Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Formation of the Electoral Commission

When
January 29, 1877
Where
Congress
Part of
Compromise of 1877 resolves the disputed 1876 US presidential election

Congress passed a law on January 29, 1877, to form a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the disputed result, facing an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

Neither candidate initially secured enough electoral votes to win. The Commission was authorized to determine the fate of disputed electoral votes. The Compromise of 1877 might have been a reason for Democrats accepting the Commission, though historians debate if this was a formal deal or a mutual concession.

Sources

  1. 1876 United States presidential election Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06
  2. Rutherford B. Hayes Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-17

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.