Democrats overturn Indiana Election

During the Fiasco in Florida, I read of a Congressional election in Indiana, I believe in the mid to late 80's, where the Republican candidate won, but the democrat contested (as usual). The votes were recounted, the D's still lost but the count was much closer (Friends from Chicago probably).

it went to the Indaian legislation and surprise, surprise the democratically controlled, no, I should say, the Legislature, which was controlled by the democrats, voted to award the seat to the.............DEMOCRAT!.

I have tried to find an article on this, but to no avail. can anyone help with details? Such as:

I wrote my brother in Indiana about this and he provided us with this account:

I can offer a little help, but not sure if there would be any stories online about this event. It's about when Rick McIntyre (R) ran against incumbent Frank McCloskey (d) for the 8th Congressional District in the House of Representatives. I'm pretty sure it was the 1984 election.

The district is pretty evenly divided between Democrats (mostly in the urban Evansville area) and Republicans (most of the rest of the largely rural district). McCloskey was not well liked at all by Republicans, and he'd apparently dissed some of his base by '84, so the vote really did come down pretty much to the wire. Initial counts had McIntyre in the lead, however, though exactly what the margin was I don't remember without digging through some old correspondence. Whatever the actual numbers were, it was fairly clear that McIntyre had won, but because it was relatively close a recount was called for. The recount also resulted in a Republican victory.

In the years since I've talked with people who were directly involved in the fracas, and here's a summary of what I learned. Given that Washington wasn't happy with the loss of another democratic seat, they decided to send their own officials (read "democrats") to Indiana to count the ballots again. Those in the know related to me that this group tried counting using a variety of criteria, but however they twisted and turned McIntyre still won. Finally they arrived at a McCloskey victory by throwing out any vote on a hand ballot in which any part of a mark went outside the circle or square next to the candidate's name. The balloting instructions were to place an X inside the square (or circle, depending on the ballot used) next to the candidate's name. Obviously, scores of people will allow a millimeter or so of an X to cross the boundary of the square, so that even if the center of the X was placed solidly in the middle of the square, because a microscopic part of the X landed outside the box they'd consider the ballot invalid. By doing this they ended up with an EXTREMELY narrow "victory" for McCloskey.

These shenanigans were, of course, challenged, and the immediate result was that our district faced taxation without representation for several months (I seem to recall a revolution taking place over something similar once long ago), and the end result was that McCloskey was "declared" the winner by the 99th Congress pursuant to H. Res. 146. McCloskey finally took his seat on May 1, 1985.

Because the race had been so ugly and the aftermath so badly handled, McIntyre abandoned politics (many felt he had a very bright career ahead of him) and continued in his law practice in Bedford until he was appointed a judge. He has been an admirable judge in Lawrence County ever since.

To his credit, and possibly because there had been so much ranor over the election, McCloskey served our district respectably well after 1985. He seemed to want to heal some of the bitter divisions between the parties that had resulted from the embroglio, and all in all I'd have to say he did a pretty decent job representing all persuasions. He continued serving in Congress until 1995 when he was finally defeated in an attempt to retain his seat for the 104th Congress after in what I considered to be a rather halfhearted campaign on his part.

Though I despised what McCloskey and his cohorts did in their travesty of democracy in 1984, and while I disagree with much of his politics, he turned out to be a not-so-bad representative. Perhaps the turmoil sobered him. I've no doubt McIntyre would have served us all better (most of us wanted him anyway, as the counts revealed), but given that we had no choice in the matter McCloskey conducted himself fairly well after that mess.

Let me know if I can maybe help provide any more details.

What a huge freaking coincidence!!!!! Last night I was reading part of Mel Steely's Newt Gingrich biography The Gentleman From Georgia and it talked all about Newt's role in how the GOP should respond to the fiasco. Hope this helps a little, Michael.SF. From pp.181-183:

The 1984 election had been close in Indiana's eight[h, sic] district. It appeared that James McIntyre, the GOP challenger, had barely won. There was a protest from the incumbent, Frank McCloskey, and the matter would be decided in the House. On a straight party-line vote McCloskey was selected and seated while the election was still being contested.
...Newt and [CA Rep.] Duncan Hunter went into action. All night special orders were arranged and, staying up until 3:00 a.m. Newt and the staff drew up a battle plan for the leadership meeting the next morning, but were disappointed by the response they received...
...[The ad hoc committee] left and went on to put a variation of Newt's original plan into action. "So, I [Newt] set up the whole thing. I structured all of it. The whole party walked out [of the House chamber in protest]. Michel and Lott were right there at the front. Bill Thomas was the hero, and I never spoke during the entire fight.
...As a result of his efforts during the McIntyre walkout Newt felt that he had earned the right to be recognized leader on the Central American debate project. Lott and Michel were not so sure. Newt had shown considerable strength during McIntyre.

Thanks you guys, I knew that someone would come through.

It absolutely amazes me that those who call themselves Democrats would pull stunts like this and then they can turn around and acuse Republicans of 'stealing an election'.

The comments on the ballot counting is especially revealing.

I am a little surprised that I only read one article on this 'election' last year (well maybe not considering the papers here in SF area).

This is a story that everyone who is interested in politics should know.

It is late for me and I am going to research this possibly tomorrow and post my results.

Thanks again!!

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