- Gore refuses to accept vote recount
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- Al Gore would not normally pay much heed to the example
of Richard Nixon when mulling his next course of action.
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- But yesterday the Vice-President was considering 1960,
when Mr Nixon passed up the chance to take legal action to challenge the
result of the closest race of the 20th century.
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- John F Kennedy won the popular vote by a margin of just
0.17 of a percentage point but the electoral college went to him by 303-219
after the big blocs of Illinois and Texas fell to him at the last minute.
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- Fraud was suspected, particularly in Illinois, where
Richard Daley, the controversial Democratic mayor of Chicago, was alleged
to have stuffed ballot boxes with Kennedy votes. Yesterday, Mayor Daley's
son William, now chairman of the Gore campaign, was leading the challenge
to the Florida vote.
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- Mr Nixon wrote in 1978: "There is no doubt that
there was substantial vote fraud in the 1960 election. Texas and Illinois
produced the most damaging as well as the most flagrant examples."
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- But ignoring calls from Dwight D Eisenhower, the retiring
president, who wanted him to seek an unprecedented presidential recount,
Mr Nixon accepted the result and conceded the election to John F Kennedy
at 12.45pm on the day after votes were cast.
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- He told a reporter at the time: "Our country cannot
afford the agony of a constitutional crisis and I damn well will not be
a party to creating one just to become president or anything else."
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- In his book, Mr Nixon explained his thinking: "A
presidential recount would require up to half a year, during which time
the legitimacy of Kennedy's election would be in question. The effect could
be devastating to America's foreign relations. I could not subject the
country to such a situation."
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- More than one of Mr Nixon's biographers have suggested
that his altruism did not entirely explain his motivation in not challenging
the result, as he admitted himself in the book.
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- "And what if I demanded a recount and it turned
out that despite the vote fraud Kennedy had still won? Charges of 'sore
loser' would follow me through history and preclude any possibility of
a further political career." In the event, Mr Nixon did return to
politics after eight years in the wilderness and became president in 1968.
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- 'Nixon's Graceful Exit' Said A Fallacy
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- From Rob Brezsny
- 11-14-00
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- It's a Myth That Nixon Acquiesced in 1960 http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20001110/t000107675.html
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- Was Nixon Robbed? (October 16 article) http://slate.msn.com/HistoryLesson/00-10-16/HistoryLesson.asp
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- Senate History Interview (1987): The "Good Old Days"
Were Not http://www.senate.gov/learning/learn_history_oralhist_shuman4.html
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- "Illinois Republicans Lose", New York Times,
Dec. 13, 1960, p. 23.
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