My Historical Ballot

Since we're getting into election season, I thought I'd write a post laying out how I would have voted in every U.S. Presidential election from 1789 through 2012. I have a point that I'm planning on making with this concept, which I'll get to in a subsequent post.


1789: George Washington. Not much of a choice, is there? I think I would've voted for John Jay as Vice President; he was pretty cool.

1792: George Washington. Still, no choices to be made. I probably would've voted to re-elect John Adams as VP over Democratic-Republican George Clinton.

1796: John Adams. The secret of Thomas Jefferson is that he was wrong about a lot of things.

1800: Thomas Jefferson. Why would I switch my vote from election to election? Four words: "Alien and Sedition Acts." That's all it takes. This will probably be the last time you see me changing my vote in this sort of fashion.

1804: Thomas Jefferson, probably? I'm not sure about this one, since I wouldn't have liked his efforts to mess with the judiciary, but Pinckney seems like he had some pretty reprehensible ideas.

1808: James Madison. He's cool, and like I said, Pinckney doesn't strike me as acceptable.

1812: James Madison. I still like Madison, although DeWitt Clinton provides much stiffer competition than Pinckney did. Probably why this is one of only two times an incumbent won re-election with a decreased electoral margin.

1816: James Monroe. By this point, the Federalists were pretty pathetic, although honestly I would probably have had some sympathy with their complaints about the War of 1812.

1820: James Monroe. Another one of these ones where there's no choice involved.

1824: Henry Clay. Jackson's a scoundrel, and William Crawford is just so utterly bland and mediocre. Hell, his own party knew it, and nominated three other guys against him. John Quincy Adams is the only competition, but he's just not as impressive a guy as Clay, and they had rather similar ideas.

1828: John Quincy Adams. See above, re: Jackson is a scoundrel.

1832: Henry Clay. I'm still not voting for Andrew Jackson.

1836: William Henry Harrison, I think? I dunno, I have nothing in particular against Martin Van Buren, and in particular if I were allowed to know of his subsequent Congressional career and anti-slavery advocacy I'd probably vote for him. But at the time, he was Jackson's right-hand man trying to win the top spot, and I really dislike Andrew Jackson. So I think I would've voted Whig.

1840: William Henry Harrison, for exactly the same reasons as the last time around.

1844: Henry Clay. He was more liberal, particularly on the question of slavery, than Polk. That's pretty much all I need to know.

1848: Martin Van Buren, perhaps? I'm not sure, because while I would've voted Whig in the past many election cycles I think Zachary Taylor really wasn't much of anything. In general I'm against pointless third-party votes, but there comes a time when the two parties really are pretty similar on the, well, in this case one issue that matters.

1852: John P. Hale. Similar logic to last time. Definitely not Franklin Pierce, and while it looks like Winfield Scott was the Northern Whigs' candidate I don't see anything about him that makes me think he was particularly courageous. So, Free Soil Party it is. Basically 1844 is the last time I think the Whigs presented a meaningful alternative.

1856: John Fremont. Fortunately, the Republicans came along to offer one.

1860: Abraham Lincoln. One of the easier choices, this.

1864: Abraham Lincoln. Still, pretty easy. I don't love war, but this was a war that needed to be won.

1868: Ulysses S. Grant. For the next little while I'll be voting pretty solidly Republican, just because they were the more liberal on civil rights issues.

1872: Ulysses S. Grant. Of course, knowing his opponent snuffed it a few weeks after the election helps.

1876: Rutherford B. Hayes. Although I'm not too thrilled with him for ending Reconstruction, I have no reason to think the Democrats of the time wouldn't have been worse.

1880: James Garfield. I've read a bit of Garfield's inaugural address, and it has a surprising amount of substantively good stuff in it. Shame he died so soon, but at least Chester A. Arthur was shockingly good.

1884: James G. Blaine. All things considered, Grover Cleveland wasn't too bad for his era, but Blaine had a long history of being good on civil rights. My one concern about him, from perusing his Wikipedia page, is that he was hard-money, but then again, so was Cleveland.

1888: Grover Cleveland, I think? Okay, so I may have lied when I said 1800 was the last time I'd switch my vote. It seems that in 1888, the main issue was tariffs, and Cleveland was anti-tariff. That makes me want to vote for him, and I know nothing about Benjamin Harrison that makes me particularly like him for a Republican. This is around the time that the Democratic Party starts rehabilitating itself, for the first time, well, ever.

1892: Grover Cleveland. Pretty similar logic to the last time around. Though I would have agreed with many of the Populists' concerns, I don't think this would've been a time that I'd waste my vote.

1896: William Jennings Bryan. I have a lot of problems with this guy, most of which are related to the Scopes trial, but William McKinley is one of my least favorite old-timey substantial Presidents. Also, Bryan was just plain right about easy money.

1900: William Jennings Bryan. I still can't stand McKinley.

1904: Theodore Roosevelt. I have a lot of problems with this guy as well, but they're mostly with him as a human being rather than as a politician.

1908: William Howard Taft. I'm not particularly a fan of Bryan's rampant populist streak, and Taft was basically continuing Roosevelt's progressive policies.

1912: Woodrow Wilson. He offered a more left-wing progressivism than Roosevelt, as far as I can tell.

1916: Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, okay, he didn't end up keeping us out of war, but I wouldn't have known that in 1916, would I? Anyone who's running on not wanting to go to war gets my vote, even if history proved he didn't much mean it.

1920: James Cox, because Warren Harding's terribleness was really, really predictable. By this point I'm very nearly a solid Democrat.

1924: Robert La Follette. And, this would be the very nearly. Calvin Coolidge was awful. John W. Davis was worse. This is the last time I won't be voting for the Democrat.

1928: Al Smith. At this point the Democrats are just consistently more left-wing on economic issues than the Republicans, and are starting to move leftwards on racial issues. Okay, so it was a modest shift at the time, but still.

1932: Franklin Roosevelt. Enthusiastically. About as easy as 1860.

1936: Franklin Roosevelt. Need I say more?

1940: Franklin Roosevelt.

1944: Franklin Roosevelt.

1948: Harry Truman. Honestly, at this point I'm just a party-line Democrat, and while I do have major problems with Truman I'm a big fan of his policies.

1952: Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower may have been a moderate, but Stevenson was a liberal. And an egghead!

1956: Adlai Stevenson, redux.

1960: John F. Kennedy. Because everyone already knew Richard Nixon was a scumbag.

1964: Lyndon B. Johnson. You think I'm gonna vote against the guy who brought you the Civil Rights Act?

1968: Hubert Humphrey. The same old Nixon thing. And no, I wouldn't have supported him in the primaries. I suspect I would've been behind Gene McCarthy, as my parents were.

1972: George McGovern. It's getting simple by this point.

1976: Jimmy Carter. I'm not sure if I would've supported him in the primaries, since his whole schtick was Southern moderateness and I wouldn't yet have known he would be such an awesome old dude.

1980: Jimmy Carter. That's obvious. I probably would've at least flirted with supporting Kennedy's primary challenge, although I might've felt like he was undermining the party vis-a-vis Reagan and been pissed at him. Not sure about that one.

1984: Walter Mondale. C'mon, his opponent was Ronald frickin' Reagan.

1988: Michael Dukakis. I don't care if he was mediocre, he was the more liberal candidate.

1992: Bill Clinton. And I was even alive for this one! But yeah, I mean, he was more liberal than his opponent, and brilliant. Shame about being all centrist-y, though.

1996: Bill Clinton. Hey, does the Dole/Kemp ticket remind you just a little bit of Romney/Ryan?

2000: Al Gore, enthusiastically. Seriously, Gore is awesome. I mean, not that he'd need to be to be worth voting for over Bush.

2004: John Kerry, enthusiastically. Hell, at this point we're talking about a guy I volunteered for. I don't remember how I felt during the primary, though, and I'm not sure in retrospect.

2008: Barack Obama, including in the primary. I was so close to being allowed to actually cast this vote.

2012: Barack Obama. Oh well, this time I will be allowed to vote.