Eli Houston Murray, openly supported the Liberal Party, which generally opposed church candidates. The 1880 territory-wide election for a congressional delegate brought the Liberal Party unexpectedly close to sending a representative to Washington, DC. The Liberal candidate, Allen G. Campbell, with 1357 votes, lost resoundingly to Cannon, who had 18,567 votes. However, before Governor Murray certified the election, a protest on behalf of Campbell was filed. The protest listed a dozen claims, chiefly that Cannon, born in England, was not a naturalized citizen but an alien. The protest also claimed that Cannon's participation in polygamy was incompatible with federal law and a delegate's oath of office. Murray agreed and issued certification to Campbell, in spite of his poor showing. Cannon, in Washington at the time, argued that only Congress could decide on a member's qualifications. He furthermore received a certificate from sympathetic territorial election officials that stated he had received the most votes. That document convinced the House of Representatives clerk to enter Cannon's name on the roll and so Cannon began drawing the delegate's salary. Both Murray and Campbell traveled to Washington to dispute the seat. Each side battled over the position for over a year, even after the assassination of President James Garfield. On February 25, 1882, the House of Representatives finally rejected both candidates. The House refused Cannon his seat on the basis of his involvement in polygamy. In the end, the House seated John Thomas Caine as the Delegate during the 47th Congress. Caine went on to serve for several years. The issue brought unfavorable national attention to Utah, which contributed to the Edmunds Act being signed into law on March 23, 1882. The act reinforced the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act by declaring polygamy a felony and also revoked polygamists' right to vote, made them ineligible for jury service, and prohibited them from holding political office. Plural marriage Cannon practiced plural marriage and was married to six women. Cannon frequently spoke in justification of the practice. When the Supreme Court upheld the ban on plural marriage in the 1879 Reynolds v. United States decision, Cannon stated: Eventually, Cannon went "underground" with others in the church leadership as a fugitive from the federal authorities. In September 1888, Cannon surrendered himself and pleaded guilty at trial to charges of unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Act. As a result, Cannon served nearly six months in Utah's federal penitentiary. Cannon