Stolen? Kennedy election is still debated to this day

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Sixty years ago on Nov. 8, John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States. The Democrat went up against then-Vice President Richard Nixon and the outcome, to this day, is still debated by historians. Some still say it was “stolen fair and square” by ballot box stuffing in key states.

In the Electoral College, Kennedy won 303 to 219. But in the popular vote, with 69 million votes counted, Kennedy only had a 113,000 lead — a margin of .2 percent. In the end, it came down to 49.7 percent for Kennedy, and 49.6 percent for Nixon — a razor-thin win.

The drama had centered on Illinois and Texas. Texas, home of vice presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson, chose the Kennedy-Johnson ticket by a 46,000 vote margin. In Illinois, Kennedy won by just 9,000 votes.

Those two states, had Nixon won them, would have been enough to defeat Kennedy in the Electoral College by two votes.

Corruption was widespread in Illinois elections. In Chicago, many to this day believe Mayor Richard “The Boss” Daley and his union operators stuffed the ballot boxes of Cook County. Downstate, Democrats accused Republicans of the same voter fraud.

In Texas, Johnson was already well-rehearsed in election rigging in his Senate races all the way back to 1948, although coming up with 46,000 fraudulent votes statewide would be quite a feat in 1960.

On Nov. 9, 1960, Nixon officially conceded the election. Kennedy declared victory, and the transition of power began.

The Republican Party pursued recounts in 11 states, but soon abandoned the effort after losing in court. The brand new State of Hawaii flipped during those recounts from Nixon to Kennedy. California, which was forecasted for a Kennedy win, went to Nixon after all the absentee ballots were counted.

Nixon did not encourage Republicans to regard the election as stolen, although he was known to tell friends privately, that “We won, but it was stolen from us.” Also privately, he encouraged his key surrogates to pursue recounts.

In public, Nixon said, “Our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.” Too much time has passed for historians to know with certain if he was right about it being stolen, but within three years, Johnson would become president after Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas while riding in a motorcade.

16 COMMENTS

  1. So, did Nixon order the assassination, as retribution? He was in Dallas that day, and that’s a fact. But, so was Johnson. The two guys who had the most to gain. One settling an old score, and the other, devising a new score. Facts are hard things to ignore.
    Maybe Nixon and Johnson had a secret pact. Johnson cleared the way for Nixon in 1968. Think about it!

    • Nixon was in Dallas on 11/22/63 attending a Coca Cola Board meeting. Johnson had just drank a coke before he got in the VP limo, three cars behind Kennedy. Oswald was sipping a Coke in the break room on the 1st Floor of the SBD about 1 minute after the assassination. Hard to figure out if this could be counted into a new conspiracy theory, but we do know that things go better with Coke.

    • I doubt Nixon ordered the assassination. More than likely Johnson was behind it. Kennedy didn’t like or trust Johnson and only put him on the ticket to get Texas. But yeah Johnson screwed up the war and made a fool of himself, and then later announced that he would no longer run nor accept a nomination for another term. kind of a strange political strategy wouldn’t you say?

      • Greg, it’s hard to imagine anything stranger than 2020. We just elected a hair-sniffing, old geezer who doesn’t know the difference between the button on his tv remote and the button on the nuclear launch code that says “push to change temperature.”

        • I hear you. Apparently finding the cure to a pandemic and record time, and all-time record GDP, black and Latino unemployment at all time lows, the mid East calming down because of our influence, none of that matters. Now they have the gall to put a skit on Saturday night live that resembles Trump leaving the White House like the OJ Simpson bronco Chase. The socialist / communist s have no class as well as no brains, they never did.

      • Oh you can say Nixon got his but he didn’t do anything wrong other than obstruct Justice trying to cover for his people. It’s not like he was the one in there in the Watergate hotel holding the flashlight. Not unlike Bobby Kennedy who may have been holding the syringe it gave Marilyn Monroe her fatal overdose. Besides, Nixon didn’t do near the crimes that Clinton did as well as Obama. They were just better at covering it up. Nixon was a great man you should read up on his trip to China. Being connected with Eisenhower as his vice president, during the time of majestic 12, he may be the last president to actually know where the Roswell aliens are. Read the story about when Nixon gets his golf buddy Jackie Gleason and take him down to homestead air Base. Gleason was never the same after that.

  2. The overall pattern is disturbing, Trump led in multiple states only as jurisdictions controlled by the Left kept counting, and counting, and counting ballots of indeterminate origin until Biden was able to lead. We need to require that vote totals, once they are initially stated, must be final in 48 hours. Otherwise, early “leads” will just become targets to be reached. Vito says: “Bennie, we are down 9000 votes overall!”. Bennie responds: “That is all I need to know…”

    • That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard comrade. What we need is Federal Marshals sitting in all the counting places keeping people from boarding up windows, and water line breaks from happening that aren’t remotely close to where the action is, and election officials following the laws instead of making up their own.

  3. Even the New York Times talks about Johnson’s voter fraud.

    nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost.html

    • The socialist insecurities led to a must-win situation where they had to cheat or go home after Trump wins re-election and eat a bullet. They don’t care about the GDP. the fact that Pfizer announced today that they had the shot on election day but chose to withhold that information, that our border wall is growing by 10 mi a week, and mostly all the bad guys in the world are held at Bay so that snowflakes can sleep it night. Basically everything that Trump did that was right for the country they didn’t give a crap about because they’re greedy, self-centered, egomaniacs and have no place in modern society.

  4. I’m so happy the Republicans lost. Now my arthritis will get better and my being overweight will be a thing of the past. This week I got an extra 2 miles to the gallon. Thanks God for the Biden Harris administration.

    • That’s some funny stuff right there. Your arthritis will get better because like Oregon and Washington you can now legally do heroin and crack and all kinds of stuff so I bet you’ll probably be numb to just about any pain. Yes overweight is going to be a thing of the past for you. Hope you like being in the soup and the bread line. People from the 1930s said that that was a hell of a diet good way to lose weight. Don’t worry about miles per gallon. In 3 years it will be illegal tone cars that burn carbon fuels. And if you do there will be a steep tax levied on you like Obama did if you didn’t buy his insurance then you had to pay more income tax that sort of thing. So I’m glad you’re happy but don’t kid yourself about Biden being on the ticket. That was just for the Democrats to have somebody to vote for. They wasn’t going to vote for a socialist candidate alone.

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