#Presidential November 21

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Today for the 30-Day Election Trivia Coach4aday Challenge the focus is on PRESIDENTIAL Elections

My post today is about things I learned related to the history of Presidential Elections. Some of it applies specifically to North Carolina but a lot of it does not.

FAQ about Presidential Elections

I learned the following:

• The first presidential election of George Washington was held on the first Wednesday of January in 1789.
• No one contested the election of George Washington but he remained a reluctant candidate until the last few days.
• Early on the state legislatures for the most part choose the electors. Pennsylvania and Maryland were the exceptions.
• The 12th Amendment provided the procedure for selecting a president and vice-president. It was adopted in 1804
• Before the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, each elector cast two votes for president. The candidate with a majority won the presidency, and the runner-up became vice president.
• Might be hard to convince people today but the 1828 election campaign between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams was one of the dirtiest in America’s history.
• Adams was the incumbent in 1828 and was portrayed by Jackson campaign as a decadent aristocrat, who had procured prostitutes for the czar while serving as U.S. minister to Russia and spent taxpayer money on “gambling” equipment for the White House (actually a chess set and a billiard table).
• Jackson in 1828 was labeled as a violent frontier ruffian, the son, of a prostitute married to a mulatto. When Jackson and his wife, Rachel, married, the couple believed that her first husband had obtained a divorce. After learning the divorce had not yet been made final, the couple held a second, valid wedding. Now the Adams men claimed Jackson was a bigamist and an adulterer.
• The 2000 election was the fourth election in U.S. history in which the winner of the electoral votes did not carry the popular vote-that election was between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
• 1960 was the last Presidential Election that saw 60% or more of the Voter Age Population go to the polls.
• In the event no candidate receives the majority, the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President. As scary as this election has been that would be scarier in my opinion.