The party suffered a schism at the 1896 Prohibition convention between the "narrow gauger" faction which only supported having an alcoholic prohibition plank in the party's platform and the "broad gauger" faction which supported the addition of free silver and women's suffrage planks. After the narrow gaugers successfully chose the presidential ticket and the party platform, the broad gaugers, led by former presidential nominee John St. John, Nebraska state chairman Charles Eugene Bentley, and suffragette Helen M. Gougar, walked out and create and created the breakaway National Party, nominating a rival ticket with Bentley as president and James H. Southgate as vice president. The Prohibition party ticket of Joshua Levering and Hale Johnson had the worst popular vote performance since Neal Dow's 10,364 votes in 1880, but still outperformed the National Party's 13,968 votes. Following the 1896 election most of the members of the National Party became disillusioned with that party and returned to the Prohibition party, but those who remained reformed into the Union Reform Party and supported Seth H. Ellis and Samuel Nicholson during the 1900 presidential election.