Harvard History Professor Jill Lepore has an essay on the history of the government-printed ballot in the United States, in The New Yorker Magazine of October 13. It is a substantial article, covering six pages, yet it does not mention the point that abuse of the government-printed ballot in the United States has deprived voters of their right to vote freely for the candidate of their choice, in many instances.
Government-printed ballots in the U.S. began in 1888. Before 1888, it was impossible for any state government to prevent a voter from voting for anyone he wished. Since then, government-printed ballots have sometimes been used to prevent people from voting for presidential candidates who were so important, they carried other states in the electoral college. This list of presidential candidates who carried some states in the electoral college, and yet were off the ballot in certain other states in which they had tried to get on, includes:
1. Theodore Roosevelt (Oklahoma 1912)
2. William Howard Taft (California, South Dakota 1912)
3. Robert La Follette (Louisiana 1924)
4. Strom Thurmond (Oklahoma, Maryland, Indiana 1948)
5. Harry Truman (Alabama 1948)
6. Lyndon Johnson (Alabama 1964)
7. George Wallace (D.C. 1968)
Also, Charles Evans Hughes would have been off the ballot in Louisiana in 1916 if he had not been put on the ballot by court order.
The Lepore essay also has a factual error on another subject. It says, “In this fall’s Presidential election, every citizen who is 18 or older – except, in some states, prisoners and felons – will be eligible to vote.” This sentence is not true. U.S. citizens who reside in U.S. territorial possessions may not vote in this fall’s Presidential election. Furthermore, persons who have been adjudged mentally incompetent may not vote at all in most states.
Although I think Oklahoma and South Dakota voted for individual electors in 1912. The results they post from Oklahoma make that point. But i’d guess Roosevelt would have tried to get access. Plus, the Progressives got access after 1912 for an election or two in Oklahoma.
I know Oklahoma stopped picking electors in primaries after Henry Irwin in 1960. But I’m not sure when they stopped voting directly on electors.
Theodore Roosevelt and the Oklahoma Progressive Party filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court to get on the ballot, but it lost.
Oklahoma stopped letting voters vote for individual presidential electors sometime between the 1924 election and the 1928 election.
I read that all of TR’s electoral votes in South Dakota were from W.H. Taft GOP electors who announced they were supporting TR instead of Taft. Also, in 1968, Governor Wallace tried to get on the ballot in D.C. He needed 6,500 signatures and only got about 6,000.
In 1912, in South Dakota and California, the Roosevelt electors were chosen by the state Republican parties. The South Dakota electors were chosen by the Republican state convention with a stated intent to support Roosevelt.
There was also a Republican elector in Kansas(?) who stated that he would vote for Roosevelt if the Republican electors were elected.
In California, the electors were chosen by party primary. Hiram Johnson, Roosevelt’s running mate, was governor of California, and promoted the election of Roosevelt-supporting electors. At that time, there was no California provision for independent presidential candidates, and the Taft supporters failed in their effort to create a new party (in part because voters in the primary could not join a new party). Taft supporters were able to write in the names of 13 elector candidates, but this wasn’t very successful. Some Taft supporters encouraged a vote for Wilson in protest.
Because individual electors were voted on in California, and a voter could strike off elector candidates he didn’t like, there were two Wilson electors chosen. The results of the presidential were contested, and there were allegations that some precinct clerks had hurredly made a tally mark next to the name of the first elector on a tally sheet, rather than the name of all of the electors.
Thanks to the commenters for excellent extra relevant details. Especially thanks to #3 for reminding me about D.C. and George Wallace in 1968. I amended the post to include that example.
Wallace tried to get on in DC in 1968? Really? I admire his determination, but what exactly was the point?
Use of the Australian ballot in the United States (in statewide elections) was first proposed in 1888. It passed in Massachusetts, but, as noted by Lepore, was vetoed by Governor David Hill in New York.
What she failed to note was that another reason that Hill had vetoed the bill was because he said it would eliminate the liberty of an individual voter to nominate any person for office by writing their name on the ballot. Those who advocated the Australian ballot made the argument that the standards for ballot access in the bill were so modest that it was no barrier at all, and that voters could also write in the name of a candidate. They further argued that the Australian ballot would, in fact, spare small parties and independent candidates the expense of printing their own ballots, making it easier for them to compete.
The South Australia legislation that had first brought government-printed ballots to the world required but two signatures for a nomination to be made, those of a proposer and seconder.
One early corruption of the Australian ballot in the United States was provision for party nominations, and the incorporation of the form of the party-printed ballot into the government-printed ballot. In extreme cases, each party’s nominees were listed in entirely separate sections of the ballot. In other cases, each ballot was on a separate sheet of paper (or ticket), with sections for each office. A voter could either simply deposit one party’s ticket in an envelope to vote a straight ticket, or tear off sections to vote for selected candidates. Elsewhere the party column was adopted, making it as easy for a voter to vote for all the candidates of a party as it had been for him to accept a party ballot from a ballot peddler. It also made it easy for observers to determine whether a voter had quickly voted a straight ticket, or had taken the time to choose selected candidates.
One advantage of voter-prepated ballots was that a voter could carefully prepare his ballot at home, place it in his vest pocket and then take it the polling place the next morning. Government-printed ballots were available only at the polling place, and if a voter wished to write-in a candidate, they would have to do it in a poorly lit polling booth, likely standing up, and perhaps without a writing utensil in hand. They might not be allowed to have a sheet of paper with the correct spelling of “Comptroller”. If there were a waiting line, a voter might feel pressured not to carefully consider their choices or take the time to vote for a write-in candidate.
Inclusion of party tickets within the government-printed ballots meant that instead of party toughs from political gangs preventing delivery of bundles of party ballots to voters (as had happened with George Kyle), lawyers and activists from political gangs sought to prevent inclusion of party tickets within the ballot. At least Liz Holtzman never had to kill anyone.
Government-printed ballots meant that candidates would have to file some time before the election, especially if elections were conducted by the Secretary of State. For example, in 1919, Indiana required candidates to file 3 weeks (sic) before the election. Generally, independent candidates were permitted to file their petitions some time after the filing deadline for party nominations, so that voters disatisfied with who was nominated by the politicians could support someone else.
Truman in 1948 and Johnson in 1964 weren’t listed on the Alabama ballot at all? I had thought that one or both of them was on the Alabama ballot as an independent.
Henry Winter Davis was elected on November 8, 1859 (not on November 2, which was the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 1858). While a few states had adopted the presidential election date for congressional elections, most had not. Maryland, like many states, particularly in the South, held their congressional elections in the odd-numbered year, following the beginning of the congressional term, but prior to the customary beginning of the session in December. Holding an election in November of the even year meant that representatives would be chosen before the lame duck session, and over a year before they actually met in Congress.
The election was 3 weeks after John Brown’s raid on the US Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Maryland. This may have enflamed passions more than the form of the ballots used in the election.
Davis received 10,068 votes to Harrison’s 2,796 votes, so it wasn’t a close election at all.
Republicans did not quite have a majority in the 36th Congress, which spent its first two months in session, attempting to elect a Speaker. On the 43rd ballot, Davis switched candidates to back William Pennington (R-NJ), becoming the 116th vote in his favor. On the 44th ballot, the 117th vote and a majority was secured.
For his vote in Congress, Henry Winter Davis was formally censured by the Democrat-controlled Maryland Legislature for consorting with the Black Republicans.
About a week later, the contest of his seat in Congress was filed.
Davis’s election in 1857 had also been contested (Davis had won 10,515 to 3,979). In that contest there had been a roll call vote in the House on a vote governing the procedure to be used in invesigating the conduct of the election. All Republicans, and all Americans, along with 17 cross-over Democrats voted in favor of using the procedure set out in law in 1851, where the contestant and contestee would jointly take depositions and present their evidence to Congress. Those in the minority on this vote had favored Congress sending investigators to Baltimore. After this, and the passage of some time, the Elections Committee asked to be discharged from further consideration of the contest.
Humphrey was on the Alabama November 1968 ballot as the candidate of two minor parties. But Johnson was completely off the ballot in Alabama in 1964, as was Truman in that state in 1948. The Alabama law at the time required independents to file in May. Truman was on as an independent in Mississippi and Louisiana. In South Carolina, there were still no government-printed ballots as late as 1948, so Truman forces just printed up private ballots for him and distributed them, the same as all the parties in South Carolina did at the time. South Carolina got government-printed ballots in 1950.