This Day in History November 3, 1964

I did not even know about the 23rd amendment, did you?  It just so happens on this date in 1964, residents of Washington D.C. got to vote in the presidential election for the first time!  Washington D.C. is not a state, and it was originally founded in 1791, as federal district housing for the capital.  But the residents were not allowed to vote!  It took this amendment to make this happen.  Residents are still not represented in Congress, and due to the heavy democratic climate of the area, that will probably never happen.  Thus, "taxation without representation" is a popular motto in the area.

For more information:
http://famousdaily.com/history/washington-dc-residents-vote-in-elections.html
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dc-residents-cast-first-presidential-votes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_voting_rights

Socal Media and the Election Infographic

Social Media Election by OpenSite is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at http://open-site.org/blog/social-media-election/.

This Day in History December 1, 1824

Political Party	Presidential Nom.	VP Nom.	#			%		#		%
	Democratic-Republican	Andrew Jackson		99			37.9		0
	Democratic-Republican	John Quincy Adams		84			32.2		0
	Democratic-Republican	William H. Crawford		41			15.7		0
	Democratic-Republican	Henry Clay		37			14.2		0

What I have put above is some very unusual election results from the election of 1824.  As you can see, no one won the majority.  At least as far as percentage goes.  And while it was Jackson and Adams who had the most electoral votes, Crawford and Clay complicated things.  No candidate had the 50% of the electoral votes needed to win.

So on this date in 1824, Congress was called in to decide the election.  This was according to the 12th amendment.  And the decision had to be made between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson--two candidates who were on opposite sides of the poles.

It was Speaker Henry Clay who convinced Congress to go with Adams.  And it should come as no surprise that Adams chose Clay for his Secretary of State.  Jackson became rather irate, and he united the fragmented Democratic party, and in four years, Jackson easily beat Adams.

I have heard before that presidents can be elected without a majority of the vote.  I now see that this did happen.  I probably learned about it in history, but I don't always remember everything.  To be perfectly honest, I am not a fan of Jackson, and Quincy Adams was not really exciting.  But between the two, I am glad that Adams won.  It was Jackson's policies that began to lead to the Civil War.

For more information on this, check out:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-decides-outcome-of-presidential-election
http://www.historycentral.com/elections/1824.html
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showelection.php?year=1824