For as long as they’ve been held, presidential elections have always stood out among the annual gladhanding and vote-scrounging that mark democracy in action. But they sure have changed.

Look, for instance, at the Nov. 9, 1864, issue of The Daily Evening Journal in Lewiston — an early predecessor of today’s Sun Journal – that carried news of President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection.

The paper wasn’t exactly nonpartisan in those days.

“The Glorious Victory” read the headline over what amounted to a front-page editorial that began, “The hard-fought contest is over, and the Republic is nobly on her feet. [Confederate President] Jefferson Davis in Richmond never had so terrible a blow to his cause as was struck Tuesday by the silent and yet speechful bullets of an indignant people.”

A more newsy but equally biased story elsewhere on the front page carried the headline “The Old Ship of State Safely Out of the Breakers. Abraham Lincoln Re-elected President of the United States By an Overwhelming Margin.”

“Let the Friends of Union Rejoice,” it added in a subhead.

By the time Wednesday’s paper came out, many residents already knew the results thanks to an innovation that spread the news more quickly than a printing press: the telegraph.

On Election Night, Lewiston’s telegraph office, located in the Journal building at the time, “was the scene of the most hilarious rejoicing” as a “silver-voiced” operator “gave echo to the unknown tongue of the telegraph” as it brought details of the returns from around the country.

The dispatches brought sorrow to the Copperheads in Lewiston who hoped to see Lincoln ousted and brought joy to what the paper called “the better ore” who wanted a second term for the first Republican president.

Those favoring the Democratic contender, Gen. George McClellan, “withdrew their diminished heads as the returns came in,” the Journal reported.

One unidentified wag told the departing Democrats, “The only state we will give you is the State of Despair.”

The victors stuck around at the telegraph office late into the night as the magnitude of Lincoln’s win became ever clearer.

Inside, the paper reported that 97-year-old John Richards of Durham, able to “get in and out of his carriage without assistance,” cast his ballot for Lincoln.

Richards’ first vote for president? John Adams in 1796. He proudly declared he’d voted in every presidential election since.

THE 1868 ELECTION

The Journal’s delight at Lincoln’s victory seems almost paltry, though, compared to its full-throated roar of happiness at Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s win four years later.

The headline that day: “Peace! Grant! Victory! All Hail Grant, President Elect!”

“The people breathe easier,” the Journal said in its news story about the results. “The great battle has been fought and victory won!”

The Journal said that in Lewiston, it had always been the custom to invite someone from each party “to witness the counting of the votes at the close of the polls,” but when the time for counting came on Election Night in one ward “not a Democrat was found who could read and the custom was laid aside from necessity.”

To help people learn of the results, the Journal paid for a public gathering of Grant supporters at a club where they could follow the returns as they came in on Election Night.

“Although the enterprise cost us a very considerable sum, we were amply repaid in the general joy over the good news,” the paper said.

The 1876 ELECTION

About the time the polls closed, it began to rain buckets and buckets of freezing water.

Yet crowds jammed into the political headquarters in Auburn and Lewiston, as well as wedging into every spare bit of the Journal’s office, determined to know whether Republican Rutherford B. Hayes would squeeze out a victory.

For hours, the crowds “were unusually quiet,” the Journal said, with “both sides dreading to hear bad news and comprehending that adverse results were not impossible.”

As it began to seem that Democrat Samuel Tilden had won, GOP stalwarts slipped away and Democrats, for the first time in two decades, found reason to cheer as bits of news showed he’d done well.

“Their pent-up enthusiasm began to flow like a flood,” the Journal said, adding they could hardly be blamed for cherishing success.

“Never since war days have we seen so deep and widespread an interest,” the paper said, with Democrats celebrating into the next day at their apparent win.

And yet, in the end, the presidential elections results were exceedingly close. Tilden won the popular vote, but Hayes managed to cut a deal with some of his foes and wound up with the win — at the price of ending Reconstruction in the South, a blow that Black Americans did not recover from for nearly a century.

THE 1884 ELECTION

In Maine, at least, this was a seriously big presidential election as home state hero James Blaine held the Republican line on the ballot nationwide, the only time a Mainer has been the presidential nominee of a major party.

And it was oh so close.

A heavy rain fell on Election Night, with crowds nonetheless gathering at a skating rink downtown, where the Journal posted incoming news, and at many other spots as well. A big group stood at Auburn Hall in “rubber coats with dripping umbrellas.”

All of them waiting for something definitive.

But that night, there was no clear winner. “A vague uncertainty of doubt” hung over everyone, the paper reported.

Still, the Journal thought Blaine probably had it in the bag, though, a case of wishful thinking, no doubt.

Ten men stuck it out in the Journal’s counting room to see for themselves, but morning came, and the outcome remained in doubt.

“I’ll be hanged if I go home until I can tell my wife that the nation is safe,” one of them said.

It took days before it became obvious that Blaine fell a little short, propelling Grover Cleveland into office for the first of two non-consecutive terms as the nation’s chief executive.

THE 1920 ELECTION

The Journal reported that Democrats were “scarce as hens” at the polls in Auburn and vastly reduced in number in Lewiston as both towns went heavily for Republican Warren Harding.

One man, 39-year-old Joseph LaPointe, got “a bit too hilarious in his celebration” of the win. He wound up paying a $5 fine for being intoxicated on Court Street soon after the news got around of the big GOP win.

THE 1924 ELECTION

This year marked the first presidential election since Lincoln that many got their news from something other than telegraph reports relayed through newspapers in some way.

Radio had arrived.

But the Journal wasn’t quite ready to give up. It got a stereopticon to broadcast pictures of the results as they came in onto the side of a Park Street building where hundreds of people could see them in real time.

In freezing wind, the newspaper reported, the operators of its picture-broadcasting machine stood outside until 11 p.m. when they could finally show an image declaring that former Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge had swept into office.

Even so, the Journal noted that the huge crowds that once surrounded its office for breaking news straight off the Associated Press wire no longer gathered to find out if Coolidge would win.

They could just listen to the radio. For those who didn’t have their own sets, the new stations set up listening venues, helping spur demand for more radios.

THE 1936 ELECTION

In 1936, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced his first reelection battle, the Journal carried the news of his win under this headline: “Roosevelt Carries All States But Maine, Vermont.”

While FDR fell short in Maine, he easily won Lewiston, capturing every district in the city. Auburn, always far more Republican, backed Alf Landon by a narrow margin. It even gave seven votes to the Communist Party candidate.

THE 1960 ELECTION

On a cold day with plenty of sunshine, voters turned out in record numbers in Lewiston and beyond to cast ballots in the contest between Vice President Richard Nixon and U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The Lewiston Daily Sun noted the long lines of voters at every polling place.

At the Lewiston Armory, the vote proved so heavy that its ballot box got so stuffed to the brim that by late afternoon it could hold no more.

The election officer for the ward, Lucien Lebel, asked City Hall to send over another one to handle the excess – a request that election officials said they’d never seen before.

The day ended with a sweeping win in Maine for all the GOP’s candidates, led by U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, who set a record for statewide votes as she defeated Lucia Cormier in the first-ever U.S. Senate race between two women.

“You’ve heard of people riding in on candidates’ coat tails,” Nixon said during the campaign. “Here in Maine, we’re hanging on as hard as we can to Margaret’s skirts.”

THE 2008 ELECTION

“It’s Obama,” proclaimed a headline in the next day’s Sun Journal.

Gwen Alimondi of Auburn was among the majority in Maine who voted for Barack Obama.

“He’s going to be a good president,” she told the paper, “and there needs to be a change. I think he’s a strong person that will do better than our last president.:

THE 2016 ELECTION

Kathy Grant of Lewiston didn’t want to talk about who she voted for because the election raised too much ire in her family.

But she told the Sun Journal on Election Day that the campaign was “too long, too dragged out and too nasty,” reflecting widespread sentiment in a race narrowly won by Republican Donald Trump.

“I’m just tired of the whole thing,” Deborah Powell of Lewiston said at the polls. She called the election “the worst ever.”

Lewiston backed Democrat Hillary Clinton, who also won the state, but a slim majority for Trump in a few key states put him in the White House despite falling far short of Clinton in the overall popular vote.

THE 2020 ELECTION

In an election held in the middle of one of the nation’s worst pandemics, voters lined up six feet apart at the polls to cast ballots that would decide if Trump would remain as president.

In another close contest, Democrat Joe Biden emerged the victor, with the support of voters in Lewiston and statewide.

THE 2024 ELECTION

What will happen on Tuesday when Trump seeks to regain the country’s top office over Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris remains an open question. The one sure thing is that voters will, as they have since Richards cast a ballot for John Adams, head to the polls and make a choice.

Adams’ foe Thomas Jefferson, who together became pen pals late in life, urged Americans to cast their ballots.

“We do not have government by the majority,” Jefferson observed. “We have government by the majority who participate.”

Lincoln had a more cynical notion.

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision,” he said. “If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”