Electoral Commission

A commission created by an act of congress of January 29, LS77, to decide certain questions arising out of the presidential election of Noand Tilden and Hendricks of the democratic party. The election was very close, and depended on the electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. It was feared that there would be much trouble at the final counting of the votes by the president of the senate according to the plan laid down in the Constitution. The republicans had a majority in the senate and the democrats had a majority in the house of representatives. A resolution was adopted by congress for the appointment of a committee of seven menders by the speaker to act in conjunction with a similar committee that might be appointed by the senate to prepare a report and plan for the creation of a tribunal to count the electoral votes whose authority no one would question and whose decision all would accept as final. The joint committee thus appointed reported a bill providing for a commission of fifteen members, to be composed of five members from each house appointed viva voce, with four associate justices of the supreme court, which latter would select another of the justices of the supreme court, the entire commission to be presided over by the associate justice longest in commission. This body has since been known as the Electoral Commission. Justices Clifford, Miller, Field, and Strong were named in the act as members, and they chose as the fifth justice Justice Bradley. The other members were Senators Bayard, Edmunds, Frelinghuysen, Morton, and Thurman, and Representatives Abbott, Garfield, Hoar, Hunton, and Payne. The commission began its sessions February 1, and completed its work March 2, 1877. Various questions came before it in regard to the electoral vote of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, as to which of two state returns was valid, and as to the eligibility of certain of the presidential electors. The most important decision of the commission and the one which has caused most comment and criticism was to the effect that the regular returns from a state must be accepted, and that the commission had no power to go behind these returns; or, as the commission itself expressed it, "that it is not competent under the Constitution and the law as. it existed at the date of the passage of said act, to go into evidence aliunde the papers opened by the president of the senate in the presence of the two houses, to prove that other persons than those regularly certified to by the governor of the state of Florida in and according to the determination and declaration of their appointment by the Board of State Canvassers of said state prior to the time required for the performance of their duties, had been appointed electors, or by counter-proof to show that they had not, and that all proceedings of ing of the votes of the electors on the prescribed day are inadmissible for any such purpose." 2 Curtis, Const. Hist, of U. S., 419. The result of the controversy over the election of 1876 was the passage, after long and earnest consideration, of the Act of Feb. 3, 1SS7, to regulate the counting of the electoral votes for president and vice-president. U. S. R. S. 1 Supp. 525. See Presidential Electors; President of the United States; 38 Am. L. Rev. 1.