1960 United States presidential election

=== Allegations of vote fraud ===
There were widespread allegations of [[vote fraud]], especially in Texas, where Kennedy's running mate [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] was Senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor [[Richard J. Daley|Richard Daley]]'s powerful [[Chicago political machine]].<ref name="salon"/> These two states were important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have earned 270 electoral votes, one more than the 269 needed to win the presidency. Republican senators such as [[Everett Dirksen]] and [[Barry Goldwater]] claimed vote fraud "played a role in the election",<ref name="wash post"/> and that Nixon actually won the national popular vote. Republicans tried, and failed, to overturn the results in both Illinois and Texas at the time, as well as in nine other states.<ref name="greenberg slate">{{Cite journal| url = http://www.slate.com/id/91350/| last = Greenberg| first = David| title = Was Nixon Robbed?| journal = [[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]| date = October 16, 2000 }}</ref> [[Earl Mazo]], a journalist who was Nixon's biographer, made accusations of voter fraud.<ref>{{cite news| title=Another Race To the Finish |newspaper=The Washington Post | date=17 November 2000 | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/11/17/another-race-to-the-finish/c810a41c-7da9-461a-927b-9da6d36a65dc/ | access-date=17 July 2023}}</ref>
[[File:Richard Nixon 1960 Campaign Button.png|thumb|right|1960 Nixon campaign button]] 
Nixon's campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy's victory in several states, especially Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election.<ref name="wash post"/> Nixon gave a speech three days after the election, stating that he would not contest the election.<ref name="wash post"/> The Republican National chairman, Senator [[Thruston Ballard Morton]] of Kentucky, visited [[Key Biscayne, Florida]], where Nixon had taken his family for a vacation, and pushed for a recount.<ref name="wash post"/> Morton challenged the results in 11 states,<ref name="salon"/> keeping challenges in the courts into mid-1961, but the only result of these challenges was the loss of Hawaii to Kennedy on a recount.

Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes, out of 4.75&nbsp;million cast, a margin of 0.2%.<ref name="salon"/> Nixon carried 92 of the state's 101 counties. Kennedy's victory in Illinois came from Chicago, which had favorable demographics for Kennedy, with its large populations of [[Catholic]] and African-American voters.<ref name="wash post von hippel">{{Cite news| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/08/heres-a-voter-fraud-myth-richard-daley-stole-illinois-for-john-kennedy-in-the-1960-election/| last = von Hippel| first = Paul| title = Here's a voter fraud myth: Richard Daley "stole" Illinois for John Kennedy in the 1960 election?| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]| date = August 8, 2017 }}</ref> His victory margin in the city was 318,736, and 456,312 in Cook County. Daley was alleged to have phoned the Kennedy campaign with the promise "With a little bit of luck and the help of a few close friends, you're going to carry Illinois."<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/Politics-Chicago-Style-3088070.php | title=Politics, Chicago Style | newspaper=Sfgate | date=April 11, 1999 | last1=Matthews | first1=- Christopher }}</ref> When the Republican ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' went to press, 79% of Cook County precincts had reported, compared with just 62% of Illinois's precincts overall. Moreover, Nixon never led in Illinois, and Kennedy's lead merely shrank as election night went on.<ref name="wash post von hippel"/>

In Texas, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a 51 to 49% margin, or 46,000 votes.<ref name="salon"/> Some Republicans argued that Johnson's formidable political machine had stolen enough votes in counties along the [[Mexico–United States border|Mexican border]] to give Kennedy the victory. Kennedy's defenders, such as his speechwriter and special assistant [[Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.]], argued that Kennedy's margin in Texas was simply too large for vote fraud to have been a decisive factor.

[[Earl Mazo]], writing in the ''[[New York Herald Tribune]]'', argued that in Texas, "a minimum of 100,000 votes for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket simply were nonexistent."{{citation needed|date=January 2024}} Allegations of voter fraud were made in Texas. [[Fannin County, Texas|Fannin County]] had only 4,895 registered voters; yet 6,138 votes were cast in that county, three-quarters for Kennedy.<ref name="wash post"/> In an [[Angelina County, Texas|Angelina County]] precinct, Kennedy received 187 votes, to Nixon's 24, though there were only 86 registered voters in the precinct.<ref name="wash post"/> When Republicans demanded a statewide recount, they learned that the state Board of Elections, whose members were all Democrats, had already certified Kennedy as the winner.<ref name="wash post"/> This analysis has been challenged, since registered voter figures only counted people who had paid the [[Poll taxes in the United States|poll tax]], and "veterans and senior citizens and some other isolated groups" were exempt from that tax.<ref>''The Houston Chronicle'', April 13, 2012, [https://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Vote-ID-law-is-a-waste-of-money-3481335.php "Vote ID law is a waste of money"] by Terri Burke</ref> Earl Mazo's analysis produced evidence of voters casting up to six ballots at once, precinct chiefs bribing voters, and pre-primed voting machines, one of which was caught recording 121 ballots when 43 people voted.{{citation needed|date=January 2024}}

Schlesinger and others have pointed out that even if Nixon had carried Illinois, the state would not have given him a victory, for Kennedy would still have won 276 electoral votes, to Nixon's 246. More to the point, Illinois was the site of the most extensive challenge process, which fell short, despite repeated efforts spearheaded by Cook County state's attorney Benjamin Adamowski, a Republican, who also lost his re-election bid. Despite demonstrating net errors favoring both Nixon and Adamowski (some precincts, 40% in Nixon's case, showed errors favoring them, a factor suggesting error, rather than fraud), the totals found fell short of reversing the results for the candidates. While a Daley-connected circuit judge, Thomas Kluczynski (later appointed a federal judge by Kennedy, at Daley's recommendation), threw out a federal lawsuit "filed to contend" the voting totals,<ref name="wash post"/> the Republican-dominated State Board of Elections unanimously rejected the challenge to the results. Furthermore, there were signs of possible irregularities in downstate areas controlled by Republicans, which Democrats never seriously pressed, since the Republican challenges went nowhere.<ref>''Slate'', October 16, 2000, [http://www.slate.com/id/91350/ "Was Nixon Robbed? The legend of the stolen 1960 presidential election"] by David Greenberg</ref> More than a month after the election, the Republican National Committee abandoned its Illinois voter fraud claims.<ref name="salon"/>

An academic study in 1985<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kallina |first=Edmund F. |title=Was the 1960 Presidential Election Stolen? The Case of Illinois |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550168 |journal=Presidential Studies Quarterly |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=113–118 |date=Winter 1985 |access-date=November 19, 2020 |jstor=27550168}}</ref> later analyzed the ballots of two disputed precincts in Chicago which were subject to a recount. It found that while there was a pattern of miscounting votes to the advantage of Democratic candidates, Nixon suffered less from this than Republicans in other races, and, furthermore, the extrapolated error would only have reduced his Illinois margin from 8,858 votes (the final official total) to just under 8,000. It concluded there was insufficient evidence that he had been cheated out of winning Illinois.

A special prosecutor assigned to the case brought charges against 650 people, but charges were later dropped.<ref name="wash post"/> Three Chicago election workers were convicted of voter fraud in 1962, and served short terms in jail.<ref name="wash post"/> Mazo later said that he "found names of the dead who had voted in Chicago, along with 56 people from one house".<ref name="wash post"/> He also found cases of Republican voter fraud in southern Illinois, but said that the totals "did not match the Chicago fraud he found."<ref name="wash post"/> After Mazo had published four parts of an intended 12-part voter fraud series documenting his findings, which was re-published nationally, he said: "Nixon requested his publisher stop the rest of the series so as to prevent a [[constitutional crisis]]."<ref name="wash post"/> Nevertheless, the ''Chicago Tribune'' (which routinely endorsed GOP presidential candidates, including Nixon in 1960, 1968, and 1972) wrote that "the election of November 8 was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify the conclusion that [Nixon] was deprived of victory".<ref name="wash post"/>

Nixon's personal decision not to challenge the electoral results came despite pressure from Eisenhower, his wife [[Pat Nixon|Pat]], and others. He explained in his memoirs that he did not do it for a number of reasons, one of them being that every state had different electoral laws, and some had no provisions for a vote recount. Consequently, a recount of the votes, if it was even possible, would take months, during which time the nation would be left without a president. Furthermore, Nixon feared that it would set a bad precedent for other countries, especially the Latin American states ("every pipsqueak politician down there would start claiming fraud when he lost an election"). "I had no doubt that had the results been the other way around, Kennedy wouldn't have hesitated to challenge the election."