|
At
this writing, Creigh Deeds trails Bob McDonnell by
some three hundred votes in the contest that will
decide who will be Virginia’s next attorney
general.
But
the gap is closing. Gee, is it closing! On election
night, the unofficial margin was ten times what it
is now—and Bob McDonnell was the presumed attorney
general-elect.
Sometime
after November 28, when all the state’s electoral
jurisdictions have double and triple checked their
tallies, and everyone involved has said “cross my
heart and hope to die,” an official re-count will
begin and sometime after that we will know who won.
Check
that. We will know who is going to be Virginia’s
next attorney general. The word “won,” used in a
political context doesn’t always mean what you
think it does.
Al
Gore “won” the popular vote—by more than half
a million. George Bush “won” the presidency. See
what I mean?
No
matter what happens, this one is headed for the
history books as the closest statewide contest in
Virginia’s long, illustrious history.
There
have been close ones, for sure, but none closer
statewide. Single-digit wins have happened with some
regularity in House and Senate races over the years.
My
friend, Jim Scott, the Fairfax delegate, came to the
House in 1991 with a one-vote margin and has served
with distinction ever since His win, by the
way, came following a re-count. Initially, it looked
like he had lost by 17 votes.
Perhaps
no President is more synonymous with Virginia than
Thomas Jefferson. He almost didn’t make it. In the
1800 election, the Federalists nominated John Adams
for President and Charles Pinckney as
Vice-President.
The
Democratic Republicans put up Jefferson for
President and Aaron Burr as Vice-President. The
problem was, though the Democratic Republicans
“won” the popular vote, the party inexplicably
assigned the same number of electoral votes to
Jefferson and Burr and the House of Representatives
had to sort it out.
The
Federalists threw their support to Burr once the
election went to the House, but the Constitution
stipulated that in the event an election went to the
House, the winner would be decided by a
state-by-state vote in the House. Of course,
Jefferson “won” it—on the 36th ballot.
That
rigamarole resulted in adoption of the 12th
Amendment to the Constitution, clarifying that if it
ever happened again, House members had to designate
their votes specifically for President or Vice
President—they couldn’t just leave it so that
whoever got the most votes was President, and the
second-most was Vice President.
It
did happen again—in 1824. Four candidates—John
Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and
Henry Clay—won electoral votes, but none won a
majority. Jackson finished with 99, Adams with 84,
Crawford with 41 and Clay with 37. For a second, and
last, time the Presidency would be decided by the
House of Representatives.
Clay
would be the king-maker. A big scandal broke when a
Philadelphia newspaper published an unsigned letter
alleging Clay would support Adams for President, and
in return would receive appointment as Secretary of
State. Both parties vigorously denied the agreement.
Adams was elected on the first ballot. Did he
appoint Clay as Secretary of State? Of course he
did!
In
1876 Democrat Samuel Tilden edged Republican
Rutherford Hayes in the popular vote, but Hayes
bested him in the Electoral College by one
vote—185-184. That one stirred up months of riots,
charges, and counter-charges, investigations, and so
on. A special Congressional committee finally gave
it to Hayes.
The
closest popular vote occurred four years later, when
Republican James Garfield, of Ohio, beat a former
Civil War general, Winfield Hancock, by 1,898 votes.
Then, in 1884, Democrat Grover Cleveland beat
Republican James Blaine by less than three tenths of
one percent in an election in which more than ten
million votes were cast.
There
is an old saw in American politics, a romanticized
throw-back to election chicanery of yore: “It’s
not who gets the votes in an election. It’s
who counts them!” I think those days are largely
over now. At least here in Virginia. Mostly.
--November
28, 2005
|
