Talk:1858–59 United States House of Representatives elections

Late elections
On the 1858 House Election page, on the main table with the states and results, there is a bar reading "Late elections (after the March 4, 1859 beginning of the term)." While I'm open to various forms of change, this bar's text is inaccurate. These elections were not "late" - that is simply false, that word is not correct - and if you go to history.house.gov you'll see that no "term" of anything, Congress or otherwise, began on that date. Congress meets in sessions, not terms, and the dates of those meetings are listed on history.house.gov.— 67.61.34.163 (talk) 06:18, 20 February 2019 (UTC)BJE


 * I think this is a minor distinction and we can resolve it. I understand what you're saying, but my writing "late" is not actually "false."  Your position would be more on-point in the ordinal congress articles (e.g., 35th United States Congress).  But the election articles are just about their terms in office, not really about how Congress functions re: sessions.  That's why I sometimes mention "after the term began but before Congress convened" (see, e.g., 1820 and 1821 United States House of Representatives elections).  The only relevant date for THIS article is the March 3-to-4 term change. —GoldRingChip 13:19, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

"Election Day" and invention of Telegraph
Congress funded ($30 K, a chunk of change) the Baltimore-Washington telegraph test in 1843 and it says so on the page for that topic. There absolutely is a direct connection, pun intended, between the famous success of that test and Congress legislating Election Day in January 1845 for the one election that the telegraph would otherwise spoil: that for President. Contemporary people were not stupid and easily foresaw that instantaneous communications among multiple states would wreck a Presidential election held on different days - but also enabled it to be coordinated like never before! The same danger doesn't hold for elections happening within state boundaries, mooting any Constitutional issue. For example, it doesn't matter a lot if Mississippi and Alabama choose their Congressmen three months apart, because they're fundamentally separate sets of Congressmen anyway, but once you have the telegraph, it's insupportable that they would vote for President three months apart, with one state knowing beforehand how the other voted. The telegraph was one of the most revolutionary technologies imaginable at the time. It was mind-bending in the world of the 1840s that someone on Boston could message someone in New Orleans instantaneously and that definitely affected elections.— 67.61.34.163 (talk) 06:18, 20 February 2019 (UTC)BJE


 * The telelgraph connection (good pun, BTW), is interesting and worth developing — I agree. I didn't know about it and I actually learned about it when I read your edits.  But it's just unnecessary in the footnote of this table.  Maybe put it in the lede or in a new section of a single election article, perhaps the one immediately after enactment, and then just link back to it. —GoldRingChip 13:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Whigs
https://history.house.gov/Institution/Party-Divisions/Party-Divisions/ does not show the whigs as winning anything. Also, if you add all the parties members together, it equals 1 more that there should be. Subtracting the 4 whigs and adding 3 republicans (like my source says) would fix that. Also, my source says there were 8 Anti-Lecompton Democrats and no Anti-Administration ones.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:1788 and 1789 United States House of Representatives elections which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:18, 19 November 2022 (UTC)