At the time you receive this issue of The Montclairion, we will be moments away from electing the next President of the United States.  Each of us as citizens knows what a tremendous responsibility this is, but there are some very interesting historical facts about our past elections and Presidents I thought I’d share with you.

• Though many Presidents have had prior military service, only one served as an enlisted soldier, never as an officer: James Buchanan (served from 1857 to 1861).
• Foreign policy experience has been one of the topics of interest in the run up to this election.  But did you know we’ve only had one President who could be considered fully bilingual? Martin Van Buren (served from 1837 to 1841). His first language was Dutch.
• All presidents since the Civil War have been nominees of one of our two major political parties, Democratic or Republican.  But there is no mention of political parties in our Constitution; it’s just a practical truth of today’s process.  In fact the election of 1824 had four presidential candidates competing, all from the same political party: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay!  The election result? John Quincy Adams (served from 1825 to 1829).
• Before the Twelfth Amendment to our Constitution was passed in 1804, the Electoral College had an interesting ‘flaw’ in their process. Each elector cast two votes.  While it was intended that one would be used for a presidential candidate and the other for a vice president, the practical result was the President and Vice President were sometimes not ‘from the same team’, so to speak. And it got worse. 
• In the 1800 election there was a tie and the ‘intended’ vice presidential candidate was almost selected by the House of Representatives over the ‘intended’ Presidential candidate (it’s a long story)!  The result? President Thomas Jefferson (served from 1801 to 1809) and a Constitutional Amendment that gave us the electoral system we use today.
• Circumstances addressed by this 200-year-old amendment have even played a role as recently as the 2000 election.  The first line of the twelfth amendment says in part, “The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves...” Both Bush and Cheney were apparently residents of Texas and the Courts got involved.  But you know how this turned out.

Please contact Bill Riski (bill@riski.biz) if you have any information or questions about the history of Country Club Lake / Lake Montclair / Montclair.