Great piece as far as the history of electioneering in the early republic. It doees repeat a lot of conventional wisdom about the pernicious Democratic urban machines. I would add another section that looks at the fact that the urban political machines received a lot of negative attention in the press because the big money owners' papers of the WASP power structure had no love for the Catholic machines.
The Dem urban machines like Tammany actually provided for their working class communities - something the oligarchy detested and still does. Similar to the myth that the Kennedys were the only political family to have extramarital affairs.
The biggest powerbase within the US was positioned within Republican party. The oligarchy was firmly Republican for almost all of post-bellum US history and we could argue they still are given the current realignment. The old Ivy League, Skull & Bones WASP guard who ran the massive US industrial base - and crushed the south in the Civil War - ran the real machine. If they weren't considered "corrupt" its only because they wrote the laws and owned the biggest papers. Just like the Democrats now.
Yes, I agree with you completely. I have actually already written an article about the WASP upper class. Perhaps, I should have linked to it in this article:
When did we get the "secret" ballot? I know that in the 1880s, the voter chose a democratic or republican ballot, and deposited it in the box in view of the ward heelers hanging around. Later, they could tell whether you voted a straight ticket by how long you were in the voting booth (until recently, at least in Illinois, the straight ticket option was abolished.)
Yes, that is a really good point. I should have included that in the article.
Your chronology is roughly correct, although the US Constitution gives state governments control over elections, so the secret ballot was adopted at different times.
Wikipedia states:
"Before the final years of the 19th century, partisan newspapers printed filled-out ballots, which party workers distributed on election day so voters could drop them directly into the boxes. Individual states moved to secret ballots soon after the presidential election of 1884, finishing with Kentucky in 1891 when it quit using an oral ballot.
Initially, however, a state's new ballot did not necessarily have all four components of an "Australian ballot":
1) an official ballot being printed at public expense,
2) on which the names of the nominated candidates of all parties and all proposals appear,
3) being distributed only at the polling place and
4) being marked in secret.
Louisville, Kentucky, was the first city in the United States to adopt the Australian ballot... Seven states did not have government-printed ballots until the 20th century. Georgia started using them in 1922. When South Carolina followed suit in 1950, this completed the nationwide switch to Australian ballots."
It sounds like rigorous voting identification laws and regular trimming of the rolls could actually be supportable on some grounds besides covert racism. This is interesting. I'm looking forward to your next post, about modern political party machines.
I think that maybe constant and massive fraud is inherent to egalitarian political systems, like democracies of all flavors. In totalitarian systems, while there's still fraud due to tighter control of media, much less input into policy-making is expected by broad populace, and hence the need for fraud to gain political approval tends to be less.
Too, I suspect that a diverse population works against group consensus and this, too, invites fraud.
Where broad opinion matters, public fraud tends to be higher.
When you say: "What you are about to read is not controversial among historians of American political history. It is just a part of American political history that most would prefer to gloss over or ignore. Conservatives ignore this part of American political history because it seems unpatriotic to point out such obvious deviations from a patriotic history...." I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of your history discussion, but somehow I am resistant to accepting the phrase for Conservatives as "unpatriotic to point out such obvious deviations from a patriotic history".
In thinking about this feeling a little more, I changed my objection. Initially my resistance came from something along the lines of "not wanting to admit there were deviations from the established Founder's/ Framer's constitutional theory of what should happen". But reflecting a little more I am reminded of Adams pronouncement about that constitutional structure being applicable only to a virtuous people; with a related implication that "we the people" have never been quite as virtuous as we really should have been and need to be for this form of governance theory to work as originally envisioned. We have not fought as strongly as we should have to retain our population and electorate wide virtue and thinking of ourselves as our own sovereign, rather than being subject to the "rule" of king-like-presidents and congressional and judicial courtiers at court. Let alone adding in the impacts of wealthy donors, lobbyists, etc. overwhelming if not totally distorting the views of "the people" in general. Of course "the people" are not of one mind on most things either, but we supposedly accepted majority rule as an acceptable social compromise. It now appears there are limits on that acceptance when the deviations or competing viewpoints get too large - thus "justifying" non-virtuous and/or illegal behavior in regard to election integrity by some people.
Your argument is that has always been the case. With the presence of slavery from our very founding, that disconnect in moral views was also present from the beginning, justifying bad actions and bad actors, which has carried over even into the post 1860's, and then the 1960's, civil rights legislation. To the extent the racial discord was dying down by 2007, Obama et al. rejuvenated it (in my view - as I don't want to admit it was not really being reduced by that time).
This in turn reminded me to check into this quote. :-)
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut - Wikiquote says " The earliest known appearance in print of this quote is Benjamin Brewster in the October 1881 - June 1882 issue of "The Yale Literary Magazine." " Not Yogi Berra or some others as it is often ascribed.
Great piece as far as the history of electioneering in the early republic. It doees repeat a lot of conventional wisdom about the pernicious Democratic urban machines. I would add another section that looks at the fact that the urban political machines received a lot of negative attention in the press because the big money owners' papers of the WASP power structure had no love for the Catholic machines.
The Dem urban machines like Tammany actually provided for their working class communities - something the oligarchy detested and still does. Similar to the myth that the Kennedys were the only political family to have extramarital affairs.
The biggest powerbase within the US was positioned within Republican party. The oligarchy was firmly Republican for almost all of post-bellum US history and we could argue they still are given the current realignment. The old Ivy League, Skull & Bones WASP guard who ran the massive US industrial base - and crushed the south in the Civil War - ran the real machine. If they weren't considered "corrupt" its only because they wrote the laws and owned the biggest papers. Just like the Democrats now.
In response to your insightful comment, I just added a new section to the article about the WASP upper class.
The new section starts with the header "The political enemies of the Democratic urban machines"
An open mind and insightful, honest writing. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment.
Yes, I agree with you completely. I have actually already written an article about the WASP upper class. Perhaps, I should have linked to it in this article:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-transformation-of-the-american
And I did mention how the Democratic urban machines provided a primitive form of the welfare state to its supporters.
I’ll definitely read it. Perhaps they should be part of a series together.
When did we get the "secret" ballot? I know that in the 1880s, the voter chose a democratic or republican ballot, and deposited it in the box in view of the ward heelers hanging around. Later, they could tell whether you voted a straight ticket by how long you were in the voting booth (until recently, at least in Illinois, the straight ticket option was abolished.)
In response to your comment, I added two new sections near the top of the article.
Thanks for comment!
Yes, that is a really good point. I should have included that in the article.
Your chronology is roughly correct, although the US Constitution gives state governments control over elections, so the secret ballot was adopted at different times.
Wikipedia states:
"Before the final years of the 19th century, partisan newspapers printed filled-out ballots, which party workers distributed on election day so voters could drop them directly into the boxes. Individual states moved to secret ballots soon after the presidential election of 1884, finishing with Kentucky in 1891 when it quit using an oral ballot.
Initially, however, a state's new ballot did not necessarily have all four components of an "Australian ballot":
1) an official ballot being printed at public expense,
2) on which the names of the nominated candidates of all parties and all proposals appear,
3) being distributed only at the polling place and
4) being marked in secret.
Louisville, Kentucky, was the first city in the United States to adopt the Australian ballot... Seven states did not have government-printed ballots until the 20th century. Georgia started using them in 1922. When South Carolina followed suit in 1950, this completed the nationwide switch to Australian ballots."
Given what I know, the above sounds accurate.
It sounds like rigorous voting identification laws and regular trimming of the rolls could actually be supportable on some grounds besides covert racism. This is interesting. I'm looking forward to your next post, about modern political party machines.
Yes, I am in favor of both and they should be easily achievable with modern digital technology.
I think that maybe constant and massive fraud is inherent to egalitarian political systems, like democracies of all flavors. In totalitarian systems, while there's still fraud due to tighter control of media, much less input into policy-making is expected by broad populace, and hence the need for fraud to gain political approval tends to be less.
Too, I suspect that a diverse population works against group consensus and this, too, invites fraud.
Where broad opinion matters, public fraud tends to be higher.
As long as humans have had things to do, they have found ways to cheat at it.
When you say: "What you are about to read is not controversial among historians of American political history. It is just a part of American political history that most would prefer to gloss over or ignore. Conservatives ignore this part of American political history because it seems unpatriotic to point out such obvious deviations from a patriotic history...." I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of your history discussion, but somehow I am resistant to accepting the phrase for Conservatives as "unpatriotic to point out such obvious deviations from a patriotic history".
In thinking about this feeling a little more, I changed my objection. Initially my resistance came from something along the lines of "not wanting to admit there were deviations from the established Founder's/ Framer's constitutional theory of what should happen". But reflecting a little more I am reminded of Adams pronouncement about that constitutional structure being applicable only to a virtuous people; with a related implication that "we the people" have never been quite as virtuous as we really should have been and need to be for this form of governance theory to work as originally envisioned. We have not fought as strongly as we should have to retain our population and electorate wide virtue and thinking of ourselves as our own sovereign, rather than being subject to the "rule" of king-like-presidents and congressional and judicial courtiers at court. Let alone adding in the impacts of wealthy donors, lobbyists, etc. overwhelming if not totally distorting the views of "the people" in general. Of course "the people" are not of one mind on most things either, but we supposedly accepted majority rule as an acceptable social compromise. It now appears there are limits on that acceptance when the deviations or competing viewpoints get too large - thus "justifying" non-virtuous and/or illegal behavior in regard to election integrity by some people.
Your argument is that has always been the case. With the presence of slavery from our very founding, that disconnect in moral views was also present from the beginning, justifying bad actions and bad actors, which has carried over even into the post 1860's, and then the 1960's, civil rights legislation. To the extent the racial discord was dying down by 2007, Obama et al. rejuvenated it (in my view - as I don't want to admit it was not really being reduced by that time).
This in turn reminded me to check into this quote. :-)
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut - Wikiquote says " The earliest known appearance in print of this quote is Benjamin Brewster in the October 1881 - June 1882 issue of "The Yale Literary Magazine." " Not Yogi Berra or some others as it is often ascribed.
Thanks for your comment, but you seem to be arguing against yourself.
My main point is that Americans of all ideologies would rather not talk about this important part of American political history.
Because we do not want to admit to ourselves that in reality we are not worthy of the governance model entrusted to us from 1787?
With the even deeper fear that no people are truly capable of establishing and then retaining/ maintaining such a model of sovereign governance?