It is a quirk of the American electoral system that elected presidents do not need a majority of the country to vote for them. The current electoral college system was designed as a compromise between the “tyranny of the majority” by popular vote and a completely legislative decision by Congress. Each state is apportioned a number of “electorates” based on the number of Congressmen (which in turn is based on the state’s population). Those electorates vote on a winner-take-all basis: whoever wins the popular vote gets all the state’s electoral votes. Thus, it’s possible — and has happened in the past — that elected presidents did not win the popular vote.

On this day, March 2, 1877, Rutheford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the presidential election and the 19th President of the United States. Hayes received around 4 million votes, compared to his opponent Samuel J Tilden’s 4.2 million.

Hayes’s election was also disputed by the electoral count. Because of political skulduggery, the results of three states were in wide dispute, and a committee of Congress comprised of 7 democrats and 7 republicans met to decide to allocate the twenty votes, and thus declare a winner. Further skulduggery replaced one of the democratic members with a republican Supreme Court Justice, and all 8 republicans gave the votes to Hayes.