Monsterpal wrote:
I just looked at an electoral map of the 1960 election. You can see it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960

As you can see if you look at the page, Kennedy won the electoral vote by an 84 vote margin 303-219. At the time, Illinois had 27 electoral votes and West Virginia had eight, for a total of 35. If my math is correct, even if all the stories about cheating in those states is true, that means Nixon still would have lost by 49 electoral votes.


It's been a long time since I took political science courses, but if I remember the question of corruption in the 1960 election centered around Illinois and Texas.  Illinois had 27 electoral votes and Texas 24.  Putting them into the Nixon column would have produced exactly the necessary 270 votes.  Kennedy won by only 46,000 in Texas, and considering Texas' reputation at that time concerning corrupt elections, and it being a one-party state dominated by Lyndon Johnson, it is in the cards that Nixon might have taken the state in an honest election.  In fairness, basically because of anti-Catholic bias.

The importance of West Virginia would not have been to put Nixon over the top but to keep Kennedy from winning outright.  Illinois and West Virginia together have 35 electoral votes.  Taking these two off of Kennedy's total would have reduced him to 268 votes.  Nixon wouldn't have won, as 13 votes went to a State's Rights candidate in the South.  The election would have been thrown into the House of Representatives.  What would have happened?  The Democrats controlled the House, so Kennedy would probably have been elected, but quite possibly at the cost of making a deal with the segregation wing of the Democratic party to not touch civil rights in return for their votes.  If Kennedy refused, would Nixon have been open to such a deal?  If both refused, would the House have turned to a third candidate who did cater to the South?  Lyndon, anyone.  Or President Richard Russell.