I’ve received a number of requests since 2000 with regard to election map posters and other such election results paraphernalia. To this end (and to help to support the cost of the continuing increase in site traffic) I have recently signed up for a web store at cafepress.com. The Atlas store is located at http://www.cafeshops.com/uselectionatlas.

I’m in the early stages of developing this and will add more items. Please let me know if there are particular items that you have an interest in! And, by the way, one of the items to be added will be the long-awaited CD-ROM version of the Atlas!

I have received several emails with regard to this article from the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal. The article makes an argument that JFK lost the popular vote to Richard Nixon in the election of 1960. The basis of the argument is not about the alleged fraud in Illinois and Texas, but rather that it is not correct to assign all of the popular votes for Alabama’s Presidential Electors to Kennedy because six of the eleven electors were officially not pledged to Kennedy. The facts of the article are mostly correct – Alabama held a primary to determine which Democratic Presidential Electors would appear on the ballot. The result, was a ticket with split loyalties – six of the eleven Electors were “unpledged” and the remaining five were “loyalists” pledged to Kennedy (this was a different situation than in Louisiana and Mississippi – where the Unpledged Electors were on a separate ticket than the Democratic Electors).

One inaccuracy in the article is the statement that the Nixon “Slate” defeated the Democratic “Slate” 324,050 to 237,981. In fact, the citizens did not vote for the electors as a slate, but actually cast eleven ballots for not more than eleven electors (if someone wanted to vote for the six unpledged electors and five of the Republican ones, they could. If they wanted to vote for just one elector, they could). The result of this voting method produced varying totals; the difference between the highest and lowest electors is about seven thousand votes (see table below).

Alabama Election Results – 1960

Summary:
Unpledged: Max: 324,050; Mean: 322,471; 6/11: 175,893
Democratic: Max: 318,303; Mean: 317,580; 5/11: 144,355
Republican: Max: 237,981; Mean: 235,345; 11/11: 235,345

So, the question is, how does one fairly allocate the popular vote in Alabama in 1960? Typically, most sources that I have seen give Kennedy 324,050, the highest total of the eleven electors. However, the elector whom received that total, Frank M. Dixon, was one of those not pledged to Kennedy. The highest vote total for a Kennedy elector was 318,303 (C.G. Allen). There are several ways that the results can be allocated with math (mean, median, 5/11 for Kennedy, 6/11 for Unpledged, etc.). These would all result in different totals and, from some perspective, be correct (its the “all-of-the-above” choice). The real total would be to determine the intent of the voters. When a citizen cast his/her ballot for each elector, was that citizen choosing Kennedy or Not Kennedy (some conservative democrat not yet named). Unfortunately, we can never know.

The point I would like to make about the national popular vote, is that it does not matter. The “game” isn’t played that way. As for an analogy, I haven’t seen anybody up in arms and complaining that the Yankees rightfully won the World Series in 2003 because they scored more runs (21 – 17). The Marlins won the most games… and are therefore the winners. The US Presidential Election is about winning electoral votes (which, today, translates to winning the popular vote within each state – with exception of Maine and Nebraska where a candidate’s electors are chosen by a plurality of the popular vote within each congressional district). The players understand this and execute their game plans accordingly. If the national popular vote was the actual metric by which they would win, then the campaigns would execute their plans very differently than they do today – leading to a different outcome.