removing politics from other threads, I offer this as background for all disinterested but interested observers of the State of the Onion:

Is that an election in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

The U.S. Presidential election has made headlines around the world. Believe it or not - this is not the first time in U.S. history that things have been this close -- or this crazy...

On election night in 1876, Rutherford Hayes went to bed believing he had lost the presidential election. The next day, however, his Republican campaign manager boldly proclaimed him the winner, opening the curtain on the most fiercely disputed election in American history.

It was discovered that three Republican states in the South (Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana) had sent in double returns. The Democrats screamed foul, until it was revealed they, too, had committed election return fraud. Congress debated the election results for weeks.

The year ended with no U.S. president-elect. In January 1877, Congress appointed an electoral commission to laboriously re-count the entire vote and settle the dispute. On March 2, the commission announced that Hayes had 185 electoral votes and Samuel Tilden 184. If only one of the 20 disputed electoral votes had gone to him, Tilden would have been elected. His popular vote was 4,284,020; Hayes's trailed at 4,036,572.

With thanks to Lee Daniel Quinn at <words@iop.com>, from Useless-Infomaster http://uselessdigest@uselessknowledge.com