Notre Dame Law School NDLScholarship Journal Articles Publications 2004 How Not to Count Votes John C. Nagle Notre Dame Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship Part of the Election Law Commons Recommended Citation John C. Nagle, How Not to Count Votes, 104 Colum. L. Rev. 1732 (2004). Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/393 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. HOW NOT TO COUNT VOTES John Copeland Nagle* Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Samuel Tilden by one electoral vote in the presidentialelection of 1876. In Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876, Roy Morris, Jr. concludes that the election was stolen from Tilden by Republican par- tisans serving on the canvassing boards in the three Southern states-Flor- ida, Louisiana, and South Carolina-thatwere still under the control of Republican governments backed by the federal army. But in Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876, ChiefJustice William H. Rehn- quist defends the integrity and the actions of the Supreme CourtJustices who served on the special Electoral Commission that Congress established to re- solve the disputed claims about the election. The 1876 election, and the analogous difficulties attending the 2000 election, demonstrate the need to consider who counts votes in contested elections, and how to best balance the sometimes competing needs of independence, expertise, and timeliness.