, that's basically how politics works, I guess. But yeah, Gore's team was essentially trying to find votes wherever they could. There was actually a point in this where Bob Beckle,

who became a pretty famous pundit, but he was a Gore political operative at the time. He talked about, quote, kidnapping electors. And basically this was, they were going to try to dig up dirt on Republicans who were in the electoral college and sort of kind of corner them. And you might want to vote for Al Gore when it goes to the electoral college. But they kind of a Wall Street Journal story exposed that and then they kind of backed off that. But ultimately, this worked its way through the state courts. There were a couple of different lawsuits, and they got merged into one lawsuit when the U.S. Supreme Court took the case, Bush v. Gore.

And from there, the court ruled actually, everybody says it's 5'4. The initial decision was 7-2 that it violated the equal protection, one-man-one vote. law. However, there was 5-4 decision as to basically how to alleviate that, whether they should allow more counting or a statewide recount and so forth and so on. So, so yeah, basically, after the court ruled, Gores, most of Gour's legal options were spent and he conceded. But that was a 36-day election. We're not anywhere at the time we're recording this, at least, we're not anywhere near 36 days. Again, back to that unprecedented point, you had 1876 went on for several months. 2000 went on for a little over a month. 1824 went up until February. So same with 1800s.

So this is, we're not in uncharted waters. In all likelihood, the 2020 election is going to be decided by December 8th. And I would certainly, I guess, is going to be decided by the time the electoral college meets on December 14th. Yeah, for sure. I think one thing can be said is Gore pursued every political and legal avenue to victory before eventually conceding, I believe, on December 13th to George W. Bush. He certainly fought it out as hard as he could in as many ways as he could before.

finally bowing out of that election. Well, Fred, thank you so much for talking to us about your book. It's very interesting, particularly noteworthy right now. Again, it's called Tainted by Suspicion, The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections. It's definitely worth a read right now in the future. This is certainly not the first disputed election, and let's be honest, it likely won't be the last either. Thanks for taking time with it. Absolutely. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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