The 10 Biggest Election Lawsuits in U.S. History
The suspicion of fixed elections isn’t anything new as it has far too often proven to be a sad part of how political parties and their candidates feel they’re perfectly justified to alter the voting results as they prefer to go with whom they feel deserves the win and not always what the people voted for. This has been a reality that has been around even before the United States of America officially became a nation. In light of the 2020 federal election that still has lawsuits revolving around it pending to this day, the magnitude of it, plus all the conspiracy stories, easily places the drama of the situation among the ten biggest lawsuits in American history. Regardless of what political affiliation a person is with, it seems there are confirmed and unconfirmed cheaters who think they’re above the law. They also think their opinions matter more than the people they’re supposed to be working for, which is the very population that’s supposed to trust the electoral system to properly judge who has the right to assume office and who doesn’t.
A Nation Divided
In America, the top two political parties who compete against each other to run the nation and its people are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Even before the name of Donald Trump became among the most controversial part of the political circle, he isn’t the only presidential representative who has found himself square in the middle of an election lawsuit. He has, however, seemed to be the one in it the most amount of finger-pointing accusations that have actually gone both ways. To this day, even long after the 2020 election results have been officially decided by the American Supreme Court, there are still lawsuits ongoing about the matter as there are still many Americans who feel Donald Trump’s presidency was stolen from him by a political party and their associates. While there is zero doubt election fraud did indeed play a role in the 2020 election, this wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last, where the matter would find itself in the middle of a court battle.
10. Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, 1824 Federal Election
In 1824, there was a presidential election that featured the candidates of Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. When the election ran its course, none of the candidates were able to win the majority of the electoral college. This was one of those rare occasions where the House of Representatives had to step in and decide who is to become president as the needed votes from the electoral college was not enough at that time to determine the rightful winner. It was expected Andrew Jackson would earn the win as he was the candidate who earned the most amount of electoral votes. It was expected the House would agree with the votes and choose him as president. However, this was not the case. They chose John Quincy Adams instead. This is also the election where the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as we know them today began. During the 1824 election, all four candidates were from what used to be a singular Democratic-Republican Party. When the House voted in favor of Adams over Jackson, the other two candidates, Henry Clay chose the side of Adams and lobbied on his behalf when he made his appeal to the House. When Adams became president, he gave his old Secretary of State position to him This led Jackson to believe a deal was struck between Adams and Clay where Clay would influence the House to favor Adams for his own personal gain. Adams only won thirty-two percent of the total vote and became the first president in American history to have a minority government. This fight between Adams and Jackson continued long after the election results and it served as a motivator for Jackson to run against Adams again. For the American people, there was enough outrage against the thought of a corrupt government using the election to install a president who did not receive as many votes as the man whom they all believed should have won. The 1828 election saw Andrew Jackson earn a solid win over John Quincy Adams with over 55% of the majority vote, plus 178 of the electoral votes.
9. 1888’s Electoral Results, Bought and Paid For
During the 1888 federal election, the current president, Democrat Grover Cleveland from New York ran against Republican Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana. Despite Cleveland earning the popular vote by the nation’s people, the electoral results favored Harrison by 233 to 168. This was enough for Harrison to replace Cleveland as the next American president. However, controversy erupted when the former president accused his replacement of attempting to buy votes. This accusation was backed by the Democratic Party’s lettered argument that a number of local leaders within Harrison’s home state were promised funds to buy votes, as well as possibly doing the same in New York. However, it was also discovered that Harrison wasn’t the only politician that appeared to be buying votes as the loss of Cleveland’s own home in New York suggested he was attempting to do the same, having every expectation to win. Cleveland also chose to discontinue contesting the election result after the controversy of bought votes came about and how he found himself on the losing end of this legal battle.
8. Counting Issues, 2000 Federal Election
The 2000 election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George Bush saw a spin of many lawsuits filed over the election results that eventually came down to the final decision made by the Supreme Court. Despite earning the popular vote, as well as 266 electoral votes, Gore needed the State of Florida so that he could secure 270 electoral votes. The result from Florida was in Bush’s favor with a marginal win of 537 votes. This highly publicized lawsuit resulted in a single vote in favor of Bush’s side of the argument. This resulted in all recounting of ballots to come to an end to determine who really did win. To add to the controversy, there were also accusations of many ballots not being counted due to a series of errors. Although Gore conceded to Bush, the mud-slinging between the two sides still remains as this issue has since poured into every single federal election and mid-season election that has taken place since then.
7. 2018 Mid-Term Election
The Heritage Foundation features a long list of the lawsuits that erupted when the dust of the 2018 mid-term federal election settled and left behind many questionable, and disputable results. Since the 2016 presidential win by Donald Trump and the Republicans, there was no sign of the aftermath slowing down when 2018 came around as the two-year mid-term that sees another federal election take place. This particular election focuses on who gets to sit in the House of Congress and who can become part of the Senate Office. Although two years have already gone by when 2018 began its run, Americans who still refused to acknowledge Donald Trump as the nation’s president vowed to use the mid-term elections to their advantage to take as much power away from him, as well as his Republicans. Already, conspiracy theorists and voters braced for the strong possibility of voter fraud. While some of the matter has been officially resolved, some of it hasn’t. This isn’t just about some single lawsuit that makes it so big, but a cluster of them that still continues to boil in a manner that was directly affected by the 2016 election and has directly affected the 2020 election. It will also very likely have an impact on the 2022 mid-term election as well.
6. Votes from the Dead, 1960 Federal Election
During the 1960 presidential election between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy, this too close for comfort race to run the country saw the states of Illinois and Texas hand the win to Kennedy, despite only having 100,000 votes in total, which is only 0.2 of the electoral vote. This was enough for Nixon and his Republican Party to lose the federal election. This result had the Republicans in an uproar, especially the southern parts of Texas and the city of Chicago. The mayor of the Illinois city, Richard Daley, used his political reach to bring about voters that were suspected to either be deceased or ineligible to vote, at least this is according to the Republican Party. An investigation was called to declare election fraud that also saw newspaper publications supporting Nixon over Kennedy. However, in the end, Nixon chose not to continue pursuing any legal chances and chose to accept the results. He simply ran again in 1968 and won that election by a landslide.
5. Not My President, 2016 Federal Election
When Donald Trump threw his name into the hat as a Republican running for president, this resulted in a mixed reaction from the American people, regardless of whether they gave a darn about politics or not. Like him or not, this immensely popular figurehead served as the underdog favorite as he was not at all like the presidential candidates that eyeballed the 2016 opportunity to win the coveted title of the President of the United States (POTUS). At first, it seemed like nobody took him seriously until he became the official runner on behalf of the Republican Party to take on Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party. It was concluded Clinton was guaranteed to take Barrack Obama’s place, at least according to the views of the Democrats and its supporters. With what seemed like most of Hollywood siding with the political camp belonging to the Democrats, as well as mainstream media, it appeared as if Trump and his team were facing imminent defeat. However, when war erupted on social media that revealed more than enough dirty laundry against Clinton and her Democrats to last a lifetime, the end result of the election by the time the ballots were all counted up was a jaw-dropping one, to say the least. Although Hillary Clinton earned the majority of votes, Donald Trump’s victory was earned through the electoral votes. This sparked outrage, as well as what became a non-stop, mud-slinging gong show that not only affected the population of the American nation but people all over the world. While the Democrats were crying foul, so were the Republicans as they indicated many of the votes in Clinton’s favor came from the deceased and people who were not eligible to vote. This accusation is not uncommon, but what made these allegations stand out more was shared media footage by pro-Trump supporters that revealed what the Republications were accusing the Democrats of to be partly true. Ballotpedia has a long list of 2016 election-related lawsuits that show both sides of what’s been contested and why.
4. Watergate Scandal
The Watergate Scandal starts with the June 17, 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s Washington D.C. headquarters, which is located at the Watergate Office Building. Then-president, Richard Nixon, adamantly insisted neither he nor his Republican Party had any involvement with a criminal act that was pulled off by the five burglars who were arrested and brought to trial. Further investigation revealed a connection of a cash exchange during the timing of Nixon’s re-election campaign with his committee. In what became a nationwide broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), anybody with a television set that was interested in this lawsuit watched the proceedings as the live drama took place. What led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974 was the constitutional crisis that erupted over the voice-activated taping system located in the Oval Office. In 1973, the House pushed for Richard Nixon to be impeached from office. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling for Nixon’s administration team to release the audio recordings from the oval office to government investigators. The House Judiciary Committee wound up approving the impeachment against Nixon for abuse of power, contempt of Congress, and obstruction of justice. Instead of facing a Senate trial and an official impeachment by the House, Nixon opted to resign as president on August 9, 1974. When then-vice president Gerald Ford assumed office on September 8, 1974, he pardoned Nixon. What ranks this as an election lawsuit is there was drama already in full swing between the political warring Democrats and Republicans when Nixon won his 1968 election. Even in 1960, when Nixon lost to Kennedy during that federal election, the animosity between the two sides never did die down. In fact, it escalated to the point where more extreme measures were taken by both sides that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal. It was believed by the Democrats that the 1972 federal election that saw Nixon easily defeat George McGovern as president was somewhat dubious. While Nixon and his Republicans did indeed win the election, the House of Congress was still dominated by Democrats, which actually added to the drama of Watergate, plus the elections that took place between 1960 and 1972.
3. Republican Party vs. Democratic Party Compromise of 1876
Republican Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden went toe to toe against each other during the 1876 presidential election campaign. It still remains one of the most disputed elections in American history as the end result was so controversial that it’s still discussed among conspiracy theorists who follow American history and its politics. The election result saw Tilden receive the majority of the popular votes and the majority of the electoral votes as he had nineteen more of those than Hayes. However, twenty of those electoral votes remained unresolved after days of counting. The missing votes came from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Both political parties declared themselves the winner in each of those states, but the matter was not resolved, nor could it be resolved with the ballots counted in the electoral votes. In the questionable Compromise of 1877, the election was decided by the Democratic Party agreeing to give twenty electoral votes to Hayes in exchange for the Republican Party to withdraw federal soldiers from the American South. Those soldiers had been there since the end of the American Civil War. This compromise resulted in Democrat Jim Crow using his newfound power to develop laws that would suppress the black community from voting in the South after the end of Reconstruction. The 1876 election may have seen the Republicans and Rutherford Hayes win as the federal government, but the true win went to the Democrats and their closest allies as all the main goals they had in mind to achieve as a government was turned into reality. This is a compromise that still plagues the American nation to this very day as it’s still continuing, regardless of how much of its true history seems to have become whitewashed.
2. 1860, Let’s Go to War, Then Assassinate
The electoral victory earned by Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Party served as the major catalyst that caused the American Civil War to erupt as a very divided America just couldn’t bring itself to reach a peaceful agreement. The Democratic Party was so outraged by the results that this sparked seven states of the young American nation to secede from a government body they refused to support. On April 12, 1861, the military bombardment on South Carolina’s Fort Sumter served as the official trigger that would escalate a series of lawsuits and other legal issues into an all-out war. While the end result of the war still saw Abraham Lincoln retain his presidency, he was assassinated on April 14, 1865, while attending a theater production in Washington D.C. by John Wilkes Booth, an actor who was on the side of the Democrats and the Confederates. Despite the papers and the courts making the matter an open and shut case, many conspiracy theorists still believe there is far more to the story behind the 1860 election and Lincoln’s assassination than what has so far been revealed. This entire matter was more than simply a lawsuit. This was a fight that broke out into war that resulted in even more lawsuits erupting between both sides who have still failed to let this matter come to rest. Since the 1860 federal fiasco, not a single election within the United States of America has seen results that haven’t had some form of finger-pointing by people who simply refused to swallow the loss and move on.
1. The 2020 Presidential Lawsuit Circus
According to Red State, Donald Trump and the American people were wronged by an electoral system, as well as the Supreme Court, when the final decision was made to allow the election results that saw Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, millions of Americans were in an uproar. To this day, they still cry election fraud, as does Donald Trump and his family and closest associates. Ever since he won the 2016 election, the Democratic Party and its supporters have been relentless against the real estate tycoon. All that resentment hasn’t gone unnoticed as the hate train even extended into mainstream and social media outlets. Even with doubts of the 2018 mid-term elections that saw questionable results that were in the favor of the Democrats, many also accused of dishonesty taking place even in that. What sets the 2020 presidential lawsuit apart from any other election-related lawsuit in American history is that it’s not simply about a single lawsuit. There are multiple lawsuits in the equation that easily make the 2020 presidential lawsuit the biggest the United States has ever seen. There have been seventy-five lawsuits all related to the 2020 election. Eight of them have either been consolidated or withdrawn since then, but the rest continue. Twenty-five of them has been dropped. Nineteen lawsuits have already been completed, resulting in eleven of them won by Donald Trump while the other eight he lost. There are still twenty-three more election-related cases that remain unresolved. What makes this the biggest election lawsuit in history is all the other lawsuits that have been clustered into what has truly become a multi-ringed circus act. Not since 1860 has the American nation become so deeply divided, which is revealing all that animosity that poisoned the country even before 1860 continues to fester this very day. When such issues go unchecked or have their facts conveniently altered to suit business and political agendas, everybody becomes a victim.
When Votes Don’t Really Count
Democracy is supposed to be all about what the people want for the nation they call home. When the American Constitution was first put together by the Founding Fathers of America, there were a number of amendments that were made along the way, but the core of it, along with the Declaration of Independence, is what’s supposed to define how a nation is to be run. The America of today seems to have become the very thing the Founding Fathers broke away from when they left, which was a nation that was riddled with corruption. The whole point behind the constitution was to protect the people from corrupt politicians, but when the manipulative have such control issues that they’d rather take matters into their own hands, this poses a very serious problem. It doesn’t help when new laws are installed to protect the corrupted from having to answer the very laws they’ve deliberately broken themselves. When it comes down to real votes from real people no longer counting, then it seems what should be the biggest election lawsuit in U.S. history should be coming from the people themselves and not between political parties and their associates as the United States of America is supposed to belong to them and not the other way around.
