this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2025
80 points (97.6% liked)

History Memes

1053 readers
1343 users here now

A place to share history memes!

Rules:

  1. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.

  2. No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.

  3. Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.

  4. Follow all Piefed.social rules.

Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world

founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
 
top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 43 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Explanation: In the modern day, it's common for dictators to announce elections, and then have them 'won' by improbably high vote counts - sometimes exceeding the number of actual registered voters in a region.

George Washington, the first president of the USA, on the other hand, won exactly 100% of the vote!

Of course, there is a substantial reason for this difference. While Washington was immensely popular as a war hero who had stepped down from power at the end of the American Revolutionary War, the real reason for the perfect score was the voting system of the early USA.

We in the USA have an institution known as the electoral college - it's utterly fucked and archaic today, but it did serve a purpose originally. Namely, that each of the original 13 states joined up with the USA with the understanding that they would have freedom to run their own elections - nominally as a safeguard against centralized tyranny, and because of the vastness of the new country and the difficult of transport and communication (with even voting results of this system taking months to come in and tally).

However, this also meant that there were effectively 13 different election systems with different voter qualifications and processes. To 'streamline' counting that, each state was assigned a number of 'elector' positions based on their population that the state's elected legislature would decide how to appoint. Three states, furthermore, had borked things up (two failed to ratify the Constitution in time for the election; the New York legislature got caught up in arguments with itself about its electoral system and failed to send any electors). Washington thus won every vote cast - but from an 'electorate' of 69 electors (nice), not millions!

... it made sense before the invention of the train and the telegraph, and when the roads to DC were packed with mud and not gravel; not so much now.

[–] Foni@lemmy.zip 36 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That is to say, Washington had 100% of the vote in the electoral college, not in the popular vote, of which I suppose there will be no record.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Funny you should mention that - voting there was different as well. Some states do have records of the popular vote, but the votes were for the electors themselves, rather than the presidential (and vice-presidential, as that was voted on separately at the time) candidates they were going to be electing.

Since all the electors who voted ended up casting a vote for Washington, and we can't be certain how the failed electors would have voted, even knowing the popular vote totals doesn't help us. XD

[–] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

In slightly less than half the states (TIL—I thought it was most or all of them), the electors were chosen by the state legislatures, not using any sort of popular vote at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1788%E2%80%9389_United_States_presidential_election

States had varying methods for choosing presidential electors. In five states, the state legislature chose electors. The other six chose electors through some form involving a popular vote, though in only two states did the choice depend directly on a statewide vote.


Arguably, that system (along with the pre-17^th^ Amendment method of choosing senators) had better federalist separation of powers, by giving more importance to your state-level representative(s) instead of letting those things be a popular vote.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

And of course, back then, a far smaller percentage of the population were eligible voters