by Bill Jones, Stevensville
One of the questions persisting about the grumbling flock of local election integrity worry warts is: have they finally realized that they have been led around by their noses and probably their wallets by hucksters. l haven’t heard anything from them for some time.
So how about l help get them all wound up in a new pursuit of righting a wrong? This one’s not a nothingburger.
Quite simply, have they heard that the guy who got substantially more votes for the office of U.S. President in 1824 got to watch the guy with fewer votes be sworn in? The Truing the Vote club should have been there, maybe stopping the steal.
That first Wrong Winner Election wore its dunce cap for 52 years. To the chagrin of many, Samuel Tilden in 1876 got to watch Rutherford Hayes be inaugurated while knowing that Hayes had lost by more than a quarter of a million votes. An enormous margin. Too bad that one didn’t get Trued.
Come 1888, a vote deficit of 89,293 didn’t keep Benjamin Harrison out of the White House. That’s three elections now going to the wrong winner! The fourth came in 2000, and this time the inaugurated man had lost by 737,179 votes! Yes, that’s a lot.
The fifth was a real doozy. The holder of 2,868,518 more votes was not inaugurated. That was in 2016. A great way to fill our Presidency requirements. I’m thinking that something needs Truing. The problem is NOT that sensible people use tabulating machines to count votes.
Thanks to America’s folly of the Electoral College, losers become winners, and we all pay the price.