Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), an ally of Donald Trump, likened the former president’s claims of election denial to the violent, racially-tinged contested ballot box in 1876 in an interview with The New York Times this week, and then on Saturday got a harsh history lesson from the paper.
The right-wing Republican, rumored to be on Trump’s short list of running mates, lamented that ignoring the “stop the steal” complaints is “taking this very legitimate grievance against our most basic democratic act as a nation and completely suppressing it.”[ing] I am concerned about that.”
And he compared it to the election of 1876.
“If they really wanted to do this, this is what would have happened,” he said. “They would have actually gone into the states where they had problems and tried to assemble an alternative slate of electors, like they did in the 1876 election. And they would have had to actually bring that lawsuit and take it to the American people.”
The comparison infuriated Times columnist Jamel Bui.
“Look at what happened in 1876,” he said.
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“In this election, Democrat New York Governor Samuel Tilden won a majority of the national popular vote but fell one vote short of a majority in the Electoral College. Republican Rutherford Hayes was well behind in both. The problem was that he won the 20 electoral votes of four states: Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina.
“In three Southern states where elections were marred by fraud, violence and intimidation of black people, officials from both parties certified competing slates of electors.
“Hayes believed, perhaps correctly, that if there had been a fair election in the South, we should have 200 electoral votes, a majority of the people.”
If black people had been allowed to vote, he wrote, the election results would likely have been overturned.
The dispute has spiraled into a months-long legal battle and led Democrats to threaten to take over the state Capitol by force.
“It’s odd that Senator Vance would hold this up as an example of what should have been done in 2020,” Booi wrote.
“The biggest and most important reason is that there was real fraud, violence and intimidation in the 1876 presidential election. In one incident in Hamburg, South Carolina, a paramilitary death squad of white Democrats (known as the Red Shirts because of their attire) raided a local armory and kidnapped more than two dozen black citizens, executing several on the spot.”
He added: “If people who voted for Trump were attacked, intimidated and defrauded, then there may be reason to demand a serious investigation into the legitimacy of the vote, in comparison to 1876.”
“But as we can see from more than two months of actual litigation, there was no measurable fraud. It’s safe to say the 2020 presidential election was one of the most secure and most scrutinized elections in American history.”
“What Vance called the ‘legitimate grievances’ of the January 6 rioters was actually sour grapes. They lost, they didn’t like it, and they were determined to change the outcome by any means necessary. We have no reason to respect their tantrums.”
