The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

The defeat of Cleveland, despite his majority of the popular vote, was not the blot on democracy that it seemed because there were far larger blemishes. Given the suppression of the Republican black vote in the South, it was hard to argue that Harrison was truly a minority president. Three black-majority Southern states—South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana—sent only 311,674 voters to the polls to determine twenty-six electoral votes. Their electoral votes were based on the total population, black and white, but in reality only white votes counted. Illinois cast nearly twice as many votes, but had only twenty-two electoral votes. Ohio cast more than 839,000 votes for only twenty-three electors. Southern fraud and violence ensured that every white vote in the South was worth two Northern votes in presidential elections.