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The Republicans controlled the Senate, the Democrats the House. Which body would count the electoral votes? To resolve the deadlock, Congress appointed an electoral commission. By an 8-to-7 party-line vote, the commission gave all the disputed votes to Hayes. This represented a supreme election swindle, and there was a season of great bitterness. As a final noble gesture, though, Tilden asked his supporters not to riot outside the Capitol.
Some Democrats threatened to obstruct the electoral-vote count in Congress. But the Compromise of 1877 appeased them by terminating Reconstruction and turning the South over to the ex-Confederates. Only three days before Hayes' Inauguration, the Electoral College by a single vote declared Hayes the next President. The nation, North and South, accepted the result with a surprising lack of indignation.
In both 1824 and 1876, the popular-vote winner was deprived of the presidency. But in neither case was the Electoral College to blame. The House of Representatives denied the presidency to Jackson, and the rigged electoral commission denied the presidency to Tilden.
The first time the Electoral College directly denied the presidency to the winner of the popular vote was in 1888. Grover Cleveland, running for re-election, beat Benjamin Harrison by 91,000 in the popular vote but lost, 233 to 168, in the Electoral College. It was a confusing election. Fraud tainted both results. Yet nearly 80% of eligible voters had gone to the polls, and though the popular-vote winner lost the presidency, no one in 1888 seems to have questioned the legitimacy of the result.
Before the 2000 election, the only case of Electoral College misfire occurred in 1888, but there have been seemingly murky elections in the years since. In 1916, when Woodrow Wilson sought a second term, the New York Times rushed to announce his defeat by 10 o'clock election night. Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate, went to bed thinking he had won. Two days later, it became clear that Wilson had won after all.
In 1960, in another very close election, John F. Kennedy carried Illinois by only 9,000 votes. Given the skill of the Chicago Democratic machine in extracting votes from vacant lots and graveyards, the myth has arisen that Mayor Richard Daley stole the election from Richard Nixon. In fact, if Nixon had carried Illinois, Kennedy would still have won 276 to 246 in the Electoral College.
If George W. Bush is confirmed as winner of the Electoral College vote and the presidency, while Al Gore wins the nationwide popular vote, this result will undoubtedly revive the movement to replace the Electoral College with direct popular election of Presidents. This sounds plausible enough, but is it really a good idea?