Dems pulled electoral stunt once
In the presidential election of 1892, Michigan split its electoral votes by congressional district.
Dems pulled electoral stunt once In the presidential election of 1892, Michigan split its electoral votes by congressional district. Check out this story on Freep.com: http://on.freep.com/1qICsQT
Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press Published 12:08 a.m. ET Nov. 21, 2014 | Updated 3:57 p.m. ET Nov. 21, 2014
Grover Cleveland being sworn in as president.(Photo: Detroit Free Press file)
LANSING – Opponents of a Republican plan to change the way Michigan's Electoral College votes are awarded like to say that Michigan has used the "winner-take-all" system for distributing the votes since 1836.
But that isn't exactly true.
That time, it was Democrats who controlled the state House and engineered the change. And it was Michigan Republicans who went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsuccessful effort to stop them.
So is turnabout fair play, 122 years later?
Michigan was mostly Republican back then. But in 1890, the state elected Gov. Edwin Winans, a farmer and former state lawmaker, as the first Democrat to lead the state in 40 years — since before the Civil War.
The Democrats passed legislation known as the Miner bill that divided the state in half to award two of its electoral votes by popular vote in each of those districts. The legislation awarded the remaining 12 electoral votes by congressional district.
It was an attempt to boost Democrat Grover Cleveland in his bid to return to the White House by unseating Republican President Benjamin Harrison.
Harrison won Michigan's popular vote, but Cleveland received five of the 14 electoral votes. The split didn't affect the outcome of the overall election, which Cleveland won easily.
Republicans, who before the election unsuccessfully fought the measure in both the Michigan Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, also regained legislative and executive control in Michigan in 1892 and returned the state to the winner-take-all method of distributing Electoral College votes.
Contact Paul Egan; 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.
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