Tantalizing Trivia: Election Trivia (Historical, Not Current)

Election Trivia Time!

Who was the only presidential candidate to receive electoral college votes even though he was dead?

Horace Greeley, in 1872. Ulysses S. Grant was easily re-elected that year, but because Greeley died before the electoral ballot was cast, there was a lot of confusion. No 24-hour cable news networks or Internet to help clarify things, either. In all the hoo-ha, Greeley ended up receiving 3 electoral votes, which Congress eventually disallowed.

More Greeley Trivia:

A lot of people, myself included, know Greeley mostly for saying “Go west, young man.” Turns out he borrowed the phrase from someone else: John Babsone Lane Soule wrote it in a Terre Haute newspaper, where Greeley read it and tweaked it for an editorial in the New York Tribune.