Earlier Examples of Electoral Fraud
Much analysis went into showing how the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were stolen. More on them below, but first some earlier examples.
One was the 1824 election known as the "Corrupt Bargain." Four major candidates were involved — all from the same Democratic-Republican party, today's Democrats:
- Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford — President James Monroe's favorite;
- Speaker of the House Henry Clay;
- Andrew Jackson — a former general and Tennessee senator later elected the nation's seventh president in 1828; and
- John Quincy Adams — son of John Adams, the nation's second president.
When votes of the 24 states were tallied, no winner emerged. Jackson led with 42%. Adams trailed with 32%, and Clay and Crawford had 13% each. In the electoral count, Jackson had 99, 32 short of a majority. Adams trailed with 84, Crawford 41 and Clay 37. Under the 12th Amendment, it fell to the House to choose a winner from the top three, so in the run-up to the March inauguration day, lobbying and back room bargaining were furious. In the process, Clay won over western states for Adams even though they voted solidly for Jackson. He even got his own Kentucky home state's votes where Adams was entirely shut out.
On February 9th, 1825, the House met to vote, and after a month of hard-bargaining, Adams took 13 states or the exact minimum he needed to win. Jackson got 7 and Crawford 4. The House galleries were outraged and with good reason. Deal-makers won out, not voters, and three days later Adams rewarded Clay by nominating him for Secretary of State. Jackson supporters were furious, and Clay was dogged for the rest of his life with charges of having struck a "corrupt bargain."
The 1876 election was even worse because of its fallout. Democrat Samuel Tilden got today's equivalent of two million more votes than Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But in all presidential elections, electoral college votes are decisive. With 20 disputed votes uncounted, Tilden led 184 to 165 so a House committee got to decide. It secretly struck a deal, called the "bargain of 1877," to abandon Reconstruction and sell out freed blacks:
- Democrats controlled the House;
- they agreed not to obstruct Hayes' election even though he lost;
- Hayes, in turn, agreed to recognize Democrat control of the disputed southern states;
- railroad interests got federal aid; and
- former slaves were to be guaranteed their rights, but southern Democrats reneged; the era of Jim Crow, segregation, lynchings, and disenfranchisement began and didn't end until the 1960s civil rights legislation - but not entirely, and today Voting Rights Act provisions no longer protect.
Another example was Lyndon Johnson's 1948 senatorial primary win — the most blatant example of electoral theft in US history according to some observers. Historian Robert Caro is one of them. He documented it in the second of his planned four-volume study of our 36th President. He noted that ballot fraud was common in parts of Texas at the time, then went into great detail to show how Johnson miraculously overcame a 20,000 vote deficit to pull out an 87 vote victory. In Caro's words: it wasn't "the only election....ever stolen, but there was never such brazen thievery." The Texas Democrat Party's executive committee upheld the win by a 29 to 28 vote, and Johnson went on to defeat his Republican rival in the general election.
But there was more. The primary result was so disputed that a Federal District Court ordered Johnson's name off the ballot pending an investigation. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, however, voided the order on a petition from Johnson's chief lawyer, Abe Fortas. In 1965 as President, Johnson rewarded Fortas by appointing him to the High Court where he served for four years, then resigned under pressure for having accepted a secret $20,000 a year retainer from a Wall Street financier in return for unspecified advice. No mention was made of how he helped launch Johnson's senatorial career that made him Majority Leader, Vice-President and then President.
Another example involved partisan gerrymandering, not outright fraud, but in the end little different. The process is a form of redistricting that goes back to Elbridge Gerry (one of the Founding Fathers) who as Massachusetts governor in 1812 signed a bill into law that redistricted the state to benefit his Democratic-Republican party, today's Democrats.
States may redistrict legislative district boundaries to reflect decennial census population changes. But individual ones have latitude under their own standards provided they comply with federal requirements. In addition, municipal governments elected on a district basis, as opposed to at large, go through the same process. Criteria may allow for compact, contiguous districts, keeping political units and communities within a single one, and not drawing boundaries for partisan advantage or incumbent protection. All too often, however, one-party dominated legislatures abuse the process, and in 2003 it happened notoriously in Texas under Tom DeLay's leadership.
As Republican Majority Leader, he engineered a virtual coup d'etat against Democrats in his home state — one of the most outlandish examples of gerrymandering ever. It gave Republicans more control. They elected additional members to Congress, and thus got a greater majority in Washington.
The essential rules are to redistrict every decade, but DeLay took advantage of Texas law that contains no prohibition against doing it mid-decade. Democrats challenged his action. It went to the Supreme Court, and on June 28th, 2006 the High Court upheld most of what he designed. It rejected Democrats' contention that the Texas plan was unconstitutional because the legislature redistricted three years after the 2000 census solely to advantage Republicans when they had a voting majority to do it.
Ahead of the Court ruling, Columbia Law School Professor Samuel Issacharoff (now at NYU) referred to "a sense of embarrassment about what happened in American politics. The rules of decorum have fallen apart. Voters no longer choose members of the House; the people who draw the lines do," and when they rig the process democracy becomes fantasy.
That characterized the South post-Reconstruction when Jim Crow laws stripped blacks of their voting rights and gave regional Democrats decades of one-party rule. Then recall the 1960 presidential election that Kennedy won over Nixon in spite of charges of fraud and vote buying. The race was close with Kennedy getting 113,000 more votes than Nixon, and his 303 - 219 electoral vote margin masked the fact that key states like Texas, Illinois and others could have gone either way.
As mayor, Richard J. Daley controlled Chicago politics, and it was widely believed that he turned an election eve Nixon lead into a Kennedy win by holding back a large number of precinct results that coincidentally reported later at the same time for Kennedy. After his inauguration, the Department of Justice conducted an "inconclusive" investigation. As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy was in charge at the time.
A Brief History of US Voting Rights
- the 1787 Constitution and 1791 Bill of Rights gave only adult white male property owners (around 15% of the population) the franchise in most states; excluded were men with no property, women, slaves, some free black men, Native Americans, apprentices, laborers, felons and persons considered incompetent for whatever reasons;
- in 1810, the last religious prerequisite was eliminated;
- in 1850, property ownership and tax requirements no longer applied;
- in 1855, Connecticut adopted the first literacy test for voting; Massachusetts followed in 1857; Mississippi and other southern states did as well;
- in 1870, the 15th Amendment gave freed slaves and adult males of all races the right to vote;
- in 1889, Florida adopted a poll tax; 10 other southern states followed;
- in 1913, the 17th Amendment allowed voters to elect senators; previously, state legislatures did it;
- in Guinn v. United (1915), the Supreme Court ruled that grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests violated the 15th Amendment and were unconstitutional;
- in 1920, the 19th Amendment gave women the franchise;
- in 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted all Native Americans citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections;
- in Smith v. Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court ruled that all-white primaries were unconstitutional;
- in 1957, the first voting rights bill since Reconstruction passed — the Civil Rights Act of 1957; because of Democrat opposition, it was largely ineffective;
- in Gormillion v. Lightfoot (1960), the Supreme Court ruled that a gerrymandered Alabama district unconstitutionally disenfranchised blacks;
- in 1961, the 23rd Amendment let District of Columbia voters participate in presidential elections; it didn't grant statehood or allow representation in Congress;
- in 1964, the 24th Amendment banned poll taxes in federal elections;
- in 1965, the Voting Rights Act protected minority voter rights and banned literacy test requirements;
- in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), the Supreme Court banned poll taxes in all elections; the same year, it upheld the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach;
- in 1970, the Voting Rights Act renewal banned literacy requirements for five years; at the time, 18 states still had them; in Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upheld the ban, made permanent in 1975;
- in 1971, the 26th Amendment standardized the minimum voting age at 18 but let states enfranchise younger voters;
- in Dunn v. Blumstein (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that lengthy residence requirements of over 30 - 50 days prior to state and local elections were unconstitutional;
- in 1995, federal "motor voter laws" let prospective voters register when they obtain or renew a driver's license; and
- in 2003, the Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act required states to streamline registration, voting, and other election procedures.
