"Eugene V. Debs ran, but didn't win.", Captain Obvious. May the next person to run from jail have similar results.
Eugene V. Debs was in an Atlanta penitentiary, serving a ten-year sentence, when he lost the 1920 presidential election. Two years earlier, Debs, a labor leader, had spoken out against America’s involvement in World War I. He was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, after the prosecution argued that his antiwar speech obstructed military enrollment. The 1920 loss didn’t come as a surprise to Debs, who had run four times before. His fifth and final run, promoted with a campaign button that read “For President Convict No. 9653,” brought him nearly one million votes, says Claire Jerry, curator of political history at the National Museum of American History. President Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921.