Ghosts of past elections

Election days across America used to be joyous holidays, when businesses closed and politicians handed out “fire water” and campaign pie — a loaf of sweet bread with raisins, figs and spices — to buy votes. Newspapers from the 1700s paint an amorphous picture—like ghosts or memories of past elections—filled with lively voting parades for local courts, drinking and brawling, processional drumming and dancing.

In colonial America, the electorate—predominantly only white Protestant landowners—

voted “viva voce” or by voice

for all to hear, History.com reports.

Even George Washington

The first American president, emphasized potential voters

at his Mount Vernon estate with 47 gallons of beer, 35 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of cider, nearly 4 pints of brandy, and 70 gallons of rum punch in 1758. He ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses, the nation’s first democratically elected legislature in the British American colonies, History.com reports.

He won the election with 310 votes.

In 1857, Democrats drove voters to the polls with promises of payment like “cattle to the market,” reported St. Paul Weekly Minnesotan. By 1880, allegations of voter fraud and bribery filled almost every political campaign published in the newspapers.

The illegal vote in Minneapolis was orchestrated by hard-line politicians fighting petitions to hire more police officers. “In fact, this is the only way to effectively suppress illegal voting. A large number of special deputies are required on election day to make these arrests,” reported the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1880.

Court cases from the same year reported that votes were bought for $20, equivalent to $618 today. A total of 304 charges of voter fraud from the Twin Cities were brought before Congress in 1880, including the cases of Louis N. Gaynor, Peter Engberg, John Smith, Peter Quady, and many others. Many testified that they sold their votes for $20 to $35, according to St. Paul Globe.

And many refused to name their benefactors.

That same year in North Dakota, the Bismarck Tribune reminded readers that any intimidation or bribery used to influence an election could be subject to a $1,000 fine.

Corporations such as the old Minnesota Iron Company in the mid-19th century required their workers to present their already completed ballots with a small red card certifying that they “could not read or write English” and that they wished to vote directly. the Republican ticket, according to the Duluth Rip-Saw in 1924.

On Election Day 1886, North Dakota newspapers reported that English, German, and Scandinavian speakers were making silly speeches in Cooperstown, North Dakota.

“Eat apples, smoked cigars and some ‘fire water’ down under the hill for votes,” reported the Cooperstown Courier on November 5, 1886.

A year later, the fun and mayhem of Election Day is over in Minnesota. North Dakota soon followed suit.

In 1887, Minnesota passed laws that prohibited cities with a population of more than 12,000 from selling alcoholic beverages near polling places. Electoral judges and clerks were also no longer allowed to drink. According to St. Paul Globe and Minneapolis Star Tribune, a conviction was punishable by a $100 fine or up to 60 days in prison.

Good manners and privacy behind the voting curtain came with the Australian ballot, more commonly known as the secret ballot. Shortly after the 1884 presidential election, and ending with Kentucky in 1891, the government began deploying the secret ballot, which quickly became the preferred method, according to newspaper reports.

“The Australian ballot is a secret ballot, and we adopted it in this country to protect American citizens’ right to vote their conscience without being fired or prosecuted,” St. Paul Globe in 1896.

“Without the secret ballot, the voter would be subject to the coercive influence of the owner, creditor and employer. Prior to the adoption of the Australian system, such coercive effects were not uncommon,” reported the Duluth Rip-Saw in 1924.

For many politicians of the late 19th century, the secret ballot, which was no longer distributed by political parties but by the government, had an ulterior motive. The Civil War freed black slaves and gave them the right to vote like all free people, but in 1870, 11 percent of white males and 80 percent of black males could not read or write, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“The motives of state legislatures for adopting the new system varied, but in the South the secret ballot was fraught with disenfranchisement and temptation. Literacy tests were an obvious attempt to eliminate black and poor voters, but so was the written, printed Australian secret ballot that had to be read.”

Institute of Advanced Technologies in the Humanities

reported

In 1892, the Arkansas Democratic Party’s campaign song was called “The Australian Ballot” and was sung to the tune of “Bonnie Blue Flag,” the marching anthem of the Confederacy.

One stanza of the lyrics caused alarm:

“The ballot in Australia works like a charm,

It makes them think and scratch,

And when the nigger gets the ballot,

He certainly found a suitable one…”

Public schooling began to improve literacy rates, and by 1900 only 6 percent of white males and 45 percent of black males were illiterate, according to a 2021 University of Michigan study.

After 70 years of struggle,

women’s suffrage became law

in 1920. And while the total population of the Fargo-Moorhead area was 27,681, “the suffragette women of the Northern Plains and western United States were among the first to fight for the right to vote. “, reports The Forum.

In Fargo, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union met in the old depot that formerly housed the Fargo Park District offices.

Although women gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920, Native American women did not gain the same right until four years later. Immigrant Chinese women had to wait until 1943, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African-American women the right to vote, The Forum reported.

Although the secret ballot quickly became the preferred method of voting, polling stations began to report a decline in turnout, a departure from earlier, more turbulent times when almost everyone went to the polls.

“Many voters who were no longer being paid to vote responded by abstaining,” says economist Jack. K. Heckelman, who also reported this

about 75% of states recorded a drop of 8.2%.

voter turnout immediately after the secret ballot became law.

Not all politicians liked secret voting. According to the Weekly Times-Record, petitions were circulated throughout North Dakota in 1919 to collect signatures to abolish the secret ballot with House Bill 60 to “open the election to unscrupulous politicians and crooks.”

“Once you remove the element of secrecy from the ballot, you can put a market value on the vote,” the Weekly Times-Record reported.

North Dakota’s winter weather has also occasionally been a problem for voter turnout. In 1996, a “miserable” and “howling” snowstorm prevented many North Dakotans from voting on Election Day, even “with the readily available mail-in ballot,” according to the Bismarck Tribune.

Today, the secret ballot is considered a “cornerstone of modern democracy,” ending the Gilded Age while opening the door to the Progressive Era by reducing electoral violence, intimidation and bribery, according to the Congressional Research Institute.