Author: Henry Coen

The election of 2000 showed for the first time in over a century that US presidential elections were not the pillars of stability they had been perceived of in the 20th century but instead, messy, contentious things ripe with strife and ambiguity. What’s more, the election of 2000 proved even more contentious with the fact that for the first time since the automobile was invented, the popular vote and the electoral vote went in different ways, meaning the candite who eventually sat in the White House during the term, a very chaotic and dramatic time in American History, was not the leader the majority of the country had wanted. It is the ways that the response to contentious elections differs after 100 years that might provide insight into the current election, one almost guaranteed to be contentious.

There are two main ways in which contested elections are responded to. There are the processes of justice, those inner state functions that attempt to make sense of the conflicting results and come to a central conclusion so a president can be inaugurated by January. Then there is the court of public opinion, a much less impartial but still important part in shaping the results of contested elections. Ultimately, power resides where the people think it does, and so the perception of an election being fair is vastly important for the health of democracy.

In terms of the process of adjudication within the government itself, there is a shift in who the responsibility falls to in resolving contested elections. In 1800, 1824, and 1876, it was Congress who took the burden. Whether it was with a corrupt bargain or a secret congress committee, it was the legislative branch that ultimately decided the president when the vote was unclear. In 2000, however, it was the judicial branch that had the responsibility to resolve the issue. Through a series of local and supreme court cases, the recount of Florida, something that, if fully done, would have, in all likelihood, changed the results of the election, was suppressed. So, while these judges did not directly pick the president like Congress in past elections, they did so indirectly with their rulings.

The media and lay perception of the elections have also shifted between the last contested election in 1876 and 2000. The shift from local print media to national television journalism marked a huge shift in how elections were portrayed and consumed by the public. This is not an idol change; the media, in calling the election early for Bush and in their dramatization and flawed coverage of the recount, made the internal and frankly boring process of something as simple as a recount a widely watched and partisan thing. Since then, the rise of the internet has democratized information, meaning anyone with a phone and a mouth can spread information, be it accurate or not. While this is by no means a universally bad thing, it did lead to the disinformation and radical extremism that caused the January 6th insurrection, when misinformation caused the perception that the election was contested despite it being rather clear.

What can be learned from the shifting patterns of how contentious elections are decided and covered will be useful in the likely contentious 2024 election. Ultimately, it will more than likely come down to the courts to decide the election, and the media, now digital and widespread spread, will without a doubt also make those inner workings very public and provide countless opinions on the results. Despite the tone of this blog, this shift towards judicial decisions and media transparency might not be a great evil. In fact, it is a more democratic system than the election being decided in backroom deals by corrupt congressmen. It is messy and headache-enduing, but that is pretty par for the course for American politics. 

After the events of January 6th, many are rightly concerned about the possibility of political violence and whether the results of the election will be free and honest. The country has seen how easily the results of an election can be resisted, and mobs motivated by partisan candidates can become unruly and dangerous. This is not the first time an election has come in the wake of political violence.

The 1876 election happened 8 years after the the election of 1868, one in which the KKK enacted mass political suppression and violence against the newly enfranchised black voters in the South. This election also came a decade after the end of the Civil War, the largest-scale act of political violence ever seen in America. It can then be assumed and confirmed by the documents that exist from the time that those living through the 1876 election had the same, if not greater, concerns that plague our modern-day election.

Though political violence and suppression did occur in the election of 1876, the government’s breakdown of the KKK after 1968  election was mostly successful in preventing that violence from being mass-organized. Instead, what made the 1876 election contentious was the voting count, namely that neither party was able to get a majority of the electoral votes due to unclear results in three southern states.

Bringing this back to a modern comparison, the breakup of the KKK could be compared to the government’s efforts to find and uncover the insurrectionists on January 6th and bring them to justice. The consequences these people faced might mean that this election will not be one made contentious by political violence, like in 2020 and 1868, but instead, one made contentious by a struggle to certify votes like in 1876. This possibility is already occurring in Georgia, where Trump’s stacked election board is making plays to resist certifying the election results and, therefore, create confusion come election day. If this were to occur, like in 1876, both sides might be forced to come together to find a subconsutional compromise like what happened with the 1876 committee and subsequent bargain. The question becomes, then, are we in 2024 capable of creating such a compromise to keep the union going, or are we more divided now than in post-civil war America?

Despite the partisan tense state of our current political landscape, all-out civil war still seems unlikely. The road to a conflict that that pits neighbor against neighbor and state against state seems unfathomable. Of course, it has happened before in American history. Those who lived up to the Civil War may have held similar notions about the unbreakable strength of the Union until it was too late. Was there online one event that made the war inevitable, that broke the country so profoundly that war was inevitable, and if so, with the advantage of hindsight, could we avoid that same trap with the current state of the Union, especially with such an influential election two months away?

Often, the start of the Civil War is seen by historians as April 12th, 1861, the day when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumpter in South Carolina. Indeed, this first act of violence between the new confederacy and the Union started the war between these two sides. By this time, however, the southern states had already broken from the Union, a profound act of violence itself and one that made conflict inexorable. Even that, however, is not the true line from which America was unable to come back. Rather this blog suggests that the straw election that broke the camels, United States, back was the election of 1860, an election that made conflict all but inevitable.

Bell Everett Campaign Poster

The election that made Abraham Lincon the 16th president of the United States was a contentious one, not because of any misconduct in the election itself but rather because of the results, an anti-slavery republican elected president without the support of a single southern state. The words “anti-slavery” and not abolition is a purposeful one. Despite his reputation, when Lincon was elected, he was not an abolitionist; in fact, he saw abolition as just as great a threat to the Union as slavery. This didn’t bring comfort to the South. They saw the Lincons election as a shift in the political tides, a tide that would end the institution of slavery and the southern way of life. This is the moment in which the civil war truly started, in which violence became inevitable. Despite the lofty aspirations of abolitionists, it seems unlikely that slavery would have ended before the 20th century without violence. At the same time, even if the institution of slavery was not directly at risk, the southern states would not allow themselves to be governed by an executive that so fundamentally opposed their core beliefs. While it is disingenuous to claim that in voting or not voting for Lincon, Americans consciously voted for war, it is a truth that the election of 1860 was a line from which, once crossed, America was unable to recover without armed conflict. Of course, this is not to minimize the southern states’ role in escalation both by succeed from the Union and inciting violence but rather to point to how elections, even ones conducted fairly, have the power to rip nations apart.

The election of 2024 could be our could be our contemporary 1860. No matter the outcome, the election will be close. This means that millions of Americans will cast ballots for one candidate and end up with a completely different one in the white house. Duh. That’s how it always works, but like the election of 1860, each candidate has radically different views that, according to some on both sides, threaten one part or another of Americas way of life. It’s not hard to imagine how contentious issues like immigration or abortion could lead to political violence or even interstate conflict. In 2020, just as with the election of 1860, political violence wasn’t on the ballot, and yet the choices made by Americans in the polls led to the January 6th riot just the same, with some help of extremists and a former president, of course.

The past doesn’t determine the future, and no matter who wins the presidency, there are still countless ways to avoid political violence. Still, it can’t be helped, but I wonder if future historians will mark the 2024 election as the start of the second civil war.