(Page 3 of 46) - Partisanship and Contested Election Cases in the House of Representatives, 1789-2002 authored by Jenkins, Jeffery.

In addition to generating a complete accounting of all contested election cases in the

House from the 1st through 107th Congresses (1789-2002), I also begin to examine the

distribution of cases across time as well as the determinants of decision making. In doing so, I

investigate the chief claim regarding contested elections that appears in the historical literature:

that partisanship has been a (and sometimes the) guiding force in determining outcomes in

contested election cases. The evidence mustered to support this claim is often sketchy. Some

evidence, which is considered quite compelling, is rather anecdotal in nature. For example, the

following two quotations, the first from Henry L. Dawes, the Chairman of the Committee on

Elections at the time, and Thomas B. Reed, the Speaker of the House at the time, are often cited

when making the claim for partisanship:

All traces of a judicial character in these proceedings are fast fading away, and the
precedents are losing all sanction. Each case is coming to be a mere partisan
struggle. At the dictate of party majorities the committee must fight, not follow,
the law and the evidence; and he will best meet the expectations of his
appointment who can put on the record the best reasons for the course thus
pursued. This tendency is so manifest to those in a situation to observe, that it has
ceased to be questioned, and is now but little resisted. There is no tyranny like
that of majorities, and efforts in the past to resist them, and to hold the judgments
of the Committee of Elections up above the dirty pool of party politics, have
encountered such bitter and unsparing denunciations, and such rebuke for treason
to party fealty, that they are not likely often to be repeated (Dawes 1870, p. 64).

The decision of election cases invariably increases the majority of the party which
organizes the House, and which herefore appoints the majority of the Committee
on Elections (Reed 1890, p. 114).

Other evidence, collected by Rammelkamp (1905), Alexander (1916), Barnett (1939), and

Dempsey (1956), is based on results from the contested-election cases themselves; these studies

Dawes presented this paper at the general meeting of the Social Science Association, held in New York City, on

October 26, 1869.

Reed’s article was published in the July 1890 issue of the North American Review. To strengthen his point about

the role of partisanship, Reed states: “Probably there is not a single instance on record where the minority was
increased by the decision of contested cases” (114). This was not true. In fact, prior to Reed’s statement, sitting
majority party members had been unseated by minority party claimants on ten separate occasions: once each in
1794, 1821, 1822, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1881, 1883, and 1885.