Hijacking the electoral college: The plot to deny JFK the presidency 60 years ago

[Douglas Caddy]

Hijacking the electoral college: The plot to deny JFK the presidency 60 years ago

 

Hijacking the electoral college: ‘Faithless electors’ plotted to deny JFK the presidency in 1960 - The Washington Post

[Douglas Caddy]

[From the Washington Post article]

It was a bitter, close election, and there were furious allegations of fraud.

After Democrat John F. Kennedy barely beat Republican Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 election, a coalition of opponents plotted to deny him the presidency in the electoral college. Most were White, conservative electors from the south who opposed the young Massachusetts senator’s liberal policies, especially his support for civil rights for Black Americans.

If these electors had succeeded, segregationist Democratic Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia would have been elected president. His vice president would have been Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Both men had nothing to do with the idea.

On Monday, the electoral college will meet to ratify the victory of Democrat Joe Biden over President Trump, who has refused to concede. Some Trump backers are pressing states to release electors pledged for Biden. At least 33 states prohibit such “faithless” electors, and most other states void switched votes.

Supreme Court dismisses bid to overturn the presidential election results, blocking Trump’s legal path to a reversal of his loss

The 1960 presidential election set off a political storm, much like this year’s contest. Kennedy wound up winning by only about 113,000 votes out of 69 million cast.

Republicans suspected voter fraud in 11 states and filed suit in two of them, Texas and Illinois, which Kennedy won by fewer than 9,000 votes. The suit in Illinois charged that the Democratic stronghold of Cook County had dug up Kennedy voters from the cemeteries of Chicago.

Judges threw out both suits. So the action moved to the electoral college. Nixon took no part in the vote challenges and told a reporter that “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.”

Immediately after the 1960 election, electors from Alabama and Mississippi agreed not to cast their votes for Kennedy, who had won both states. All of Mississippi’s eight electors and six of Alabama’s 11 electors were unpledged. The electors lobbied their counterparts in the electoral college to follow their lead.

Organizers of the movement came up with a three-point “Plan To Give the South a Partial Vote in the Affairs of the Nation.”

Plan A was for electors from 11 southern states to use their clout to persuade Kennedy to stop U.S. aid to Communist countries and to support “states’ rights,” a code for resisting racial integration.

If Kennedy refused, the electors would move to Plan B: a resolution calling for “reversing the position of candidates” in the election. That is, Vice President-elect Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas would be president, and Kennedy would be vice president.

Of the 700 attempts to fix or abolish the electoral college, this one nearly succeeded

 

President John F. Kennedy, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Vice President Lyndon Johnson. (Briscoe Center for American History)

Finally, there was Plan 😄 Republican electors from all 50 states would be invited to meet in Chicago to pick a president from a list of “outstanding southern men.” Among the choices were Byrd, segregationist governors Orval Faubus of Arkansas and Ross Barnett of Mississippi, and Georgia Sen. Richard Russell.

The goal was to have electors elect the president within the electoral college, said Lea Harris, a Democratic lawyer in Alabama. If that failed, as “a last resort” the electors would seek to switch enough votes to keep Kennedy from getting the 269 electoral votes needed for election and throw the race into the House of Representatives.

This had happened twice before in U.S. history. In 1800, the House picked Thomas Jefferson as president over Aaron Burr when the electoral college vote ended in a tie. In 1825, the House chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, who had won the popular vote.

Over the years, there have been only about 165 “faithless” electors. This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rights of states to reject the votes of such electors.

The rebel southern electors wrote Republican electors urging them to switch their votes from Nixon. Republican Henry Irwin of Oklahoma, a pledged Nixon elector opposed to what he called Kennedy’s “socialist-labor” views, was receptive. It soon “became apparent to a shrewd observer that a possibility existed to deny the presidency to Kennedy,” he said later.

Irwin sent telegrams to 218 Republican electors urging them to switch from Nixon to Byrd. He also wrote all the GOP state chairmen. He got about 40 replies, but no commitments. “Feel obligated to Nixon,” one Kansas elector responded.

Oklahoma’s Republican Party chairman blasted Irwin’s scheme. “He apparently feels his opinion is superior to the judgment of one-half million Oklahoma voters who chose Richard Nixon,” the chairman said.

Disputed presidential elections: A guide to 200 years of ballot box ugliness

The rebellion spread in the South. Mississippi Gov. Barnett wrote electors in southern states urging them to cast their votes for Byrd and Goldwater. In Alabama, the Mobile Press declared in an editorial that “Southerners deeply concerned over racial mixing should lift their voices in an appeal to all their presidential electors.”

Efforts to release electors to vote for whomever they wished sprung up in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina. “This had been a real threat,” JFK biographer Theodore Sorensen wrote later.

Two weeks before the electoral college vote, organizer Harris predicted that Kennedy wouldn’t receive enough votes to be elected. The White Citizens Council newspaper in Mississippi assured its readers that a southerner would win the presidency.

The rebel yells of revolt ended in a whimper, however. No part of the southern “plan” was ever carried out. Most electors felt morally obligated to cast their votes based on their state’s election results.

One South Carolina elector for Kennedy said he ignored numerous “crackpot” requests to change his vote, including an offer from the “Flying Tigers Rights Party” to give him stock in a company in the Philippines.

Kennedy won 303 electoral college votes to Nixon’s 219. Byrd got only 15 votes, one from Oklahoma’s Irwin and 14 from the Alabama and Mississippi electors. All 14 electors voted for South Carolina Democratic Sen. Strom Thurmond for vice president.

 

After the overwhelming defeat, the Alabama electors complained that Southerners could have controlled the election, but “their sycophantic political leaders failed them miserably.”

 

Ironically, as vice president, it fell to Nixon to announce the electoral college vote and his own defeat in early January in the House chamber. After starting alphabetically with the first votes from Alabama for Byrd, Nixon dryly remarked, “The gentleman from Virginia is now in the lead.”

Later that year, the Senate conducted hearings into proposals to revamp the electoral college. The system needed to be “brought out of the horse and buggy era and into the jet age,” said Sen. Mike Mansfield (D-Montana).

Sixty years later, the horse and buggy version is still up and running.

Read more Retropolis:

Of the 700 attempts to fix or abolish the electoral college, this one nearly succeeded

The Founders didn’t prepare for a president who refuses to step down, historians say

Mail-in ballots were part of a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864

 

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Douglas Caddy

[James DiEugenio]

I was not aware of this.  But it would appear from these facts that JFK won the electoral college ever bigger than the official tally was.

The other takeaway is this: contrary to what establishment historians have written, Kennedy's fellow southern senators realized who he was on the issue of civil rights.  And they did not want him in the White House.  Kennedy had endorsed the Brown vs Board decision as a senator twice in public. Once in NYC, and once, in of all places, Jackson Mississippi. 

He also did not want to go along with Johnson's rather tepid 1957 civil rights act, but he did at LBJ's behest.

It turns out they were right about him.  The day of his inauguration, Kennedy called up DIllon and asked him:  Why were there no black faces in that Coast Guard parade today?  Dillon said he did not know.  Kennedy said, "Well, find out."

That was the beginning of affirmative action.  If you do something on your first day, I don't think that is waiting on the issue.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

It turns out they were right about him.  The day of his inauguration, Kennedy called up DIllon and asked him:  Why were there no black faces in that Coast Guard parade today?  Dillon said he did not know.  Kennedy said, "Well, find out."

That was the beginning of affirmative action.  If you do something on your first day, I don't think that is waiting on the issue.

That's a very good point, James. That's not dragging heels on the issue, it's showing intent. 

[James DiEugenio]

Two months later there was a meeting of all cabinet heads.  Kennedy asked to see statistics of minority hiring in each department.

He was quite disappointed in what he heard at the meeting.  So he then signed the first affirmative action act in history.

Several months later he extended that act.  Now it was not just for government hiring.  It was for all government contracting.  This meant, that for the first time, in South Carolina textile mills who created uniforms for the army, you had to hire African Americans.

[Richard Booth]

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I was not aware of this.  But it would appear from these facts that JFK won the electoral college ever bigger than the official tally was.

The other takeaway is this: contrary to what establishment historians have written, Kennedy's fellow southern senators realized who he was on the issue of civil rights.  And they did not want him in the White House.  Kennedy had endorsed the Brown vs Board decision as a senator twice in public. Once in NYC, and once, in of all places, Jackson Mississippi. 

He also did not want to go along with Johnson's rather tepid 1957 civil rights act, but he did at LBJ's behest.

It turns out they were right about him.  The day of his inauguration, Kennedy called up DIllon and asked him:  Why were there no black faces in that Coast Guard parade today?  Dillon said he did not know.  Kennedy said, "Well, find out."

That was the beginning of affirmative action.  If you do something on your first day, I don't think that is waiting on the issue.

Yet another piece of the puzzle to incorporate into your ongoing framework of understanding about JFK on civil rights. The history books are all wrong about this and your lectures on BOR have served to correct that record. I still hope we'll see a book about it, but will take the lectures and essays for now. Perhaps a future historian will build upon your groundbreaking work in this area.

It seems like JFK is viewed by most historians as off-limits: let the consensus stand and "don't go there" no matter the subject.  I think there is a reason that only JFK assassination researchers have broken ground there, with John Newman on JFK and Vietnam, and your excellent work on his domestic and foreign policy. It's almost as if subconsciously historians don't want to even assess or analyze JFK's presidency because they know that doing so means they might have to confront The Unspeakable, even if in passing, in one of the final chapters. There is a fear of looking too deeply at his presidency, evidenced by the lack of any real scholarly works on it, which I think is probably related to the difficulty of facing the prospect of having to even think about or write about how the presidency ended. 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Richard Booth

[James DiEugenio]

A reader of K and K sent me a note last week about an incident on Scarborough where this happened.  Joe said JFK did not do anything on civil rights and left it to LBJ. And the guest Harvard historian essentially agreed, that jFK had to be "talked" to about civil rights. 

Question:  On inauguration day, who told. him to call DIllon?  It sure was not LBJ sitting next to him.

LOL.

Another reader sent me a radio interview with Fredrik Logevall, another Harvard historian who is writing a two volume set on JFK.  Logevall said the same thing on that show.

As a result I am going to do an Open Letter to these people, plus Van Jones, who said the same thing on that Kennedys special a couple of years ago.

I have not done one of these Open Letters in many years. The last one was to Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas.  She got really mad at me.  And that caused me to stop reading the so called liberal blogs. Especially after I got a load of Mouitsas' history.

Edited December 15, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Richard Booth]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

A reader of K and K sent me a note last week about an incident on Scarborough where this happened.  Joe said JFK did not do anything on civil rights and left it to LBJ. And the guest Harvard historian essentially agreed, that jFK had to be "talked" to about civil rights. 

Question:  On inauguration day, who told. him to call DIllon?  It sure was not LBJ sitting next to him.

LOL.

Another reader sent me a radio interview with Fredrik Logevall, another Harvard historian who is writing a two volume set on JFK.  Logevall said the same thing on that show.

As a result I am going to do an Open Letter to these people, plus Van Jones, who said the same thing on that Kennedys special a couple of years ago.

I have not done one of these Open Letters in many years. The last one was to Jane Hamsher and Markos Moulitsas.  She got really mad at me.  And that caused me to stop reading the so called liberal blogs. Especially after I got a load of Mouitsas' history.

That is just really, really sad.

Especially when you consider what known facts there are about this case. And about the mens' personalities. JFK was a warm, empathetic, caring man. He truly cared about people, and actively thought about the plight of being a minority in this country at a time when that never crossed anyone's mind. The story about him asking about the Coast Guard, no black faces, or talking to Abe Bolden really touches my heart. 

Meanwhile we also have enough facts to know that LBJ was a vile racist. Frequently calling blacks the n-word. Cynically pushing for legislation to receive votes. 

The stories you share only emphasize how much a book is needed on this subject. To think that we have Harvard histories and pundits on TV ignorantly claiming JFK wasn't an advocate of civil rights. It's disgusting.

Again I think it's due to this part of our psychology where, for most people, examining Kennedy brings them closer to having to examine The Unspeakable. Just looking at his career puts what happened to him on your roadmap. His assassination is always just down the road if you endeavor to examine the years before it, and psychologically people do not want to confront that because deep down they know something is very wrong with it even if they tout the Warren Commission. 

So people instead stick to this conventional wisdom, this absurd notion that JFK wasn't remarkable and achieved not much more than saving the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nevermind everything else he did.

He was the greatest man to hold office since the 18th century. We should be so lucky to see another man like him, and we never will, because getting into that office since 11/22/63 has required a level of compromise and corruption that guarantees we'll never again see a great man or woman in that desk. 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Richard Booth said:

That is just really, really sad.

Especially when you consider what known facts there are about this case. And about the mens' personalities. JFK was a warm, empathetic, caring man. He truly cared about people, and actively thought about the plight of being a minority in this country at a time when that never crossed anyone's mind. The story about him asking about the Coast Guard, no black faces, or talking to Abe Bolden really touches my heart. 

Meanwhile we also have enough facts to know that LBJ was a vile racist. Frequently calling blacks the n-word. Cynically pushing for legislation to receive votes. 

The stories you share only emphasize how much a book is needed on this subject. To think that we have Harvard histories and pundits on TV ignorantly claiming JFK wasn't an advocate of civil rights. It's disgusting.

Again I think it's due to this part of our psychology where, for most people, examining Kennedy brings them closer to having to examine The Unspeakable. Just looking at his career puts what happened to him on your roadmap. His assassination is always just down the road if you endeavor to examine the years before it, and psychologically people do not want to confront that because deep down they know something is very wrong with it even if they tout the Warren Commission. 

So people instead stick to this conventional wisdom, this absurd notion that JFK wasn't remarkable and achieved not much more than saving the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nevermind everything else he did.

He was the greatest man to hold office since the 18th century. We should be so lucky to see another man like him, and we never will, because getting into that office since 11/22/63 has required a level of compromise and corruption that guarantees we'll never again see a great man or woman in that desk. 

It's the psychology isn't it, if what he did or what he stood for doesn't matter, then his killing means less, it makes it more of a random event that's not worth bothering with. There is an absolute deluge of coverage of his affairs, a heavy emphasis on the BOP, many blaming him for the CMC, blaming him for Vietnam and giving credit to LBJ for Civil Rights. It's a retelling of history through propaganda in my opinion. That extends to the rest of the family too. 

[Richard Booth]

23 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

It's the psychology isn't it, if what he did or what he stood for doesn't matter, then his killing means less, it makes it more of a random event that's not worth bothering with. There is an absolute deluge of coverage of his affairs, a heavy emphasis on the BOP, many blaming him for the CMC, blaming him for Vietnam and giving credit to LBJ for Civil Rights. It's a retelling of history through propaganda in my opinion. That extends to the rest of the family too. 

I do think that psychology plays a major role in the failure of historians and everyone else in examining Kennedy's career. Like you said, only these negative and largely slanted narratives exist that serve to demean. There hasn't been any honest or in depth analysis of Kennedy from writers and historians, save for a couple of people who happen to acknowledge the reality of JFK's assassination as the result of a conspiracy. It's no coincidence that the only honest accounts come from people who can face The Unspeakable and come to terms with it. For everyone else, the focus will be on the so-called Dark Side of Camelot. 

I really do believe it's psychological. A total inability or willingness to confront 11/22, resulting in no interest or capacity to examine what happened before that, because to do so means continuing down the road which leads to 11/22. 

 

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

I do think that psychology plays a major role in the failure of historians and everyone else in examining Kennedy's career. Like you said, only these negative and largely slanted narratives exist that serve to demean. There hasn't been any honest or in depth analysis of Kennedy from writers and historians, save for a couple of people who happen to acknowledge the reality of JFK's assassination as the result of a conspiracy. It's no coincidence that the only honest accounts come from people who can face The Unspeakable and come to terms with it. For everyone else, the focus will be on the so-called Dark Side of Camelot. 

I really do believe it's psychological. A total inability or willingness to confront 11/22, resulting in no interest or capacity to examine what happened before that, because to do so means continuing down the road which leads to 11/22. 

 

I just try to take it in context with later events. If one of these moments in history are shown to be what they really are, then we will be compelled to investigate the rest properly and acknowledge the flaws/spectre/purpose/role of our own security apparatus. Things have been done that expose western countries as everything the despotic regimes that we decry in the media are, the big difference is that we did this with the benefit of education, knowing it was morally wrong. 
I believe when JFK talked of freedom, civil liberties and democracy, that he believed in those fundamentals as the cornerstones of a functioning society. Those words have been used to death since, and no president has believed them, nor strived for them. 

[Richard Booth]

19 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I just try to take it in context with later events. If one of these moments in history are shown to be what they really are, then we will be compelled to investigate the rest properly and acknowledge the flaws/spectre/purpose/role of our own security apparatus. Things have been done that expose western countries as everything the despotic regimes that we decry in the media are, the big difference is that we did this with the benefit of education, knowing it was morally wrong. 
I believe when JFK talked of freedom, civil liberties and democracy, that he believed in those fundamentals as the cornerstones of a functioning society. Those words have been used to death since, and no president has believed them, nor strived for them. 

You raise an important point that goes to the very core of the Unspeakable. A popular elected President had his head blown off in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people, and his alleged assassin was then led out from the police station--with no police officer standing in front of him, notably--directly into the path of a waiting assassin where he, too, was shot--in front of millions of Americans on live TV. Following this very public sequence of events the entire country and the world was fed an obvious pack of lies. 

What this ultimately means is that everything that followed was in large part illegitimate. Virtually every Presidency since then has had at least one major event--most of them many events--in which there is an official story that is a pack of lies and at the heart of these events lies unethical and criminal activity. Whether that be Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, the Iraq War, these are just a few examples. Our legacy is one of lies and corruption. Each year it seems to get worse, each decade more extreme than the last. 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

You raise an important point that goes to the very core of the Unspeakable. A popular elected President had his head blown off in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people, and his alleged assassin was then led out from the police station--with no police officer standing in front of him, notably--directly into the path of a waiting assassin where he, too, was shot--in front of millions of Americans on live TV. Following this very public sequence of events the entire country and the world was fed an obvious pack of lies. 

What this ultimately means is that everything that followed was in large part illegitimate. Virtually every Presidency since then has had at least one major event--most of them many events--in which there is an official story that is a pack of lies and at the heart of these events lies unethical and criminal activity. Whether that be Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, the Iraq War, these are just a few examples. Our legacy is one of lies and corruption. Each year it seems to get worse, each decade more extreme than the last. 

I think in general having political candidates who are ambitious social climbers, who have corrupt benefactors ensures there are no surprises in office. But, 11/22/63 ensured everybody knows you get the open top car ride if you are not on board with the agenda. I suspect one of the reasons the CIA & FBI keep or kept files on every publics figures indiscretions was for blackmail purposes or leverage. I would think it was a shock getting a president in office who didn't need any money and couldn't be controlled. I am sure Hoover's pointing out affairs and things to the Kennedy's had some effect but, we also must take things in context, in the late 50's and early 60's women were staying home with the kids and men were chasing tail, married or not. I listened to Jordan Peterson talk of rock stars and celebrities, explaining, the average guy has no idea what it's like to have that much opportunity or temptation. Saying someone is a man of their time may sound like an excuse but, in that era, he may have lost a few votes but, ultimately it wouldn't have changed the direction of the tide, it may have even enhanced his desirability in some ways. If I am wrong, why didn't the CIA or Hoover use it as a tool earlier?
I just think the east coast establishment had enough of idealism and persistently having their schemes (wars, neo-colonialism) to line their pockets blocked by a clever president, the atmosphere of hate was created to facilitate it. 

Thinking critically, you could have had JFK slip away from illness during one of his bouts, a tragic plane going down or any manner of creative deaths that looked accidental or legitimate, it's not like an assassination abroad in a foreign country where you have limited access and opportunity. Then you have the presidents brother assassinated whilst running as a candidate. Is there anyone with an IQ over 100 that doesn't see a statement or message being given here. 

That's the way I see it Richard, whilst there was corruption long before JFK, it's as old as time, there is no legitimacy to the presidency after. 

[James DiEugenio]

The thing is, Clay Risen's book, The Bill of the Century shows that LBJ was not even all that active in getting the Civil Rights BIll of 1964 passed. Risen's book shows that he made maybe one phone call.  And that he did not attend the celebratory rally after the final vote that summer.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was caused by the Selma demonstration, which was due to King.  

The extension of the Housing Act, begun by Kennedy, was passed due to King's assassination.  Johnson could not get it through before that.

These are the facts:  from 1937-1956, LBJ voted against each and every civil rights bill that attempted to pass congress.  And he was not a passive opponent. He actively voiced the good old southern shibboleth of it being an intrusion on  States Rights. Which would mean, of course, that there would never be any progress on civil rights.

In 1957 two things happened that changed his tune.  First, Nixon and Eisenhower decided to submit a very mild, almost blooper ball pitch type of civil rights bill. Not because they gave anything about the issue--they did not--but they knew they could split the Democratic Party on it. Secondly, LBJ was entertaining thoughts on running for the highest office in 1960.  He saw what had happened to his pal Richard Russell's ambitions due to his anti civil rights views.  So he knew that to make himself palatable to the liberals in the party, he had to change.  Those are the two reasons LBJ first came around on civil rights.  It was reasons of realpolitik.

But to do what Robert Caro does and to make the 1957 bill that LBJ got through into some kind of triumph, I mean talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.  JFK did not even want to vote for it since it was so weak. He explained to a constituent who wrote to him about it that he hoped that next time around he could vote for a bill that really had some teeth. Johnson had to actually assign someone to him so he would not stray off the reservation.

As Harris Wofford explains in his book, because the bill was designed as simply a fig leaf for Brown v Board, and as cover during the Little Rock crisis, it had little impact.  Especially since Nixon and Eisenhower designed it as a stunt. They therefore pretty much ignored everything the newly created commission suggested, and although they did set up a civil rights division in the DOJ, the amount of cases they brought forward was miniscule. During Ike's entire two terms, be brought something like 10 civil rights cases; really nine, because the tenth one was filed on the last day of his second term, probably to make it double digits.

Its because of this posturing that the Kennedys faced such huge resistance and incredible friction from all sides when they began to turn around the issue.  As some writers have finally suggested, much of the blame should go to Eisenhower. He was in a position to really accomplish something in the field.  With the two Brown decisions, plus the insurrection by Faubus at Central High.  Yet he did next to nothing.  This, along with what has become known about this foreign policy, have made me reevaluate him downwardly. As John Newman has also.

As Risen says in his book, the people who performed the incredible act of passing the Civil Rights Bill are JFK., RFK, HHH and Tom Kuchel of California. RFK stayed on for that particular reason, since he knew all the work his brother had put into the effort.  BTW, when JFK was in Dallas, Bobby penned a resignation letter. He thought it would be easier to pass the bill with him out of office since he had become such a lightning rod on the issue. 

Edited December 15, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Richard Booth]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

During Ike's entire two terms, be brought something like 10 civil rights cases

You mean during the same term(s) that the Eisenhower administration carried out "Operation Wetback" ?

Cogent summary. Excellent.

I wasn't aware of Risen's book, glad to see that there is something on this out.