History buffs: Kennedy "stealing" the election?

[Robb]

So we finished watching "Nixon" (don't ask), and my wife turns to me this morning and says, "What's all this about Nixon and his team saying Kennedy 'stole' the election from them?"

And I said, "I have no freakin' idea."

Did Nixon think he'd been Bushwhacked in some way? Or was Oliver Stone just having us on...? This is an embarrassing hole in my knowledge.

[demnan]

1. As I recall from stories I heard

It was a very close election and there were some disputed votes in Illinois (as usual). But Kennedy narrowly won the popular vote. An interesting fact is that Gore beat Bush by a larger margin of popular votes than Kennedy beat Nixon.

[WoodrowFan]

2. RW Urban Legend

The standard version goes like this, JFK won in 1960 only because Mayor Daley's machine stuffed the ballot box in Chicago giving Kennedy the necessary electorial votes (Illinois) to win. There are a couple problems with this.

1) even without Illinois's electorial votes JFK would have won, he would have had to lost an additional state to Nixon for Nixon to win.

2) The Daley machine did stuff the ballot box in Chicago, but the Republican Party electorial machine in southern Illinois did the same thing for Nixon. It tended to even out I think.

[papau]

6. I agree - My Mom was a downstate Illinois GOP Judge and resigned

after seeing how they had stuffed the downstate votes with Nixon votes while "losing" boxes of votes from Dem/minority/union areas - Boxes later found in rivers like the Des Plains River but the finding was printed on page A29 on a Staturday 6 months later. Likewise the 1963 Illinois Supreme Court case ended the GOP downstate practice of "stray pencil marks mean a confused voter means a double vote means an invalid vote" - the way selective Dem votes were lost downstate in 1960 via the GOP "volunteer" counter of votes, upheld by the GOP election judge - so that the "right result" occurred in all ellections.

Nixon had others in Court contesting the Election right up 12/23/60 - at which point he allowed the last case to be withdrawn. The Wall Street Journal is very proud the Nixon did not actually join the cases as a named plantiff !!!! - wow - a "lie" since he controlled the cases - and you will see the WSJ editorial page tell you Gore was evil - and should have taken the high road of not contesting that Nixon took.

What Bull Crap - What GOP lies ....

It never stops - and our media never corrects them.

[Robb]

7. See, and Stone propagates it

I mean, I got the impression from the film that Kennedy (one of my idols, BTW) did something untoward in that election.

Oliver freakin' Stone.... :eyes:

[WoodrowFan]

9. In my professional opinion

you could write everything Oliver Stone knows about history on the head of a pin and still have room for *s brains and Cheney's ethics.

[Padraig18]

8. In 1960

Nixon dropped his legal challenges to the Chicago wards as soon as the late Mayor Daley (who was Illionis' State Democratic Chairman, I think) said, "I'll agree to let a recount proceed in Chicago, if you won't object to downstate Illinois being recounted, as well", or words to that effect. :P

PS--- The story above was related to me by my county chairman, who was a poll watcher in 1960, and actually got into a fistfight with the GOP pollwatcher when the latter repetadely and deliberatelytried to block his (my chairman's) view of the actual vote counting. :P

[MrBenchley]

3. That's a very popular LIE on the right

Porkbutt Limbaugfh has said hundreds of times that Mayor Daley stole the 1960 election for Kennedy...

To start with, Kennedy got 303 electoral votes, Nixon 219...and Illinois had 27 electoral votes...

http://search.eb.com/elections/1960.html

Incidentally another outrigth LIE from the right that was popular a couple years ago was that Nixon had conceded graciously, unlike Al Gore, even though he could have thrown the country into chaos with lawsuits.

In fact, the dirty son of a bitch Nixon DID begin squawking on election night....he sued in a number of states (in one, New Mexico, I think, the recount he got found there were 100,000 or so votes credited to him that should have gone to Kennedy and it cost him the state) and bitched publicly about it for years.

[jobycom]

4. There was cheating in Illinois and Texas

The Illinois cheating is summed up in an earlier post. As has been pointed out, the Republicans gained a lot of votes in southern Illinois through cheating, and the Democrats got a lot in Chicago when Richard Daley stuffed the boxes with votes from homeless shelters and indigent hotels.

In Texas there was widespread cheating, as their always is. LBJ lost one of his early elections because he was too honest to cheat, and from that moment on made sure that his boxes were stuffed with dead people ballots, just as his opponents' were. He won his senate seat when a "lost" ballot box was discovered in one county two weeks after the primary (the real election was the primary, because Repubs had no chance in the general), giving him just enough votes to win. Historians have shown that the ballot box contained only Johnson votes, and that each of the voters had registered alphabetically.

LBJ continued this throughout his career, and certainly had votes created during the 60 election. However, JFK carried Texas by 40,000 votes, so it's unlikely that LBJ's cheating affected the outcome.

In Illinois Daley's cheating may have affected the outcome of the state election, but JFK would have won without it.

During the recounts after the 1960 election, several states remained in the air for a long time, and at least one reversed for JFK. Nixon pushed for recounts in a dozen or so states, so the issue was in the air for a long time. When it was over, JFK had solidly won.

The thing is, Republicans know that Bush himself (and not over-eager local politicians, as was the case in 1960) cheated in 2000, in Florida. The more knowledgeable ones know he cheated in Tennessee and Arkansas as well. They know he would have lost an honest election in Florida by a large margin. So they know he is illegitimate. So they justify themselves by arguing that Kennedy cheated, too. Kennedy didn't cheat-- Daley did, and some officials in Texas did, and it isn't clear whether they affected the race or not. But Bush cheated directly.

Republicans have more nightmares and sleep less than Democrats. That's one reason. They know what they are.

[GOPisEvil]

5. Hidalgo County, if memory serves.

Down in the Rio Grande Valley.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. One must then wonder if Johnson "cheated" his way into succeeding JFK

...if you know what I mean (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)... say no more.

[GOPisEvil]

11. Well, uh, Oliver Stone seemed to think so.

If you watch "JFK", it is more than implied.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

13. what? that Johnson was behind the "deed"?

I didn't get that insinuation.

[GOPisEvil]

14. I'm thinking about this more now...

...maybe what Stone was saying was that LBJ gave the Military what it wanted - a war for profit. I need to watch that flick again...it's been too long.

[mobuto]

15. Forgive me

but explain again why I should care what Oliver Stone thinks?

[GOPisEvil]

16. I'm not telling you to care. If you don't care, fine.

However, the original post of this thread mentioned Oliver Stone, so I thought I'd tie it in.

[Padraig18]

12. geopgraphical nitpicking/teasing

"Southern Illinois" (from approximately I-70, south) is decidely Democratic, and went for JFK in a big way in 1960; "central" and "northern" IL, plus suburban Chicago are GOP strongholds.