A brief history of election "rigging" in the United States

[DSandra]

This article is a good read about the history of election manipulation in the U.S. Some excerpts...

"There was a rosy quality to this narrative. It imagined an American past in which voters went to the polls to peacefully cast their votes, gamely accepting the result even if it went against them. It was a narrative based on truth, but it was not the whole truth. The reality is that Trump’s conspiratorial way of thinking – his refusal to accept that the electoral system works in the way it claims to – is just as old as the alternative, rosy picture. The United States, by most measures, is the oldest mass democracy in the world – white men could vote almost without any property restrictions in most states as early as the 1810s, fully a century before the same was true in the UK (with the Representation of the People Act 1918). But its politics have always been rude and rumbustious – and, on occasion, rigged…"

"Election results in the 19th century were frequently contested, sometimes in the courts, but more often by appeals to the relevant legislature (at the state or federal level) who set up committees to investigate disputes among rival candidates. The hearings those committees held revealed amazing stories of the lengths that campaigns would go. For example, the practice of “cooping”, notoriously adopted by the Tammany Hall political machine in New York City, meant luring willing or unwilling men into a basement a day or two before the election, plying them with alcohol and food and then dragging them semi-conscious to the polling place on election morning."

"In Adams County, Ohio, in 1910, a judge brought to trial and convicted 1,690 voters – 26 percent of the whole electorate – for selling their votes. Especially in urban areas, political gangs openly used violence to carry elections. Isaiah Rynders was a notorious political boss and leader of the Empire Club in New York in the 1840s and 50s who led a heavily armed team of bruisers, smashing up opposition political meetings and patrolling the polling places to deter anyone who did not support their candidates. But he was far from alone. Also in New York, in 1853, a Democratic candidate for Congress, “Honest John” Kelly (the nickname was ironic), took an army of dock workers and volunteer firemen into a polling station on election day, smashed up the tables and tore up opposition ballots."

https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/a-brief-history-of-election-rigging-in-the-united-states/

[Hoyt]

1. Yep, rigged elections -- or claims of "I was robbed" -- are not new.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/donald-trump-2016-rigged-nixon-kennedy-1960-214395

[dchill]

2. The "good old days" - always a fallacy.