the Electoral Revolution
The Electoral College met on the Monday, December 16, 1968, each delegation in their own State Capital, to cast their votes for the President of the United States of America. Media attentions were high as many claimed that the Electors were preparing to solve the crisis that had erupted with their own votes, symbolic as they might be. In particular, in the five Southern States that had voted for Wallace, the electors had been hounded as to whether they had been instructed to vote for someone other than the victorious candidate. None of them agreed to comment, only exacerbating the curiosity of the nation.
In many states, protestors assembled around the State Houses as the Electors met, especially in the South as thousands of African Americans stood in protest against Wallace; police dispersal of those protests was brutal in some occasions, further promoting the escalation of violence.
It was in such setting that the twenty-nine Electors of the great State of Pennsylvania would meet, in the State House in Harrisburg, and, through several machinations, make what later became known to the public as the Minehart-Michener Conspiracy or, in a more sensationalist but also more popular term, the Electoral Revolution of ’68.
The Revolution had nothing of violent, in fact, it wasn't even loud, and happened quietly, almost in whispers, in the empty halls of the State House; it was kickstarted by the thoughts on the election of Pennsylvanian James A. Michener, a veteran of the War in the Pacific and prolific author who, in recent years, had dabbled in politics, serving in Democratic local committees, running unsuccessfully for the House (to his regret), serving as campaign manager for Senator Joseph S. Clark and Secretary for the Pennsylvanian Constitutional Convention. He was also a popular writer, with a Pulitzer Prize and a Broadway adaptation of his first book,
Tales of the South Pacific. His writing took him to research many faraway lands, from Hawaii to the Caribbean to the Iberian Peninsula, but, in late 1968, his thoughts stuck home, as he contemplated on the disastrous result of the national election.
He had been horrified at the prospect that Wallace had been able to assert himself as king-maker and that his supporters had managed to keep the nation hostage until their demands were met. As he had pondered during the election, upon the results he firmly decided to do his best efforts to keep any deal with Wallace from working out and reach an honorable conclusion to the election.
In this, he was helped by an unexpected ally; Thomas Z. Minehart, Democratic Chairman of Pennsylvania, had began assembling the corps of electors, starting with him and promoting a change in paradigm from what they had been used to – rather than vote for the victor in the State, they would bind together and vote for Nixon – he was only ten votes away from winning and that could be accomplished by turning the votes of Pennsylvania alone.
This surprised Michener, who knew Minehart as an ardent Democrat who felt for every loss in his State, a pain they had shared after the unsuccessful campaigns Michener had been a part of. Nevertheless, with his support, and of his friend and fellow Democrat leader Matt Gouger, they planned to bring enough Democrats to the fold.
As Minehart still had nine electors to select, after some had needed to be replaced, he had managed to bring nine citizens who supported his plan; although many of those who remained were unwilling to budge, mostly for ethical reasons, three more were persuaded to join them, giving the group a full 13 electors prepared to go faithless; a rather ominous number, to be sure, but nevertheless one that gave enough of a margin for their goal to be accomplished.
And so it was that, for the general surprise of the nation that day, the news erupted not from the South, to where the media had flocked, but from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as it came to be known that, rather than the Wallace electors, it had been a group of 13 Democrats from Pennsylvania, dubbed the ‘Thirteen Faithless’, who gave Richard Nixon a majority in the Electoral College.
The news were followed by both celebrations and outrage; Nixon made a speech, thanking that he had been entrusted by the voters, without mentioning the Electoral Revolution, as it was beginning to be called, while Humphrey refused to comment or make a concession speech (although he would later do so) and Wallace made a furious speech denouncing the Thirteen Faithless as conspirers against the United States and calling for Congress to invalidate the results of the election, coming close to calling for the thirteen of them to be hanged (or at least it was clear his thoughts ran that way).
Many celebrated, however, especially among the African American communities. Most of them hadn’t voted for Nixon, that was true, but they nevertheless preferred his victory unattached to Wallace than to know the segregationists held power over the Presidency.
Legal discussions also ensued, frantically, over Washington, as many claimed the conspiracy had been illegal, and harassing the Thirteen Faithless, and Minehart too as he admitted his part in the conspiracy, remaining unapologetic. Despite that, he resigned from his Chairmanship late in December, after various pressures from the Democratic Party that, as public opinion varied swiftly between supporting and criticising the move, preferred to cut their ties to the Conspiracy, just to play it safe.
As the days passed, however, the nation began to accept the results and Nixon was indeed the President-Elect. In January, Congress dully confirmed the election, even if there were raised objections to accepting the ballots from Pennsylvania, but those were quickly dismissed by Humphrey himself who, in his position as Vice President, presided over the counting of the votes.
On January 20, 1969, Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States of America, with a less than solid mandate, but nonetheless he assumed office, prepared to carry the position with as much capacity as he had.
The fallout of the Electoral Revolution, however, was still felt as, after such a troubling election, more voters called for a swift reform of the electoral method to ensure that nothing of the sort ever happened again; the year to follow would also see the investigations by Congress of what exactly had happened in Harrisburg that day, and if truly there was no criminal component to the matter.