Electoral Curiosities

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times or more is a pattern.

   Only five men have been elected to the presidency after losing the popular vote, and four were Republicans. The fifth, John Quincy Adams, was chosen by the House of Representatives in 1824 after none of the candidates gathered a majority of electoral votes. The Republican Party as we know it was not founded until some 30 years later.

   Since then, all four of the presidential candidates who lost the popular vote but gained the Oval Office by winning the Electoral Vote were members of the Republican Party: Rutherford B. Hayes in the election of 1876; Benjamin Harrison in 1888; George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald J. Trump in 2016.

   Hayes defeated Samuel J. Tilden in 1876 by just one electoral vote, and scholars have long suspected that an exchange of money persuaded one member of the Electoral College -- originally a Tilden supporter -- to change his vote and support Hayes instead. The electoral vote was 185-184.

   Twelve years later, in the election of 1888, Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote but took the presidency after the Electoral College supported him by a vote of 233-168.

   More recently, in the election of 2000, Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote but moved into the Oval Office after a prolonged battle in Florida over its vote count was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventually, the nationwide electoral count was 271 for Bush and 266 for his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, who had received some 543,000 popular votes more than Bush.

    And in the election of 2016, Republican Donald J. Trump racked up 304 electoral votes to Democrat Hillary Clinton's 227, despite losing the popular vote. That count was 65.8 million for Clinton, and 62.9 million for Trump.

   Many Americans have long been unhappy with the idea of a president being chosen by a secondary vote of electors rather than by the population generally. However, it seems the founders were not confident that the people could be fully trusted when it came to electing a single leader, so the indirect method was designed instead. The Electoral College currently is made up of the total number of members of the House of Representatives -- 435 -- plus the 100 Senators plus three for the District of Columbia, for a grand total of 538 electors. These electors meet after the general election is held and vote for a president and vice president. The winner must score a simple majority of electoral votes, currently 270.

   Normally, the electors vote for their previously designated candidate, but there is no requirement that they do so. In 2016, two electors defected from Trump and five defected from Clinton, but there is little indication that would have changed the result.

   In 1876, however, it did, as Hayes scored an electoral victory over Tilden by just one vote. And in the election of 2000, a continuing recount in Florida was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, and resulted in Bush collecting 271 electoral votes, just one more than the simple majority of 270 needed to win the presidency.

   So the argument now is whether the general population has become educated enough, and trustworthy enough, to be able to select a leader by direct vote, rather than be swayed by a demagogue into choosing someone who might lead the nation down an unreasonable path.

   Meanwhile, we continue to choose a president by indirect vote, through the Electoral College of 538 members.