Al Is Following Nixon By Contesting Vote NY Daily News - November 13, 2000

By GERALD POSNER

One of the oft-repeated myths in the increasingly partisan debate over the presidential election is the claim that Al Gore should behave more like Richard Nixon, who is cited for magnanimously deciding not to pursue possible voting fraud that cost him the 1960 election with John F. Kennedy.

But the notion that Nixon graciously exited is wrong.

The 1960 race was unquestionably close. Some states such as California initially fell into Kennedy's electoral count, but were reversed almost two weeks later after absentee ballots were counted.

But the core questions centered on persistent rumors of fraud, primarily in Illinois, where Democratic Mayor Richard Daley's powerful political machine controlled voter-heavy Chicago, and Texas, where vice presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson was boss.

Rumors of impropriety circulated before the election. And after the vote was tallied, suspicions were heightened when Kennedy won Illinois by fewer than 9,000 votes and Texas by just over 40,000. Republicans cried foul.

Nixon was worried about how to challenge the vote and still not be branded a sore loser. Although he would later claim President Dwight Eisenhower encouraged him to contest the outcome, it wasn't true; the outgoing President withdrew his support for any challenge within a day of the vote.

And while Nixon did quickly concede the election to Kennedy, contrary to modern memory, he and his Republican allies still mounted a massive vote challenge. Nixon, while cleverly avoiding any public identification with the challenge, not only authorized it privately, but actively encouraged it.

A conservative journalist and close Nixon friend, Earl Mazo of the New York Herald Tribune, launched a press frenzy over possible voter fraud (he was later Nixon's official biographer). And not only did GOP senators like Thurston Morton of Kentucky ask for recounts in 11 states just three days after the election, but Nixon aides Bob Finch and Len Hall personally did field checks of votes in almost a dozen states.

The Republicans obtained recounts, filed a slew of lawsuits, appealed to state election commissions, involved U.S. attorneys and the FBI and even impaneled grand juries in their quest to get a different election result.

All their efforts failed to uncover any significant wrongdoing. Illinois was typical of the effort. The final recount showed Nixon's votes had been undercounted by 943 - yet in 40% of the rechecked precincts, Nixon's vote was actually overcounted.

Unhappy with those results, Republicans went to federal court. Their case was dismissed. They appealed to the Illinois Board of Elections, which also rejected their claims. It was not until Dec. 19, more than a month after the election, that the national Republican Party backed off its Illinois claims.

Similar results and extended fights took place in Texas and New Jersey, among other states. In Hawaii, Republican efforts actually had the unintended result of shifting the state's three electoral votes from Nixon to Kennedy.

Although Republicans continued to insist that Illinois and Texas had somehow figured out a way to cheat and still pass a recount, they never produced hard evidence of widespread impropriety. But it was not for lack of trying.

That Nixon was clever enough to allow his aides and political friends to do the work on his behalf while publicly removing himself from the fray should not give Americans amnesia about what really happened in the wake of the 1960 vote.

If the current rallying cry of Republicans is that Gore should behave more like Nixon did in 1960, that is precisely what he is doing - aggressively pursuing every effort to insure that the final vote is fair and correct.

Posner is the author of seven books