Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hello, friends, loyal listeners and bears everywhere. Welcome to the Sound Barrier, the official podcast in Worthy State Community College. My name is Tom Wilson. I'm your host for this episode. We're coming at you today from Basler Library here on the Blount campus. Thanks to our friend Mr. Chris Demas, the dean of the library here in Northeast.
In this episode, we're going to talk about elections. Yes, I guess you've heard in the papers that there's a big one coming up. Pretty contentious from what I, from what I'm reading. We have the great pleasure of being joined today by Professor David Toy. He's a professor in the department of History here at Northeast State, and he was going to talk to us about elections throughout American history and kind of how they've shaped us and our culture. David, welcome and thank you so much for being on the podcast.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Now, if you want to start, Alice, talk a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came, how you came here to Northeast State.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Well, I earned my PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, back in the ancient times. In 1991, I taught a one year position at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. And then a tenor track position opened up here at northeast state in 1993, and I've been teaching here ever since.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Excellent. What, what, what kind of piqued your interest in history? Was it always history growing up or, or what. What interested you the most in it?
[00:01:34] Speaker B: I, I suppose, you know, both my, my parents were, were school teachers and we always had lots of books at our house growing up. And I just started picking up reading history books since grade school. And I've always been fascinated by history and the stories of history and twists and turns, and this just always been my passion.
I can't remember a time when I didn't love history. So it was my undergraduate major and went on to get my PhD.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Oh, awesome. Awesome.
What's your favorite? I guess era of history, be it American or world?
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Well, my passion and my favorite part of history is ancient history, Ancient Greece and Rome and the ancient near east, but especially ancient Greece. And I did my dissertation on an ancient Greek historian, so that's my specialty. And my specialty was ancient history and medieval history. But as a community college professor, you teach general education courses, and the two in history, the two general education courses you teach are American history and world history. So in my tenure here at Northeast Dade, I've been teaching those, those, those courses.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: American history, when we think about it, is kind of brief compared to overall world history. How how do people kind of view American history? And because I know a lot of people think history is just memorizing a bunch of dates and names. And how is that not that that really isn't history? How do people like look at American history and how do you try to teach people to learn it and what it really means?
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Well, I really try to stress when I teach American history that to learn about the history of your government is. If we live in a democracy, it's important to know how our government works and know how it's operated in the past. Because in a democracy, we have the ability to make a difference through our votes. And we need to know our history so that we can elect leaders who will take us in a direction that will be best for our country. So I always stress that in all my classes when I teach American history in particular. But one thing I try always to try to stress is the fact that our nation owes so much to our immediate colonizer. We have a lot of our history is rooted in the British Isles. But also, since we're a nation of immigrants, sometimes it's really exciting when students see to what extent our history has been shaped by so many diverse cultures, you know, whether it be from Mexico or Spain or from East Asia, and how the role that immigrants have played in shaping the history of our nation down through the ages.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: More truly, truly talking about democracy, when you go into Greek history and how those governments work and how I guess a form of democracy you would, you would say in certain elements of the Greek states back then, how do, what ideas do you see there that you found in their history that are kind of been extrapolated into American history today, if at all?
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Well, interesting enough, the, our people who wrote our constitution actually saw Greek direct democracy as something to avoid.
They saw lessons to be learned. For it's always been said that the first great democracy had executed the first great ethical philosopher, Socrates.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Interesting. Okay, yes.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: So actually our so called founding fathers, their focus was usually on Rome and having a constitution that was a republic as opposed to a democracy.
So that's something I mentioned to the students that one of the things that our founding fathers did not want to see our country become was a democracy. They wanted to have what they would refer to, the Greeks would refer to as a mixed system that was both aristocratic and democratic in form.
And that was how the Roman republic was viewed. And they wanted to implement such a system here for our country.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: And how, how effectively has that been held together over, over time, do you think? How, how much have we adhered to it. And how much has it kind of been a work in progress of keeping the republic as opposed to a democracy?
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Well, we. What we've seen in our history is that over time our attitudes have changed. You can especially see, you know, in a hurley. In the early Republic, there was this belief in a natural aristocracy that there would be certain people who would rise up and be leaders and lead the republic. But by the time you get to the early 19th century, there was more of a faith in democracy. Democracy became a positive. Good word, really, in the. By the time it's so usually associated with the presidency of Andrew Jackson. So that would be in the 1820s and 1830s. So there was a really a big shift and direction change in America in the early 19th century where Americans came to. Really came to see democracy as a positive.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: A positive thing is, I know a popular saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Is that true or is that just kind of a fun saying to throw out on Pinterest or where.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: I think in some ways it's true. I don't think that history ever perfectly repeats itself. I don't think. I think that every situation is different. But what you do see are definite patterns. There are definitely, certainly there are parallels. So you can see that over the course of time that a certain country or a certain leader will face a situation that has a parallel earlier in history. And I think that those patterns exist because of the nature of human beings. You know, we're all human beings, and our nature, our human nature really hasn't changed all that much down through the ages. And so I think that human beings facing similar situations often make similar choices. So I think that in that way you can see that over the course of time, history does kind of echo. There are echoes. Maybe the echo would be a better word than repeat.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Okay, so now, as I kind of mentioned here before, we have a very contentious presidential election coming up here next month. But I'm sure there have been. There have been other presidential elections in the past that have been pretty much been a lot of. A lot of tension, a lot of tension around the country.
Can you recall some of those or how those kind of came about?
[00:08:36] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, there. There has been numerous elections that have been contentious. Very probably the first one was in 1800 when you had a situation where no candidate had. You had two candidates for the same electoral college votes, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, and they went to the House of Representatives. That was a very contentious election. And then 1824, another case where no candidate had a majority of the electoral college vote. So it went to the House of Representatives and you actually had the loser declaring that the election had been rigged by the House of Representatives and called it the corrupt bargain. Andrew Jackson would actually use that election, the fact that he felt that he had been cheated out of the presidency to go on to win by landslide in 1828. And then the list goes on. 1860 election, of course, set the stage for the succession of the Southern states in the Civil War.
The election of 1876 was another election where they went to the House of Representatives. And that was a very contentious election where you had certain states, three states having a different slate of electors, so you didn't even have the same electors. You had again, Congress had to intervene on that one.
1912 was another case where you had a situation where you had a three man race, which was unusual.
Theodore Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination, so he formed his own party, the progressive Bull moves party.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: So he had a three way race. And in that election, no one candidate even had a majority of the popular vote. I mean, the.
Wilson won the presidency with 42% of the popular vote.
And. And then probably the next big, most contentious election, of course, more recent in history was 2000.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Oh yes.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Where it was you one of the closest elections in the popular vote and in the electoral vote. And it came down to Florida. And the Supreme Court intervened after the Democratic candidate, Al Gore challenged the results of the Florida election. And the Supreme Court halted a manual recount which may or may not have won the election for Gore, we will never know. But that having the Supreme Court stop the manual vote, that made that election very contentious and really divided the country. So that was probably the last election that was very close and contentious.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a lot of people remember that one. A good number of people remember that time in history and all that.
Now, from these kind of contentious elections, like you mentioned in 1860, Andrew Jackson's. He won on the landslide in 1828, as you mentioned. 1828, yes.
After such an election like this, did the country go into a very different path or did it stay mostly the same, just kind of a slight change in the political or cultural climate of the. In the entire nation?
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Well, there were some. The election. I would like to focus on two different elections, 1800 and 1860, because they had very different results, but they were very huge impact on the country. In 1800 when the country was divided, we had at that time the two parties were the Federalists and the Republicans and Thomas Jefferson as we mentioned, won in a contentious election.
But interesting enough was that this is actually, if you. The musical Hamilton is. This has been focused on because of this. But Alexander Hamilton was a leader of the Federalist Party, and in that, when it went to the House of Representatives, he actually urged his Federal Federalists to vote for Thomas Jefferson, who belonged to the other party, on the grounds that Mr. Burr was corrupt, morally corrupt and politically corrupt, and that even though he disagreed with Thomas Jefferson, he felt that he was a better person and would be better for the country. So he put aside partisan affiliation for the good of the country. And then after the election, Jefferson made a very strong effort to reach out to Federalists and to promote national unity. And eventually, when it was all said and done, the Federalist Party kind of collapsed as a party, and the country kind of rallied around the Democratic Republican, or that party would eventually become the only party in the years that followed. So that was a very epic changing election. And then in 1860, is kind of very different election in the sense that you had one part of the country that did not even accept the results of the election whatsoever.
In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln, he only won about 42%, I believe, of the popular vote. But he won the Electoral College because he won in states that had larger populations. So he won across the north, but he did not win in any state in the South. And many Southerners thought that the election of Abraham Lincoln proved that the south could no longer be part of the Union. And so at that point, they decided to succeed. And, of course, that would lead to the American Civil War when Lincoln, as president, rejected that and considered those states to be in a state of rebellion. And you have. And you had a war that was fought. And so that was one of the most violent, bloodiest wars of the 19th century in world history. And so that would be an example of how an election can lead to something very horrific and destructive.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Of course. Of course.
What is now, maybe today, and maybe even in generations past, one of the most misunderstood things about how an election in America works, the local, the state, or the federal level, what do people just don't quite understand about, or do they understand it? Do most students understand it?
[00:14:52] Speaker B: I think that probably around the world and in America itself, probably the whole Electoral College system is something that is hard to follow.
The fact that if you look at polls today, the one candidate, Kamala Harris, has a significant lead in the nationwide polls. But they always talk about battleground states and how that went, because Electoral College. So, for example, in 2016.
Donald Trump was able to win the election because he won a majority of Electoral College, even though he lost the popular vote by a substantial margin. So I think that a lot of people just think, well, shouldn't election just be decided? Whoever Kennedy has the most votes and that candidate should win the presidency. When, when. That's not how our system works and how our elections have been, have been set up since the drafting of the Constitution or its approval when it became the law of the land back in 1790.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Wow. 1790, that's. It's been the Electoral College. It's been around that long.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a.
When they drafted the Constitution, it was part of a process that, a compromise that was created when the, when the Constitution was drafted in 1787. And then eventually it had to be approved by the states and it was approved after by. Well, actually in 1788, there were enough states. Three fourths of the states had approved the Constitution, but the only last state to approve the Constitution was Rhode island in 1790.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: Okay, Rhode island, white.
Do people still there? There was talk for years about, well, not talk, it was results. That voter turnout was always very, very low, it seemed, for a number of years. That seems to have changed somewhat, maybe in the last two or three elections. Why do people understand or appreciate having a right to vote compared to a lot of countries around the world where it simply doesn't. It, it's just not a reality. Do people understand that? And why is it still very, very important for any country that wants to be free?
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Well, I think that in a system that we have, voting, of course, is very important.
If you look at one of our founding documents, of course, is Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Independence, it makes clear that the, the purpose of government is protect these unalienable rights that we have as human beings. You know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We're all familiar with that phrase. And so governments exist to protect those rights. And it's through our ability to vote that we ensure that those rights are and continue to be protected.
Not only do we have those rights, those endowed rights as guaranteed as listed in the Declaration of Independence, but then we also have our fundamental rights as listed in our Constitution with the first 10amendments to the Constitution or what known as the Bill of Rights. So we have certain rights as Americans. And when we vote, we basically are, we should vote always to ensure that our elected leaders respect and protect those essential rights. So without voting, there is always the threat that, that, that we could lose those rights or that Governments could take actions that could put those rights in peril.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: What questions? I'm going to go there.
Question I want to ask next.
Well, let me ask what.
How is technology affecting voting with voting machines and so much, so many things being done electronically. And has different kind of technologies affected voting throughout history? Because I guess we went to secret ballots, to electric ballots, to what have you. But how has technology kind of affected voting in elections both today and even 50 years ago?
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Well, you know, I remember you had a situation back in 2000 when we had the ballots and the hanging chads. Hanging chad, remember that?
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: And there were, you know, there were concerns that even about how the way the voting worked, that people weren't filling out the bubble securely. And so I remember if you might remember this, in 2000, you had, @ the local election level, you had people holding up ballots to the, to the light, to the window to see if the ballot hole bubble had been pierced through all the way.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: And now, now before that time, you know, you just had. There was a time when many Americans couldn't even, couldn't even read or write. So then, you know, but people still managed to vote.
There were times when you had to prove that you could read or prove that you understood the Constitution before you could vote back in the late 19th century. And so you had. But it's always been, historically our elections have always been administered by the state and local folks. And so we, you know, you have local, you know, every, when you go to vote today, for example, you go and you go to your, your, your site, your. Where your designated voters place and you have people there whose, whose job is to oversee the election. So it's always been something that's done at the local level. Now the technology has changed. We went to those, we had those, we had to fill in the bubble and then they read it through a machine. And now we have electronic where you just push a button. And I assume that that has led to a certain amount of levels of distrust because people hear stories about how Instagram and Facebook can be manipulated. So I think a lot of people might imagine how. Well, couldn't people manipulate voting machines or electronic devices in such a way to change votes? So it's something that's always been a concern regardless of whatever technology you, whether it's just writing or filling in a bubble or electronic. There's always been concerns by people.
Did you know there's. This is a great story. I love this story. There was in the 1948 election, there was a fear that the Political machine in Memphis was manipulating the elections and stuffing ballot boxes. And in Newport, Tennessee, a group of veterans were so concerned about political corruption that they actually, in Newport, Tennessee, seized the ballot boxes and guarded them and would not let state officials take them until they could personally have the. Count them themselves and deliver them. Wow. And it was a big. They had to bring in the state troopers and the state militia. And there was. And there was talk of violence and struggle. And that was. And that was in 1948 and right here in Tennessee.
So people have always been, you know, concerned about election integrity, you know, that this is not anything new. And regardless of whatever technology you're going to, whether you're filling, you know, putting in paper ballots into a ballot box or doing electronically, I think that there's always going to be questions and people who are going to question. And we always want to make sure that our elections are honest and that every vote is counted. And I think that's been a concern throughout history, throughout our history of our country.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: So the technology may change, but the desire for fairness and people's hope for fairness and their worry that somehow they're not being represented is pretty much eternal. So it's not really.
Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of media saying a lot of things on the Internet and everything. Say a lot of things, but it's really nothing too new.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: No. And it's always been down to making sure that you have, at the local level, at the state and local level, people who are. Have integrity, who are.
I remember this is a personal anecdote. My mother telling me about my grandmother who was on the Women League of Voters, and she. In Kansas City, Missouri, and the Prendergast political machine, which dominated politics in Missouri back in the. This would be in the 1930s. My grandmother would always say that the Prendergast machine people would always try to scare them and intimidate them and try to scare voters off. And it was always a big. A big challenge. But. But she and her fellow Women League of Women Voters always were very dedicated to the principle that they were not going to let anybody interfere in how the votes were counted in the local elections.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Very. No. Wow.
Standing around there, outstanding.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Now, I don't know where that story is true. That's secondhand. My mother telling a story about her mother.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: So anyway, she had the leak of women voters. Women did not get the.
Forgive me, I don't remember the amendment that granted women the right to vote.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: That would be the 19th amendment.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Did I take the amendment it's always.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: The way I remember it's the 19th amendment was put into effect in 1920, so 1920 is after 1919. So in my mind that's how I always remember it.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah. It's still shocking that just 100 years ago a whole group of people were.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Not allowed to vote.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: And others. Well, that's certainly not the only demographic prohibited from voting for quite a while now. Third parties have kind of cropped up over history. You've had the Whig Party, you mentioned Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party.
Ross Perot famously, I don't think he had a party, but he certainly was a third party type candidate.
How have these third parties nudged the existing parties into a certain group of ideas? Because they've, a lot of them have just kind of come and gone. And why have third parties not necessarily had staying power that we might expect from, from a, from, from America and from their supporters?
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Well, what has often happened is that our, both our, our political party system, our current political party system actually dates back to the time of Andrew Jackson. One of the things that Andrew Jackson did when he lost that election in 1824 was along with a man named Martin Van Buren, put together a whole new party. And they initially were called the Democratic Republicans, but that sort was later the Democratic Party. So Andrew Jackson is actually the founder of the Democratic Party and then in opposition to it was the Whig Party. And ever since that time, political parties have usually been coalitions of different interest groups. So they've put together coalitions and so eventually the Whig Party would be replaced by the Republican Party. So we've had a two party system in place for most of our history and both parties are actually coalitions of different interest groups.
And so within the Democratic Party you'll find a host of different interest groups. And the same is true as a Republican party. So they're not, and so they're like minded, but they're not necessarily all the, on the same page, necessarily all the time. So historically when a third party has arisen, usually it gets sucked up by one or the other of the parties. For example, one of the biggest third parties in our history was the populist party, which represented farmers for the most part at the end of the 19th century. And it was formed in 1890 and it's big.
One of its big issues was the currency. They wanted to buy metallic currency, silver and gold currency. And in 1896 basically the Democratic Party just adopted that position. And what happened is that most of the populists just started voting for the Democratic Party. So basically, the Democratic Party just kind of sucked up the populist party. And historically, that has been what has happened in history. That a third party, when it does arise, gets kind of swallowed up by one or one of the major two political parties.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: How do you think.
How do you see elections, depending on how this one goes, the federal elections we've got coming up? Do you see a point where Congress or even the Supreme Court would take a look at the Electoral College and start maybe considering a different way or abolishing this? Some people want it abolished. Some people like it.
It's been around for quite. As you pointed out, it's been around for a very long time.
But do people think it's outlived its usefulness? But is it still a solid way to decide elections?
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Well, the Electoral college, of course, is very divisive. A lot of people just want to get rid of it.
It was created at a different time in our history.
So some people would say that those conditions really no longer exist.
You know, when that. When just to kind of go back and give some kind of background. When. When they were drafting our Constitution, they were trying to set up a system of government, trying to set up a republic in a situation never before seen before.
Historically, republics had been small city states. And here you have a case where the United States was trying to create a republic, maintain a republican form of system of government over an area, a country that was far bigger than any republic that had ever existed in history. So when they wrote the Constitution they were trying to preserve, one of the fears was that if you had too strong of a central government, that it would be a threat to liberty. As Patrick Henry said, he was a, you know, give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry, oh, yes. He once said that he objected to a new Constitution on the grounds that they were replacing King George with some other potential tyrant, that a central government was a threat to liberty and a threat to individual freedom because it would have too much centralized power. So in order to prevent that, they designed a system where more power was given to the states. Now, originally, when the Electoral College was set up, it was the state legislatures that determined who the electors would be. So ultimately, the decision of who would be the president was decided by electors chosen by individual state legislatures.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Okay. And.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: And so that way, it would give every state. It would prevent a situation where large states would be able to dominate the republic. They didn't want the states with bigger populations to control the shots. They wanted the smaller states to have a place at the table as well, so that's why they designed the system. And you could still make that case that if we went to a system where we're just based on the popular vote, candidates could just go to California, Illinois, Cal, Texas and Florida go to the top four states, and that's all they'd have to do is win those voters there. So that would mean that states, and with, like in Tennessee, where we're kind of in the middle, we're not a big state, we're not a small state. We, our concerns would not be the concern of the president because we wouldn't, Our votes wouldn't really matter. You could win the election just by winning control, winning, dominating in the larger states. So some people have argued that, that the Electoral College. The Electoral College for that reason is still relevant, but other people have argued that, that the system that we have now gives too much power to small states and so that people who live in larger states are. Don't have the same power as people in smaller states because their votes are kind of diluted. Okay, so you could argue it all day, I suppose.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Sure.
Well, yeah, a very complex topic, elections and government generally.
But one thing we can't, one thing most people should, should do is go vote, no matter what your, your point of view is, please go exercise your democratic right to voting. Right?
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yes, yes. It's, you know, it's, it's.
You would think that one vote really doesn't matter. And I, I think many people might think, well, there's so many millions of voters, certainly my vote doesn't matter. But it's one of those things. It's like obeying the laws of the road. You know, if you might think, oh, I'll speed, who am I hurting? But, but if everybody just breaks the rules and decides not to obey the laws of the road, then you're going to have chaos.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: And it's the same thing with voting. Like one person might think, hey, my vote doesn't count. But if everybody thinks that way, then we lose our. We lose our system of government. We lose our freedoms. So it's kind of a.
If you believe in our country and believe in our system of government, then I think that you kind of have a moral obligation to let your voice be heard and to vote and to participate in our system, because without participation, we cease to be a Republican form of government. We're no longer a government of the people and for the people. If the people aren't making their voice be heard through their right to vote.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: No, truly. Truly. Without a doubt.
Well, David, this is, this has been very informative. We didn't get into, we didn't get into a ton of the controversial things, but, you know, we, the election's coming up. We'll see how it goes. But it's not anything that America has now weathered before, pre or post election. So I guess we just go from there.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that we've. Our country's weathered worse. We've had elections, all kinds of elections that have been under very troubling times.
1968 would be another example. You know, we had the leading Democratic candidate, Robert Kennedy, assassinated right after he won the California primary. Hubert Humphrey, who ended up winning the nomination, was a second choice, but they had really had no choice because their leading candidate was, had been assassinated. And also came at a time when the country is facing the Vietnam War and riots and in many of its major cities.
And it was a very troubling time period. But we're still here. Yeah, Absolutely.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: And 2000 was another very divisive election, but somehow it's 24 years later and we're still having elections. So I think that whatever we survived the Civil War, obviously that would be a worst case scenario with hundreds of thousands of deaths and destruction on a scale never before seen in our history. But it was very destructive and a horrible time in our history. But we somehow, our nation managed to survive that. So I do think that we as Americans can be confident that whatever happens, whoever wins the election, that we somehow will find a way to persevere.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Truly. Absolutely. That's the American way, the American spirit. Well, David, thank you so much for joining on this podcast. It's been very informative.
It's really interesting about some of the histories of elections and kind of how the election system works out there. Just, we appreciate you coming on so much.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Well, this wraps up this episode of the Sound Barrier.
And again, if you're out there and you're registered to vote, register to vote and go vote and make your voice heard. There's no. It's how we've got to keep freedom going. Thank you so much for joining us on the on the Sound Barrier podcast. You can Hear us on thesoundbarrier.net. you can also go to Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, we're on them all. Just look up the Sound barrier.
