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Senator Plumer’s Surprise Electoral Vote

1820

Former Sen. William Plumer of New Hampshire casts his electoral vote for John Quincy Adams rather than James Monroe, to whom he was pledged. Accounts vary about Plumer’s motivation; he is reported to have said he thought that only George Washington “deserved a unanimous election” but biographers also report that he wanted to draw attention to his friend Adams as a potential president and to “protest against the wasteful extravagance of the Monroe Administration.”