Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College—and Why It Matters Today by Carolyn Renée Dupont

Author:Carolyn Renée Dupont [Dupont, Carolyn Renée]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, American Government, National, Law, Election Law, Political Ideologies, Democracy
ISBN: 9781493085996
Google: WfEYEQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2024-09-17T08:53:22.679449+00:00

Chapter 6

“The Everlasting Principle of Equal and Exact Justice”

Reconstruction’s Radical Vision, the Electoral College, and the Election of 1876

From the cabin floor, Eliza Pinkston watched the white men drag her gagged and bleeding husband outside. Hardly noticing her own pain, she pulled herself up and listened through the door. A voice growled that if Henry wanted to vote Republican, he could do it “in hell.”

Eliza threw her hands to her face. Seven gunshots broke the Louisiana night; seven times her body flinched.

In the momentary silence, she clutched her child and prayed that the men would leave. She ached to fly to Henry’s side, cradle his body, and beg his soul to stay.

But grief yielded to panic as the vigilantes again flooded the cabin. They ripped the child from Eliza’s arms. She reached after him, and knives slashed furiously across her face, breast, and legs. A shot rang out. Eliza crumpled to the floor, and her consciousness drained away while sounds unfolded in a jumbled sequence—curses, scurrying boots, horse hooves, and a splash as the baby’s body went into the pond.1

The former slave woman lay in her blood on the cabin floor because of a presidential election—and fundamental questions about American democracy.

Not that anyone from Washington sent the white vigilantes to Eliza Pinkston’s cabin—these men rode of their own accord. But they served up mayhem and murder in an Electoral College system that offered huge incentives for even small vote adjustments in remote places like Ouachita Parish, Louisiana. The election of 1876 vividly displayed the dangers of winner-take-all, whereby the candidate with the most votes in a state received all the electoral vote. This practice meant that national outcomes could hinge on a narrow margin in a single state or small group of states. In a high-stakes and intensely competitive contest, this structure incentivized fraud, corruption, and now violence. Even a small amount of voter intimidation (by Democrats) or cheating (by Republicans) could translate into huge shifts in the outcome.

All over Ouachita Parish that season, white Democrats paid visits to formerly enslaved people. Their terror campaign reduced Republican turnout to a fraction of its previous strength.2

These orgies of violence decimated Republican support throughout Louisiana in 1876. In East Feliciana Parish that year, no Republican won a single vote, though blacks outnumbered whites two to one, and Republicans had garnered 1,668 votes two years earlier. Other black-majority parishes showed similar shifts. As a result, Democrats claimed a victory of 7,000 votes in Louisiana, winning the state for the first time in sixteen years.3

Reports from South Carolina and Florida also described intimidation campaigns that kept black voters away from the polls or frightened them into choosing Democrats. These incidents capped years of terror that aimed to disenfranchise black voters, defeat Republicans, and return whites to power.

In other words, Democrats stole the presidential election of 1876 through violence and intimidation in at least three states. Republicans amassed reams of evidence to prove it, including the testimony of a scarred and permanently maimed Eliza Pinkston.

In response to Democrats’ crimes, Republicans stole the election back.

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