From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

1813 New York's 15th congressional district special election

none

A special election was held in **** to fill a vacancy left by the death of Representative-elect William Dowse (F) on February 18, 1813, before the beginning of the 13th Congress. The election was held April 27–29, 1813.

Election results

The initial results were as follows:

Candidate	Party	Votes	Percent
	John M. Bowers		Federalist	4,287	48.3%
	Isaac Williams, Jr.		Democratic-Republican	4,129	46.6%
"Isaac Williams"		434	4.9%
"John M. Boweys"		1	0.01%
Others		17	0.2%

Bowers was declared the winner of the special election

Election challenge

Williams subsequently challenged Bowers' election on the ground that the votes for "Isaac Williams" were intended for himself. The House Committee on Elections investigated this election and found that there were three individuals in the 15th district with the name Isaac Williams, one of whom used the suffix "Jr.". Both contestants admitted that the only candidates in the election were Isaac Williams, Jr. and John M. Bowers. On July 2, The Committee ruled that Williams appeared to be entitled to the seat, but that further investigation was required, and postponed further discussion to the first Wednesday of the 2nd session.

On December 16, 1813, the committee made a final report determining that in the towns of Exeter, Milford, and Westford, 322 votes which were, in fact, cast for Isaac Williams, Jr. were mistakenly reported as Isaac Williams. The Committee ruled that those 322 votes were thus to be added to Isaac Williams, Jr.'s votes, creating a final tally as follows:

Candidate	Party	Votes	Percent
	Isaac Williams, Jr.		Democratic-Republican	4,451	50.2%
	John M. Bowers		Federalist	4,287	48.3%
"Isaac Williams"		112	1.3%
"John M. Boweys"		1	0.01%
Others		17	0.2%

Williams was thus ruled by the committee to be the legitimate occupant of that seat. The House accepted their ruling unanimously, and Williams took his seat January 24, 1814

References

Information of numbers of votes and on the challenge in the House are from Cases of Contested Elections in Congress: From the Year 1789 to 1834, Inclusive

References

"Thirteenth Congress. March 4, 1813, to March 3, 1815".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

special-elections-to-the-13th-united-states-congress united-states-house-of-representatives-elections-in-new-york-(state) united-states-house-of-representatives-special-elections 1813-united-states-house-of-representatives-elections 1813-new-york-(state)-elections new-york-(state)-special-elections february-1813

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about 1813 New York's 15th congressional district special election — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report