Slate has an article by Brook Thomas, pointing out that there were no government-printed ballots in the United States before 1888. Thomas feels the need to write this because Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar had an op-ed in the New York Times of February 7 that says, “Lincoln was not on the ballot in some states in 1860”. Amar also made that error in his U.S. Supreme Court amicus in the Colorado Trump ballot access case.
Lincoln didn’t receive any votes in most southern states in 1860 because no one organized a slate of Republican presidential elector candidates in those states and printed up ballots bearing their names. Probably individuals who might otherwise have identified themselves as Republican presidential elector candidates were intimidated from doing that. Also because voting was not secret in those days, those tickets, if they had been prepared and distributed, would have received very few votes.
Here is the Thomas article, which has a link to the Amar piece.
Slate states in which Lincoln did have presidential elector candidates were Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia.
DEATH THREATS ON PRINTERS OF OLDE 1854-1860 GOP BALLOTS IN 1861 CONFED STATES.
NO EQUAL PROTECTION FOR GOP CANDS ON BALLOTS IN 14 AMDT ???
https://electionlawblog.org/?p=141416
ELECTION VOTES – CERTIFICATION
2020-2022 MACHINATIONS
—
ONE MAJOR STEP IN THE ROTTED ANTI-DEMOCRACY GERRYMANDER/PLURALITY ELECTION SYSTEMS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election
NOOO GOP BALLOTS / VOTES ABOUT 85 PCT DOWN PAGE
Slate is not a reliable source. Do better.
The Thomas article is in error when it says that votes for “ineligible” candidates would not be tallied. In Texas if an ineligible candidate receives the most votes, then his election is not certified. It is similar to if a deceased candidate receives the most votes. It creates a vacancy in office.
The fact that someone made it on to the ballot does not determine that they were eligible. Eligibility status can change during the election.
Fred, I appreciate comments on this website. Commenters frequently add helpful information, or point out a deficiency or an error in the post, and I am glad to have commenters. That goes for you too. But, I must say, to criticize the Thomas article because “Slate is not a reliable source” is not a rational statement. The Thomas article points out a fact. The fact is not contested. There were no government-printed ballots in 1868. When someone publicizes an important fact, that is useful, no matter what the medium used to communicate that fact.
The Bayblon Bee is more accurate than Slate.
Or, how about there were not exactly a lot of Lincoln supporters in those states then, so even if slates of Lincoln electors were organized, none of them would have beeb elected to the Godly sanctified and consecrated electoral college from those States, praise Jesus?
Instead of interpreting the likely accurate suggestion that the infernal, diabolical, cursed Lincoln ticket would have received few votes in the South as a consequence of on the record voting, and possibly implying that on the record voting is therefore a bad thing, one might speculate instead it would have received next to no votes, whether those votes would have been on the record or secret, because it had very little support.
Likewise, I would expect the German National Socialist Worker’s Party and Hamas would receive very few votes from Israeli Jews if it were legal to have such options in Israeli elections, and the Religious Zionist Party would get very few votes in Gaza, if Gaza actually had elections and even if it those elections allowed that party to participate in them, regardless of whether the individual identity of voters making such extremely counterintuitive voting choices was secret or not.
The identity of individuals on a hypothetical slate of electors would still be known today, so there would still be the same level of “intimidation,” or, seen from a different angle, appropriate social accountability, for being one of the electors on such s ticket.
Next, you’ll no doubt claim that eliminating the electoral college would solve that issue, but then you’d still have “intimidation” of any individuals running in local, state, or federal elections to govern or represent any area in such regionally counterintuitive fashion.
I suppose, proceeding from such faulty premises, you’d next have nationally proportional representation, eliminating the role of states altogether, and all power concentrated at the national (at that point no longer federal) level, if not higher, so any regional differences of opinion would become inconsequential.
I guess, continuing further in such an unproductive direction, elected politicians would also have to vote secretly on all matters they vote on, lest they also be subject to “intimidation.”
Just think, with just a few such leaps of logic we could have a true marxoid paradise – voters secretly electing secret politicians to secretly govern and secretly vote on laws in an all powerful United Nation(s), from which escape, if at all possible, might happen only through death or perhaps a one way rocket ship flight, and the latter only so long as human settlement of wherever it might fly to doesn’t reach the level of people going back and forth, at which point anyone who made it there there would also be absorbed into the blob, borg, communist collective.
Perhaps, it might serve us better to speculate about potential solutions in a very differing, maybe even largely polar opposite direction?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1868_United_States_presidential_election
1868 STATE VOTES / EC VOTES DOWN ABOUT 90 PCT OF PAGE.
HOW MANY 1860 VOTERS GOT KILLED IN 1861-1866 DUE TO CIVIL WAR ???
GOP PANIC – GRANT BARELY WON >>> 1869-1870 15TH AMDT [FATAL LOOPHOLES – LITERACY / TAXPAYER / ETC.]
HOW MANY EX-SLAVE STATE CONFEDS N-O-T ALLOWED TO VOTE IN NOV 1868 ???
Who appointed/elected Presidential Electors in the states in 1868? Consider: Today, all presidential electors are chosen by voters, but in the early republic, more than half the states chose electors in their legislatures, thus eliminating any direct involvement by the voting public in the election. This practice changed rapidly after the turn of the nineteenth century, however, as the right to vote was extended to an ever-wider segment of the population. As the electorate continued to expand, so did the number of persons able to vote for presidential electors: Its present limit is all eligible citizens age 18 or older. ~ https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/electoral-college
DFR
MORE 1828 VOTERS PICKED 12 AMDT ELECTORS AFTER 1824 BIG STINK DEAL
SEE 1824 AND 1828 PREZ ELECTION WIKIS
—
LIKELY PREVENTED USA CIVIL WAR IN 1829-1833 OVER TARIFFS — JUST BEFORE BRITS HAD 1832 GREAT REFORM ACT –
THEN ABOLISHED SLAVERY IN 1833.
SLAVE STATES POWER PEAKED ABOUT SAME TIME — THEN MORE NORTH IRON ETC – STEAM SHIPS / STEAM TRAINS / TELEGRAPHS IRON WEAPONS / ETC.
I AM JUST GOING TO POST MORE MINDLESS RANTS BECAUSE I AM A SCHIZOPHRENIC
666 TROL MORONS DON’T UNDERSTAND MENTAL ILLNESS
WHY DO I SMELL LIKE CAT URINE
534 AM
ONE MORE TROLL MORON IMPERSONATOR POST.
BAN KNOWS WHO/WHAT THE MORON IS.
Richard Winger, uncontested facts can be found in all sorts of places – Slate, Babylon Bee, Chinese and North Korean people’s dailies, the Daily Stormer, Stormfront, Al Jazeera, a magic 8 ball, fortune cookie fortunes, tarot card readings, the rants of what appears to be an untreated psychiatric patient on an urban street corner, things found written on public toilet walls, etc, etc.
If you make a post here saying one of them printed or said something which correctly pointed out X, Y, and/or Z, it doesn’t in and of itself say that you think everything else from that source is valid, or even that anything else from that source is valid.
But, note that only one of these has been a repeat source for you, if any of the others have ever been sources of information that you quoted in posts here at all. The other repeat sources you use also frequently align ideologically within a narrow ideological band within which Slate falls.
One feature of that particular band of ideas is that it often paints itself as objective, non ideological, and/or centrist, or at least far more so than it actually is.
How many of the other potential sources above could you see yourself making a post worded as they had something that made a good point? How often could you see that happening? If anyone said something about the source in comments, would you then reply that good information is found anywhere?
If anyone doesn’t like Richard Winger’s choice of news sources, they are perfectly free to go elsewhere. That’s what freedom of the press is all about.
Who said he has no freedom to use the sources he does? Not anyone here, to my knowledge. We’re already going other places, and to what extent we come here, whether we express any criticism we have or not, is never guaranteed.
So long as criticism is permitted here, we also have that freedom, and there’s nothing wrong with exercising it. Maybe it will help the site improve. Maybe not. The proprietor is free to implement suggestions, reject them quietly, dispute them openly, take them into consideration, allow them or disallow them – it’s all part of that same press freedom.
Of course, Walter and everyone has the right to criticize our criticism, so long as the site allows such open exchange. But “love it or leave it and don’t come back” isn’t the greatest criticism, in my opinion.
This isn’t a country. If we weren’t allowed to give critical input, some of us would indeed see little reason to return here nearly as often, or, perhaps, ever.
YMMV, but I have much less interest in sites where there’s no open conversation in comments. Sadly, I’ve found few sites run by people who take sites like slate seriously which permit this kind of open exchange, so I rarely see any reason to read their posts.
I’ve found more sites which allow open exchange but don’t take sites like slate seriously. One drawback for me there is that the defenders of slate and similar sites rarely choose to participate in that open exchange, and practically never for very long.