ELECTORAL COMMISSION, in United States history, a commission created to settle the disputed presidential election of 1876. In this election Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic can didate, received 184 uncontested electoral votes, and Ruther ford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, 163. The states of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina, with a total of 2 2 votes, each sent in two sets of electoral ballots, and from each of these states except Oregon one set gave the whole vote to Tilden and the other gave the whole vote to Hayes. From Oregon one set of ballots gave the three electoral votes of the state to Hayes ; the other gave two votes to Hayes and one to Tilden.
The manner of selecting the electors is left to State law ; the electoral ballots are sent to the president of the Senate, who "shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." Concerning this provision many questions of vital importance arose in 1876: Might Congress or an officer of the Senate go behind a State's certificate and review the acts of its certifying officials? Might it go further and examine into the choice of electors? And if it had such powers, might it delegate them to a commission? The fact, however, that the Senate in 1876 was controlled by the Republicans and the House by the Democrats, lessened the chances of any harmonious settlement of these questions by Congress. In consequence, the country seemed on the verge of civil war. Hence it was that by an act of Jan. 29, 1877, Con gress created the Electoral Commission to pass upon the con tested returns, giving it "the same powers, if any" possessed by itself in the premises, the decisions to stand unless rejected by the two houses separately.
The commission was composed of five Democratic and five Republican Congressman, two justices of the Supreme Court of either party, and a fifth justice chosen by these four. As its members of the commission the Senate chose G. F. Edmunds of Vermont, O. P. Morton of Indiana and F. T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey (Republicans) ; and A. G. Thurman of Ohio and T. F. Bayard of Delaware (Democrats). The House chose Henry B. Payne of Ohio, Eppa Hunton of Virginia and Josiah G. Abbott of Massachusetts (Democrats) ; and George F. Hoar of Massa chusetts and James A. Garfield of Ohio (Republicans). The Re publican judges were William Strong and Samuel F. Miller; the Democratic, Nathan Clifford and Stephen J. Field. These four chose as the fifteenth member Justice Joseph P. Bradley, a Repub lican but the only member not selected avowedly as a partisan. It had been expected that the fifth member from the Supreme Court would be David Davis, an independent, but he was elected to the Senate by the Illinois legislature and declined to serve on the commission.
It was evident, however, that Hayes could secure the 185 votes necessary to elect only by gaining every disputed ballot. As the choice of Republican electors in Louisiana had been accom plished by the rejection of several thousand Democratic votes by a Republican returning board, the Democrats insisted that the commission should go behind the returns and correct in justice; the Republicans declared that the State's action was final, and that to go behind the returns would be invading its sovereignty. When this matter came before the commission it virtually accepted the Republican contention. By the votes of the eight Republicans to the seven Democrats, the electoral votes of Florida and Louisiana were given to Hayes. The commission unanimously awarded the South Carolina and Oregon votes to Hayes.
The strictly partisan votes of the commission and the adoption by prominent Democrats and Republicans, both within and with out the commission, of an attitude toward States-rights princi ples quite inconsistent with party tenets and tendencies, have given rise to much severe criticism. The Democrats and the country, however, quietly accepted the decision. The judgments underlying it were two: (I) That Congress rightly claimed the power to settle such contests within the limits set ; that, as Justice Miller said regarding these limits, the people had never at any time intended to give to Congress the power, by naming the electors, to "decide who are to be the president and vice president of the United States." There is no doubt that Tilden was morally entitled to the presidency, and the correction of the Louisiana frauds would certainly have given satisfaction then and increasing satisfaction later, in the retrospect, to the country. The commission might probably have corrected the frauds without exceeding its Con gressional precedents. Nevertheless, the principles of its de cisions must be recognized by all save ultra-nationalists as truer to the spirit of the Constitution and promising more for the good of the country than would have been the principles necessary to a contrary decision.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. 7, Bibliography.-J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. 7, covering 1872-1877 (1906) ; P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden dis puted Presidential Election of 1876 (Cleveland, 1906) ; J. W. Burgess, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 3 (1888), pp. 633-53, "The Law of the Electoral Count" ; and for the sources, Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 5 (vol. I) , and House Miscel. Doc. No. 13 (vol. 2) , 44 Congress, 2 Session—Count of the Electoral Vote. Proceedings of Congress and Electoral Commission,—the latter identical with Con gressional Record, vol. 5, pt. 4, 44 Cong., 2 Session ; also about twenty volumes of evidence on the State elections involved. The volume called The Presidential Counts (1877) was compiled by Mr. Tilden and his secretary. See also P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Election (Indianapolis, new ed., 1927) ; and H. R. Bruce, American Parties and Politics (1927).