Today in History: February 17, House elects Thomas Jefferson president over Aaron Burr
On Feb. 17, 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.
Also on this date:
In 1863, five appointees of the Public Welfare Society of Geneva announced the formation of an 'International Committee for the Relief of Wounded Combatants,' which would later be renamed the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sunk in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.
In 1897, the forerunner of the National PTA, the National Congress of Mothers, convened its first meeting in Washington with over 2,000 attendees.
In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state must be roughly equal in population.
In 1992, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of 15 counts of first-degree murder.
In 1995, Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings; he was later sentenced to 315 years in prison.
In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia.
In 2013, Danica Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.
In 2014, Jimmy Fallon made his debut as host of NBC's 'Tonight Show.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mail-in voting is nothing new, just ask Civil War soldiers
'We cannot have free government without elections,' President Abraham Lincoln reflected outside the White House on Nov. 10, 1864. 'And if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.' By the fall of 1864, the United States had been engulfed in a civil war for nearly 44 months, with 'the bones of thousands of Northern boys [lying] in Southern graves or decayed unburied in the thickets and swamps of Dixie,' writes historian Gerald Swick. For Lincoln — and for the Union — the outcome of the 1864 presidential election hung in the balance. If voters rejected Lincoln, the war to save the Union would almost certainly be lost. According to Swick, Peace Democrats, Lincoln's chief political opposition, wanted an end to hostilities immediately, under almost any circumstances. With so many men out on the field of battle, the incumbent president feared that many Union soldiers would not be able to cast their vote — and in his favor. For Lincoln, the election was to be won by bullets and ballots, with a string of Union victories that fall — David Farragut damning the torpedoes at Mobile Bay and William T. Sherman conquering the Southern city of Atlanta — helping to quell the Democrats' calls for an early peace By November 1864, as men physically lined up in the North to vote for Lincoln or the former Union general, George B. McClellan, a novel way to accommodate a soldier's right to vote was sweeping the battlefield. There was some precedent for absentee voting. During the War of 1812, Pennsylvania and then New Jersey changed their legislation to allow for mail-in voting for their soldiers at war. On Oct. 1, 1864, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton published General Orders No. 265 outlining the procedures for Army voting. The order's purpose was to 'secure a fair distribution' of election material and prevent fraud and intimidation at the front and further invited 'civilian inspectors of each political party' to visit the various brigade headquarters throughout the Army 'to see that the elections are fairly conducted.' During the war, 19 Union states changed their laws to allow their soldiers to vote absentee. Other states permitted soldiers to vote by proxy, while others created polling sites in camps and hospitals under on-site inspection by appointed clerks or state officials. (In many states, however, the laws only referred to organizations within the Army: companies, regiments and brigades. Thus, many new voting laws did not apply to members of the Navy, according to the National Park Service.) Each state devised its own methods for absentee voting procedures, with Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia mailing proxy votes, ballots or tally sheets. Pennsylvania officials prepared mailing materials for conveying the votes gathered at the front, while Ohio produced envelopes for both the state and national elections, according to the National Postal Museum. Ohioan qualified military absentee voters cast 12% of all the military ballots, with a majority voting for the reelection of Lincoln. By the end of Election Day on Nov. 8, 1864, of the 40,247 Union soldiers who voted, 30,503 voted for Lincoln, approximately 75.8% of the Union citizen-soldiers, according to the American Battlefield Trust. Lincoln carried all but three states (Kentucky, Delaware and New Jersey) with a 90% margin in the Electoral College, 212–21. Since then, states have offered, to varying degrees, the option of absentee voting. During the Second World War, the Soldier Voting Act of 1942 permitted 3.2 million absentee ballots to be cast during the conflict. The act was amended in 1944 and expired at war's end. Presently, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act allows for roughly three-quarters of the 1.3 million active-duty troops to be eligible to vote absentee, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
The Hill
3 hours ago
- The Hill
Jeffries vows to call Kristi Noem to testify in long-overdue oversight push
When House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised that Kristi Noem would be one of the first called before Congress if Democrats take the majority in 2026, he wasn't just previewing political theater — he was signaling a long-overdue accountability moment. Because what we've seen under Noem's watch as Homeland Security secretary isn't just controversial policy, it's a collision between power and the Constitution. Listen, the government has every right to deport violent criminals. But what we're talking about here isn't that. These are families being ripped apart, U.S. citizen children deported to countries they've never known, and raids on churches, swap meets and sidewalks that read less like lawful arrests and more like kidnappings in broad daylight. Armed, masked agents storming neighborhoods — it looks less like 'law and order' and more like a scene from a dystopian movie. Except it's not fiction. It's happening here. And at the center of it is Secretary Noem, who, when asked to define 'habeas corpus' earlier this year — which, by the way, is a bedrock constitutional right — got it flat-out wrong. She described it as the president's power to deport people. That's not just a slip of the tongue; that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the very principle that protects all of us from government overreach. Habeas corpus is the right of a person to challenge their detention. Without it, the government could lock up anyone indefinitely. Even Abraham Lincoln had to go to Congress before suspending it during the Civil War. Yet somehow, Kristi Noem thinks she can redefine it on the fly. Meanwhile, lawsuits are piling up. The ACLU and others say these mass raids aren't about justice, they're about quotas. Three thousand arrests a day, demanded from the White House, no matter who gets caught in the dragnet. The result? Overcrowded, dungeon-like detention centers, families denied food, water and lawyers. That's not just cruel — it's unconstitutional. And it costs taxpayers millions to warehouse people who pose no threat to society. Jeffries is right: this calls for oversight. Not partisan point-scoring, but a public examination of what happens when immigration policy is driven by fear, politics and raw numbers instead of law, due process and human dignity. Because if the government can strip immigrants of rights today, what's to stop them from doing the same to citizens tomorrow? Kristi Noem may soon face Congress, but make no mistake — this is bigger than her. It's about whether America will continue to twist the meaning of justice until it serves whoever holds power, or whether we'll insist that justice, in this country, still means something. This isn't about Kristi Noem forgetting her civics lesson. It's about whether America still remembers its own.
UPI
a day ago
- UPI
Trump wants to order end to mail-in voting, use of certain voting machines
Aug. 18 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump on Monday said he will sign an executive order banning mail-in ballots and "inaccurate" voting machines, five years after he claimed he lost the presidential election because of those voting methods. Trump has repeatedly said the 2020 election was "rigged," especially because of expanded mail-in voting options implemented during the coronavirus pandemic. Numerous lawsuits and audits told him otherwise: Joe Biden secured the most votes and the most in the Electoral College. "I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday morning. He repeated these allegations in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House. With mail-in voting, which is also known as absentee voting, registered residents receive a ballot with an option to mail it back, personally bring it to an election office or drop it into a secure drop-box. Trump has sometimes voted outside a polling site. He became a resident of Palm Beach in Florida in September 2019, after his legal residence was New York City. Florida has had some form of absentee voting since the Civil War. "WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections," he added in the social media post. Typically, more Democrats vote by mail. Mail-in ballots hit a record 43% in 2020, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The 2024 election had a 30.3% rate. States' laws on voters' ability to obtain a ballot by mail vary. Trump also claimed: "We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED." Several other countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany, Australia and Switzerland, use mail-in voting, CNN reported. States have different rules on write-in ballots. Some require them to arrive on Election Day and others allow them to arrive days later. People voting overseas are allowed by federal law to have their postmarked ballots arrive within 10 days of the election. In eight states, voting is allowed to be entirely done by mail: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington state. Some other states allow certain elections only by mail. Besides these states, New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia, mail ballots to all of those registered to vote, regardless of whether they asked for one. Trump has been critical of this. His order is likely to face court tests, especially because elections are run by states. Massachusetts District Judge Denise J. Casper blocked an executive order on ballots, saying Trump didn't have the authority to prevent states from counting mail-in ballots that are postmarked on Election Day but arrive afterward. She was appointed by President Barack Obama. On Monday, Trump said he has the authority. "Remember, the States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes," he wrote. "They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do." Trump said Democrats are "virtually Unelectable with using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM." "ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS," Trump wrote. "I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS." He added: "THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!! REMEMBER, WITHOUT FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS, AND STRONG AND POWERFUL BORDERS, YOU DON'T HAVE EVEN A SEMBLANCE OF A COUNTRY." Newsmax on Monday agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation suit against the conservative media company over its 2020 presidential election coverage. Paper ballots are scanned in electronically in some places, and others use machines with touchscreens or buttons. There is little voting fraud, experts say. "Our elections are more secure, transparent, and verified than ever before in American history, thanks to the thousands of professional election officials of both parties, at the state and local level, that oversee them," David Becker, founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit, told CNN.
