America’s History of Nasty, Tumultuous, and Strange Presidential Elections

A madman versus a crook? Unexpected twists? Fake news? Welcome to the election of 1800.

Outlandish rumors helped elect Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren and have been with us ever since.

As soon as the returns were in, the burdens of the presidency weighed upon Abraham Lincoln.

Fearing Abraham Lincoln would lose reelection, some wondered if the country should delay the election.

If you want an example of a real nation-rending, Constitution-bending contested presidential election that might have conceivably led to a second Civil War, you have to go back to the U.S. Centennial Year of 1876.

Old style ballots cast illegally in Indiana helped President Grover Cleveland in 1888.

Though the election of 1948 is best remembered for the Chicago Tribune newspaper’s embarrassing, incorrect “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline, its forgotten story is of Henry Wallace, a liberal dreamer who became the Kremlin’s unwitting pawn.

It took decades to unravel Richard Nixon’s sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968. Now, the full story can be told.

An oral history of the craziest presidential election in modern history.

What really happened?

Voting in America, it’s fair to say, used to be different. The founders didn’t anticipate that voting would be done in secret. And, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, eighty-nine Americans were killed at the polls during Election Day riots.