Election results

“ Federal law provides that if election results are contested in any state, and if the state, prior to election day, has enacted procedures to decide controversies or contests over electors and electoral votes, and if these procedures have been applied, and the decisions are made at least six days before the electors’ meetings, then the decisions are considered conclusive and will apply in counting the electoral votes. ”

“ The last election of the century was therefore fought on a confused issue, the most tangible results being the further reduction of the Monarchists, who secured only 12% of the total poll, and the advance of the Socialists, who obtained nearly 20% of the votes recorded. ”

“ A hundred years ago a contested election might last in any constituency for three or four weeks of excitement and horseplay, during which the voters were every day further removed from the state of mind in which serious thought on the probable results of their votes was possible. Now no election may last more than one day, and we may soon enact that all the polling for a general election shall take place on the same day. ”

“ There is a growing tendency, however, to present both sides fairly in news columns and to confine partisanship to editorials.
Election return stories consist largely of summaries of the most important results of the election, such as: (1) the candidates elected and defeated, (2) the majority or plurality of the successful candidates, (3) the effect of the election on the political complexion of legislative bodies, (4) causes of victory and defeat, (5) statements by candidates and party managers in regard to the results. ”

“ The subject of the Presidential election, which agitated the American community so long, and was of so much interest to the nation, has resulted in the election of a candidate who had not a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. Nor had he a majority of the members in the House of Representatives, but only a majority of the States. As our Government is, in all other respects, a representative Republic where the voice of the people governs, there must be a manifest defect of the Constitution in relation to the election of President. ”

“ Flam had surveyed the whole field of contest, and had arrived at an accuracy of information in regard to the vote of each State—and, indeed, of almost every county in the Union—that, to the unstudied in such matters, would appear to be miraculous—very little short of the gift of prophecy. It is astonishing to see what proficiency an old and practiced politician arrives at in predicting, months beforehand, the precise majorities of the Democratic party over all other parties, in every election, and especially in settling the result of a Presidential election. ”

“ President Trump got 11 million more votes than he did in 2016, and House Republicans won 27 of 27 toss-up races.
But somehow the guy who never left his house wins the election?
Eighty million Americans, 80 million of our fellow citizens, Republicans and Democrats, have doubts about this election; and 60 million people, 60 million Americans think it was stolen. ”

“ Nowadays it is the regular rule that in each State the voting for the presidential electors takes place not in separate districts, but in the mass and by “general ticket,” and these presidential electors make up the college called upon to choose the President of the Union. The candidate who gets a majority even of a few hundred votes in the hundreds of thousands of voters in any State — as was once the case at New York — gets the whole vote of that State. Thus at every election it is a majority of States rather than a majority of voters which decides the victory. ”

“ The writer held that there are a great number of voters, and pari passu a great number of constituencies, that like to be on the winning side, and whose votes are chiefly influenced by that consideration. The ballot-box has made it practically impossible for the individual voter to know which is going to be the winning side, but after the first few days of a general election, one side or the other has generally got a more or less decided advantage, and a weak-kneed constituency is sorely tempted to swell the tide of victory. ”

“ And as part of the effort in Congress to enact campaign finance reform, some have suggested also taking a look at election reform. In and of itself, our nation needs to take a look at its election laws, and the President's opinions. There are important lessons to be learned from the 2000 presidential election, including access to the polls, including the question of military people and having the right to vote, including the effect of different projections of the vote before polling places were closed and whether or not that affected turnout. ”

“ Why, pray, should the people complain, when they had everything done for them? The benevolent parties, both Democratic and Republican, even undertook the expense of printing the ballots! And generous ballots they were (twenty inches long and five wide!) , distributed before election, in order that the voters might have the opportunity of studying and preparing them: in order that Democrats of delicate feelings might take the pains to scratch out all the Democratic candidates, and write in the names of the Republican candidates. ”

“ But even when elections aren't that close, your ballot counts, because in voting, you're accepting your part in the greatest decisionmaking body the world has ever known, the American electorate. And as someone who's stayed up late on many election nights waiting to hear how the American people had decided, I can tell you that from where I sit-whether elections are close or not-every vote is important. ”

“ The American people know this—know that popular election has given them every eminent public man that they have ever had—that it is the safest and wisest mode of political election—most free from intrigue and corruption; and instead of further restricting that mode, and reducing the masses to mere electors of electors, they are, in fact, extending it, and altering constitutions to carry elections to the people, which were formerly given to the general assemblies. ”

“ Now, I remain committed to ensuring the voters receive an electoral system they deserve and where equal application of law is guaranteed. If our election integrity is compromised, we have failed the very voters who have sent us here to defend the Constitution. ”

“ Experience has shown that the load of responsibility placed upon the voters by these new measures was sometimes more than they were willing to bear. The scanty primary votes, and the inattention to some of the referendum and initiative questions put on the ballots, were seized upon as showing that the voter was interested only in men. On the other hand, the ballots of most cities, towns and states were loaded down with long lists of officers to be chosen at each election, so that the “vote for men” was in many cases a vote in the dark. ”

“ The election returns prove this. So many voters could not else be found. The States regularly holding elections, both now and four years ago, to wit, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, cast 3,982,011 votes now, against 3,870,222 cast then, showing an aggregate now of 3,982,011. ”

“ The new mode of trying elections, if it be found effectual, will diffuse its consequences further than seems yet to be foreseen. It is, I believe, generally considered as advantageous only to those who claim seats in parliament; but, if to choose representatives be one of the most valuable rights of Englishmen, every voter must consider that law as adding to his happiness, which makes his suffrage efficacious; since it was vain to choose, while the election could be controlled by any other power. ”

“ But the American people spoke clearly, and they spoke decisively: 81.2 million voters voted for Joe Biden—81.2; 74.2 million voted for Donald Trump; 51.3 percent of the vote went for Joe Biden; 46.8 percent of the vote was for Donald Trump; 306 electoral college votes for Joe Biden; 232 electoral college votes for Donald Trump. Four years earlier, Donald Trump referred to that kind of outcome as a “landslide” for him, and he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
But accepting the outcome of the election can be difficult when our political party doesn’t win. We have all felt that before. ”

“ But if no one have a majority of the actual number of electors appointed, how is he to be chosen? From the five highest on the list, by ballot of the lower house, and the votes to be taken by states. I conceive he ought to be chosen from the two highest on the list. This would be simple and easy; then, indeed, the people would have some agency in the election. But when it is extended to the five highest, a person having a very small number of votes may be elected. This will almost constantly happen. The states may choose the man in whom they have most confidence. ”

“ We won a case that we want people to watch and we want observers, and they're actually appealing, which is sort of interesting. I wonder why they appeal when all we want to do is have people watch as they do the vote tabulations. Likewise, in Georgia I won by a lot, a lot, with a lead of over, getting close to, 300,000 votes on election night in Georgia and by the way that got whittled down, and now it's getting to be to a point where I'll go from winning by a lot to perhaps being even down a little bit. ”

“ Law has no other sanction than that with us; and happy are we, and happy are those communities where the election methods are so honestly and faithfully prescribed and observed that no doubt is thrown upon the popular expression and no question of the integrity of the ballot is ever raised. ”

“ Quite naturally, for the work of electing a candidate presupposes a state of mind very different from that of serene deliberation. In 1800 the electors acted simply as automata recording the victory of their party, and so it has been ever since. In our own time presidents and vice-presidents are nominated, not without elaborate intrigue, by special conventions quite unknown to the Constitution; the people cast their votes for the two or three pairs of candidates thus presented, and the electoral college simply registers the results. ”

“ We ask for them the considerate judgment of the American people. Confident alike in the history of our great party and in the justice of our cause, we present our platform and our candidates in the full assurance that the election will bring victory to the Republican party and prosperity to the people of the United States. ”

“ Circumstances suggested the impossibility of a successful contest against the President and the Democratic party united. Even those elections which result, in the exuberant language of the press, in an overwhelming victory on the one side and an overwhelming defeat, on the other, are often found, upon analysis, to be based on very narrow margins in the popular result, the reversal of which requires only the change of a few thousand votes. This was demonstrated in many of the great States, even in the second election of Mr. ”

“ Those who have been for years calling attention to the pressing necessity of throwing about the ballot box and about the elector further safeguards, in order that our elections might not only be free and pure, but might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the accession of any who did not so soon discover the need of reform. The National Congress has not as yet taken control of elections in that case over which the Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but has accepted and adopted the election laws of the several States, provided penalties for their violation and a method of supervision. ”

“ It need hardly be said, in this company, that an election among us is a far more exciting occasion than among our less-favored American neighbors, who ignore the superior advantages of voting viva voce, and adopt the less manly and unobtrusive medium of the ballot. ”

“ Given the high hurdles—both constitutional and political—faced by any proposed amendment, it seems likely that contingent election procedures will remain in place unless or until their alleged failings become so compelling that large concurrent majorities in the public, the Congress, and the states, are prepared to undertake their reform. ”

“ So many colored people, so many white, therefore so many colored votes and so many white votes; and therefore so many Republican votes and so many Democratic votes; and if an election does not show this exact proposition, it must be necessarily the result of fraud and intimidation and the National Government must interfere. When we have established the rule that election returns must be made or corrected according to the statistics of population, then we may decide elections beforehand by the United States Census and last year's Tribune Almanac, and save ourselves the trouble of voting. ”

“ Madam Speaker, I join the objection to counting votes of electors from my home State of Arizona, as well as Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada, because election integrity is the heart of our American constitutional republic?
In a representative form of government, we must be able to trust that our elections accurately represent the will of the American voter. This is the appropriate forum anticipated and provided for by our Founders to debate whether this election complied with the Constitution that we have all sworn to protect. ”

“ Moreover every thinking man will admit that the makers of the Constitution, when framing that vague provision concerning the counting of the electoral votes, did certainly not foresee and contemplate the case of disputed electoral votes, and of a Presidential election depending upon disputed votes. ”

“ After such an example, it can not be said that indirect popular election is never advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the very best system that can be adopted. But those conditions are hardly to be obtained in practice except in a federal government like that of the United States, where the election can be intrusted to local bodies whose other functions extend to the most important concerns of the nation. ”