The election of 1876 saw claims of mass fraud, leading to four states sending two separate slates of electors to Congress to decide between. In fact, without considering these states with conflicting slates of electors, no candidate received the necessary majority of electoral votes to win the presidency. Therefore, Congress had been passed the responsibility to decide the election, though in a different way than in 1824. Specifically, Congress had to in some way form a consensus around which slate of electors was legitimate. In doing so, they formed a commission which decided in favor of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. However, the gridlock that led to this commission was partially centered around disputes over whether the president of the Senate could himself choose which electors should be counted.

In the election of 2020, many similar dynamics were also at play. As in 1876, allies of Donald Trump, one of the candidates for president, submitted alternate slates of electors to Congress from states that had very close electoral results. Then, also as in 1876, the Republicans tried to use the president of the senate, the vice president, of their party to certify the electoral slates that supported their candidate. However, unlike in 1876, there was no actual evidence of fraud that could impact the result of the election in 2020, with 2020 not having masses of votes thrown out in a way that changed the outcome of the election, as happened in favor of Hayes in 1876.

The presidential election of 1876 can be used as a comparison point for the 2020 election, for both good and bad. The Hayes team’s claims of fraud, leading to their throwing out ballots, were based on intimidation and violence in post-Civil War southern states, backed up by electoral returning boards. However, in 2020, there were no credible allegations of widespread fraud, with such claims being shot down by officials at all levels of government. Further, many of those involved in this scheme have been criminally charged and are awaiting trial for their involvement, due to the illegitimacy of the slates. This illustrates that, while there is precedent for having alternate slates of electors and attempting to change the results of an election, that precedent relies on facts of irregularities and fraud that did not exist in 2020.