Here we go again. Florida is at the center of yet another presidential electoral controversy. The fate of the United States presidency hinges on the results of the Florida election returns in the elections of 2000 just as it did during the election of 1876.
As the news media and lawyers from the Gore and the Bush campaigns converged on Florida after Nov. 7 to witness the ballot recount and to contest other issues, the attention of the nation turned south. The story was much the same in 1876, when Florida was one of three states submitting conflicting electoral returns.
In the election of 1876, the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, vied for power with the Democrat candidate, Samuel J. Tilden. As in the 2000 election, the Democratic candidate led the national popular balloting, with a 300,000-vote advantage. Tilden was also ahead in the electoral vote, with 184 electoral votes, just one short of the majority needed for election.
The Republicans, then as now, trailed in the popular vote as well as in the electoral vote, claiming just 165 electoral votes. The controversy arose out of conflicting returns from the states of Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, where rival Democratic and Republican election boards submitted dual election returns. The election hinged on which returns were deemed valid.
The nation endured weeks of uncertainty and deadlock until January 29, 1877. Today, such a lengthy delay may seem unlikely, but the resolution in this election may turn out to be as controversial as in 1876. Congress chose to resolve the issue in 1876 through a special Electoral Commission and a resulting complex set of commitments that came to be called the Compromise of 1877.
Tilden's Democrats accepted the Republican presidential victory only after Hayes promised to end Radical Reconstruction, the policy of controlling the South through military occupation and enforcing
enfranchisement of former slaves. Through the Compromise of 1877, Republicans pulled out federal troops and returned the traditional white Democratic elite to power.
In the election of 2000, we find significant similarities with 1876. As was the case then, the Florida vote is a factor that leaves the presidency hanging in the balance. Now, as then, the Democratic candidate led nationally in the popular vote, as well as in the electoral vote, in the days following the election. Today, the Republicans have everything to gain in the results of the vote in Florida. In the election of 1876, the Republicans finally conceded Florida to the Democrats because it was no longer vital to them.
But any willingness to concede Florida — and with it the election– is clearly absent today. Even with George W. Bush calling for a quick resolution after the recount, and with his transition team waiting impatiently in the wings, such a concession seems extremely unlikely. The Gore forces are aware that in Palm Beach County the vice president apparently lost votes because of confusion surrounding the so-called "butterfly ballot," in which punch holes for the voting machines ran down the middle of the ballot, rather than on the right, as is required in Florida law. The issue of a remedy remains unresolved.
In the end, the African-American vote may again be one of the first casualties of electoral controversy. In 1877, African-American voters lost the most in the compromise that resolved the electoral conflict. The return of white Democrats to power led to decades of effective disenfranchisement of African Americans. Poll taxes, literacy tests and the Ku Klux Klan were just a few of the tools Democrats used to keep new black voters away from the voting booth.
In 2000, African-American voters again appear to have been left outside the electoral process. With media pundits and Jesse Jackson claiming "effective disenfranchisement" of African Americans in south Florida, it may be up to the courts to decide the future of the presidency.
Regardless of the resolution of the present crisis, the lessons of the election of 1876 must not be ignored. Historian William Leuchtenberg characterized the resulting inactive, colorless, immobile governance of that era "The Politics of Dead Center" because of presidential weakness and congressional inaction. With the new Senate and House of Representatives in a virtual tie, and lacking a clear mandate, the new president will have to be willing to seek bipartisanship and power-sharing if another period of gridlock and inaction is to be avoided.
Matthew Alan Redinger is an assistant professor of history at Montana State University-Billings, and a writer for the History News Service.
