George
W. Bush & Rutherford B. Hayes:
Presidents
in Contrast, Yet the Same.
I
know people are tired of hearing this, but I just wanted to put new light
on the subject. The two administrations look so similar yet they are so
different. We have gone 135 years and nothing has changed.
I
consider myself an independent voter; I vote for the man not the party; so
I have no vested interest in which party wins. I voted for Dick Gregory
four times. I have voted this way as protest to the current American
two-party system. We need more parties to get more ideas and platforms so
the American people can really have a choice.
In
1876, President Hayes had to govern a country still mourning a loss. Only
ten years after the American Civil War he had to help heal a country, and
he had to do it with a tainted election. President Bush, likewise, has to
heal a divided country, after another tainted election.
Now
that the smoke has cleared and the votes are all counted (or supposedly
counted) it seems to this historian that history is repeating itself.
During the 1876-1877 election of our 19th president of the United States, Rutherford
B. Hayes, the votes had to be counted and
recounted
just like last year; after all the totals were in, the battle began,
just like last year.
The
Republicans were the liberals back then and the Democrats were the
conservatives. Most of the powerful Republicans came from the north and
northwest states; most of the powerful Democrats came from the south and
southeast. There was a regional war going on at the time; the death of
Abraham Lincoln still haunted the country, and the lack of
creative leadership from both President Johnson and President Grant made
this 1876-77 election possible.
The
battle lines were very clear: the Democratic reconstructionists wanted
Black reform stopped and wanted to keep Blacks "in line" at all points.
Reformists, on the other hand, wanted to keep Lincoln’s plan in place and grant full
freedom to all citizens of the United States.
The
Democrats put a little-known senator from Florida, Samuel Tilden, on the
ticket. Senator Tilden won the popular vote while Hayes won the electoral
vote (does this sound familiar?)
Senator
Samuel Tilden contested votes from three southern states, just as Vice
President Gore contested votes from three Florida counties. In both cases
the state of Florida became the vocal point of conflict in both elections.
Both elections became lightning rods in Florida for voting reform.
President
Hayes tried to keep the peace in the North and his party refused to go
along with any concessions. This created a hard, nasty, and protracted
battle of almost four months. Southern Democrats secretly guaranteed Hayes
the White House, if, and only if, he would end Reconstruction and pull the
federal troops out of all southern towns. In return, these same southern
states would protect their southern Black elected officials and citizens
with their local law enforcement.
After
the federal troops left the South, the promise rang hollow. Blacks all
over the South were pushed, shoved, killed, and bribed out of office,
while President
Hayes’s government stood and watched, holding true to the promise he
made to get into the White House.
In
the South, more African Americans held office than at any other time in
American history, including today. Under the guidance of President Johnson
and President Grant, Black Civil Rights during those eight years had been
on the correct path of full equality for its newly freed citizens.
These new events stopped under the guidance of the newly elected President
Hayes.
President
Hayes would later write that “There had been a bad seed against the
ballot box and Americans were entitled to decide the majority of the
popular vote.”
After
the Tilden-Hayes election, the voting committee in Washington, D.C., made
it mandatory for all states to count all of their Electoral College votes
twice before any election would become official. This reform still stands
to this day. But these events set back Black Civil rights until the mid
1960s, under President Lyndon B. Johnson and President John F. Kennedy.
The election of 2000 seems to have been a wake-up call to all African Americans. The questions we all should be asking throughout George W Bush’s reign in the White House are these:
1)
What role did his father, former President, and CIA Director George Hubert
Walker Bush, have in this election?
2)
What role did his younger brother and Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, have in
this election?
3)
Why could Florida State Secretary Harris not wait another week to certify
the Florida vote?
4)
Who designed the butterfly ballot with the small print that was so confusing
to seniors and people with mobility problems?
5)
Will President George W. Bush, like President Hayes, stop all Civil Rights
progress?
6)
Had a back door deal been made between Bush and Gore, like Tilden and
Hayes 130 years earlier? Only time will tell.
We will know most of these answers after the George W. Bush internship at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but as American citizens we have the right and responsibility to ask these questions, we deserve the correct answers to them.
The
2000 election spurred a call for reform of the process to ensure a
reasonable level of uniformity in ballot design throughout the United States—that was something that needed to be done
years ago.
Just
like Senator Tilden, Vice President Gore started a 4-week protracted
battle of votes in the state of Florida.
Gore wanted to make sure everybody’s vote counted. But he did not
go far enough. People were worried about dimpled and worn chads. Worried
about how many votes were in the ballot box, instead of who did not get a
chance to vote and why?
People
were concerned about missing absentee ballots, polling workers taking
ballots home for the weekend, and polling workers filling out ballots for
Florida workers, instead of focusing on why African American Males were being targeted
by Florida State Troopers, and instead of investigating why polling places
were changed on Election Day, preventing many disabled people from voting.
The
disabled citizens were given no alternative voting place, thus another
group was disenfranchised in this year’s election. The State of Florida
was in direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. On that
point alone Vice President Gore could and should have demanded a revote.
The
New York Times reported that Florida used a company called
ChoicePoint to check on the backgrounds of voters who might have been charged
with a crime--in Florida, like most other states, you cannot vote if
you’re a felon. ChoicePoint sent out a list of names of ineligible
voters to each Florida county. There was something very wrong with that
list. It was riddled with mistakes. People were on it who only had
misdemeanors and citations. It was a list that should have never been
printed. These citizens were disenfranchised. Where was Vice President
Gore on these issues, on the access issue?
When the American political machine takes away the given right to vote, we are on the road to manipulation, deceit, and destruction. We are on the way to having our basic right to freedom being taken away.
Just
like the Tilden-Hayes election, we have just repeated history again, so every
American should vote in this November election. Yes, every vote counts.
Gary N. Gray
