Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: presidential elections

"GOP, Generation Of Peace, 1972. Thank you for your support." A block of political campaign stamps given to supporters and potential donors by Richard Nixon during his run for a second term as U.S. president in 1972. "GOP" refers here to "Generation of Peace," a phrase that Nixon used in speeches about ending American involvement in the Vietnam War, but it also means "Grand Old Party," which, of course, is another name for the Republican Party .

This blotter, depicting a boisterous political character named the "Hon. I. Save-on Gas," was part of a Depression-era advertising campaign for Amoco's "Orange American Gas." With the approach of the 1932 U.S. presidentital election pitting Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover against New York Democratic governor Franklin D. Roosevelt., Amoco encouraged motorists to "Vote the Economy Ticket!" and buy its orange gasoline. The gasoline was actually dyed orange so that motorists could identify it by color through the clear glass cylinders that were part of the gas pumps of the time. I'm not sure how Amoco's Economy Ticket fared, but voters ended up choosing Roosevelt over Hoover as president.

"Heed youth's call--vote as you think but vote! November 6, 1956. Use your freedom to vote. Boys Scouts of America. Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge." The printed text on the other side of this doorknob hanger includes the title "The American Way of Life," a list of "political and economic rights which protect the dignity and freedom of the individual," and another reminder to "Keep your freedom—vote!" According to "Boy Scouts to Leave Vote Pleas at 35,000,000 Homes," an article in the Gettysburg Times (Gettysburg, Pa.), Oct. 25, 1956, p. 1, Scouts planned to distribute 35 million Liberty Bell hangers prior to the presidential election on November 6: "The nation's 4,175,134 Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Explorers, and adult leaders will climax their nationwide Get-Out-the-Vote campaign beginning Saturday, November 3. On that day and on Monday, November 5, they will call on a total of 35,000,000 homes and leave on front doorknobs a Liberty Bell hanger urging citizens to vote. "They have been conducting a nonpartisan campaign, without reference to any candidate or party. It has been sponsored jointly with Freedom Foundations, Inc., of Valley Forge." After all the votes were tallied on November 6, it turned out that incumbent Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower had won re-election and defeated his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson.

"Will you help make November 6th, 1940, a day of thanksgiving, or will you make it a day of mourning? Save our Constitution! Uphold the precepts of our republic! No third term!" This small card was a protest against U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's run for an unheard-of third term in office during the 1940 presidential election . Although the U.S. Constitution did not specify how many four-year terms a president could serve, George Washington, the first president, informally set a precedent for a two-term limit when he refused to run for a third term. Roosevelt, however, disregarded precedent, won a third term in 1940, and then a fourth term in 1944 before he died in office in 1945. As a result, the U.S. Congress set a two-term limit in 1947 by passing the Twenty-second Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified by the states in 1951.

Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew, running in the 1968 U.S. presidential election as the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates, used the popularity of cartoonist Charles Shultz's animated television special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (first broadcast in 1966), to suggest that even the Great Pumpkin --the Halloween equivalent of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny--would cast a vote for them. Campaign workers evidently canvassed neighborhoods and placed pumpkin doorknob hangers like this one on the front doors of potential voters. Since the election that year was on November 5, the pumpkins served as a holiday-themed message at the end of October to remind voters to go to the polls. The Great Pumpkin was looking out for Nixon and Agnew, and they won the election.