Corrupt Practices in Elections

BY HON. LUCIUS F. C. GARVIN Ex-Governor of Rhode Island

EFFORTS to expose bribery and other corrupt practices in elections are met with the cry, You are defaming the state! If there are governmental evils, we are told, prove them to the bottom and correct them quietly. Such a course may be feasible if applied to a private business, but in public affairs, in the nature of the case, it cannot be successful. Certainly none of the persons who directly profit by such practices will correct them—not the “respectable” men of means who furnish the funds and who do so with a view to recouping themselves in some way as a result of the election; not the workers who handle the corruption fund, taking good care to see that they themselves are rewarded for the trouble and risk involved; not the individuals who pocket the money disbursed, and in this way become always morally, and often criminally, confederates; nor, finally, the few who secure the offices through fraudulent methods. In fact, nothing has been found effective outside of that strongest of all influences in a free country, the force of public opinion. The many, who are made aware of the iniquity by suffering from it, have every inducement to end it.

Over and over again, in great crises, the American people have shown themselves to be patriotic, honest and wise. This has happened whenever the masses have been aroused by serious threats of danger, either external or internal.

The real danger to our institutions lies, not in great crises, but rather in a gradual, almost insensible, deterioration of the government, due either to a lack of vigilance on the part of the people or to a paralysis of their latent powers.

While it is possible that the immense fund of good will and good sense possessed by the American people may be expended in private pursuits and thus diverted from a control of their own government, the far greater danger is that the mighty influences being put forth at almost every election will rupture completely the natural dependence of public officials upon the electorate.

In order to cure any wrongdoing it is needful, first, to ascertain definitely wherein the wrong consists, and, secondly, to fix with equal definiteness upon an adequate remedy.

The crudest, the most demoralizing and the most common method of withholding the hands of the sovereign people from the control of their government is the direct bribery of voters. This means of thwarting the wishes of the majority dates back to the early history of the country. Our system of so-called majority election by districts, placing, as it often does, the balance of power in a small minority of the electorate, invites the purchase of the votes of individuals. It has proved easy both to estimate the number of votes needed to turn the scale and to find out the particular voters who can be so influenced.

Upon the original plan of buying individual voters at retail, the improvement has been made of purchasing en bloc—the money to be paid over only in case of delivery of the goods. In this modern bribery by wholesale the venal voters organize, choose an agent to conduct negotiations and sell the entire block of votes to the highest bidder. When success is achieved, as shown by the count of the ballots, hundreds of dollars are paid to the agent and by him distributed to the members of the gang.

But, whatever the details of the transaction, a long experience has shown that, in a multitude of small constituencies a few dollars placed in the hand of a voter are sufficient to outweigh every consideration of patriotism or enlightened self-interest. Wherever this habitually occurs, the rule of a few moneyed men has been substituted for a government by the people.

In the elections of large cities, of populous states and of the nation at large, it can seldom happen that bribery of voters, either by retail or wholesale, is sufficient to alter the result. To supply this deficiency other means are more and more being resorted to. To assure success, where the number of voters renders the simpler measure for overcoming the people’s will unreliable, party managers now make use of finesse and fraud.

The finesse consists in “packing” the primary meetings and conventions of the rival party for the purpose of nominating weak opposing candidates. Nearly every local party may be differentiated into two factions, both desirous of success, but the one occupying morally a very much higher plane than the other. The rich party, taking advantage of this division in the ranks of its opponents, furnishes funds and votes to aid the baser faction, upon condition, of course, that, having gained control of the nomination, candidates will be put up of such a character as to drive away the better element from their support.

In consequence of these manipulations, when election day comes around, the poorer party is found with a so-called “yellow dog” ticket in the field—that is to say, a ticket composed of unfit and unknown men, clearly inferior to the pliant respectabilities who have been placed in nomination by the richer party.

It sometimes happens that even this political trick fails to assure success. Either the better faction of the opposing party wins, or, notwithstanding the inferiority of the ticket named, it may promise to receive a majority of the votes cast. In this exigency the managers of the party which is fully supplied with the sinews of war do not hesitate at direct fraud. That is to say, they expend large sums of money in hiring election officials to betray their trusts at the risk of going to jail.

One method adopted, where the law provides an official ballot, is to get from the officials having charge of the ballots one or more to be marked for the voter by heelers outside of the polling-room. This furnishes a sure method of bribery, for the venal voter, after depositing the ballot thus prepared for him, returns an unmarked ballot to the briber, as a guarantee of good faith, to be marked by him for the use of the next person bought. In this way one or more endless chains of purchased votes may be run all day, through the connivance of some election officer. This was done in Pawtucket, R. I., and at other places in that state, on the eighth of last November.

But as the number of venal voters in a polling precinct is limited, so there is a limit to the effect attainable by giving out to heelers the official ballots designed for use in the voting booth only.

What more, then, can be done in the way of modern chicanery and criminality?

Election officers may be bought, and are bought, to defraud their fellow-citizens in a variety of ways. For instance, there is a very considerable percentage of illiterate voters in most states, many of whom desire to give their suffrage to the candidates of one of the poorer parties. But the richest party has paid the election officials, who assist the illiterate voters, to mark all such ballots for its candidates. Evidence exists that this was done systematically at the recent Presidential and state election in the city of Providence, R. I., a sufficient number of voters thus being deceived to turn the scale in the filling of one or more important offices.

Inasmuch as there is a limit to the number of illiterate voters, even that base fraud, added to direct bribery, may not effect the desired reversal of the people’s will. But the moneyed party has other resources.

In order to annul votes already cast for opposing candidates, it may hire the election officers to make additional marks upon the ballots before they are counted. In this way in the city of Providence, R. I., at the last election many votes for Augustus S. Meller, the Democratic candidate for mayor, were rendered void—fortunately, however, not in sufficient numbers to prevent his election.

And not even yet has the corrupted election officer reached the full extent of his ability to defraud. It still is possible for him to miscount votes; or he may announce the result falsely—for example, by revising the total number of votes given to the candidates, when the real majority proves to be adverse to his suborned wishes.

In case there is a Returning Board, whose duty it is to make a second and final count of the votes cast, as is the law in the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island, that board, too, or its controlling members, may be partisan and corrupt.

At the late election in Rhode Island all the ballots for state officers and for Presidential electors were in possession of a partisan Returning Board, of which the chairman of the Republican State Central Committee was the head, for a period of three full weeks before the counting began. If there were miscounts in certain voting districts on election day, it was easily possible for members of that Returning Board to open the sealed packages of ballots, make such changes as were necessary in order to have the ballots conform roughly to the previously announced figures, and then to reseal without the fraud being detected.

But, it may be asked, where are the courts while such frauds are being perpetrated? Why are not these criminal election officers punished? Unfortunately, the courts, too, are frequently partisan, especially the lower courts, before which the cases are first brought.

After the election of last November in Rhode Island, three cases were brought before the inferior courts—one for bribery, one for posing as an illiterate voter and one against an election officer in charge of a ballot-box for allowing the deposit by voters of sham instead of official ballots. Each of these causes was brought before a different local judge, and all were thrown out of court. Several days before election it was known that immunity had been promised to hesitating and apprehensive election officers. “The Republican Party controls the courts,” they were told, “and would see that no punishment was meted out to them for unlawful acts.”

It is needless to say that, if corrupt practices in elections continue to increase, the end of popular government in this country is in sight. Already there exists a widespread and deep-seated distrust of the result of elections. Instances could be given, occurring within the past ten years, in which a very large proportion of the voters interested, perhaps a majority of those voting, believe that the wrong candidate was inducted into office.

Certainly no duty is more pressing than to see to it that in every election the unbiased and unbought will of the people be recorded.

Is there a remedy? And, if so, what is it? My conviction is, that we only need to carry out the intent of the founders of this government. They blazed the way; we must make a clear and beaten track along that way.

By a republican form of government the Revolutionary statesmen meant two things, which now are not carried out. They meant that every state, and the nation as well, should possess a legislative body, representative of the will of the people. Nowhere does this exist, not even where honest elections assure a free ballot and a fair count. Neither in ability nor in opinion do state legislatures by their acts represent a majority of their constituents, except by accident. Nor will they represent the people until each political party, whether large or small, elects its due proportion of the members. That is to say, a party which casts forty-five per cent. of the total vote for representatives must have forty per cent. of the legislature, and the party which casts five per cent. of the total vote must have five per cent. of the legislature. Then only will statute law be framed in accordance with the will of a majority of the people.

The other part of our republican form of government, as understood and intended by American statesmen of the eighteenth century, was that a majority of the people should directly control the organic law. To this end they had the state constitutions framed by the people, acting through delegates chosen to conventions for that sole purpose, but not in effect until submitted to the electors and adopted by a majority of the votes cast for and against. In like manner the referendum was provided for in case of subsequent amendments.

It was thought, also, that a popular initiative for constitutional changes was created, in the authority given to legislatures to submit amendments; but, alas, time has shown that those legislatures, being unrepresentative of the people, refuse to submit amendments, however extensively demanded by public sentiment.

Hence the necessity of giving the power to propose constitutional amendments, as has lately been done in South Dakota, Utah and Oregon, to a reasonable minority (in those states eight per cent.) of the voters. When the popular initiative shall thus have been added to the referendum already existing for making changes in the organic law of our states, all else will take care of itself.

The amendment pending in the Rhode Island Legislature, and known there as the constitutional initiative, reads in substance as follows:

Eight per cent. of the legal voters of the state may propose specific and particular amendments to this constitution by filing with the Secretary of State, not less than three months nor more than nine months prior to any state election, a petition that the electors may, at such election, cast their ballots for or against such amendments. Any proposition thus made shall be submitted to the electors by the Secretary of State at said election, and, if then approved by a majority of the electors of the state present and voting thereon, it shall, ninety days thereafter, become a part of the Constitution of the state.

To elect a legislature in any state committed to such an amendment calls for not only a widespread but an aggressive public sentiment in its favor. As a rule the organization of the party dominant in the state will strenuously oppose the adoption of the amendment.

A party continuously in power, no matter what its name or avowed principles, is sure to frown upon radical measures. The complete control of the organic law of a state by a majority of its voters means a future political situation hitherto unknown. The effect upon present party leaders and upon partisan organizations cannot be foreseen in full, but that it will be tremendous no one can doubt.

But if the individuals, who are enjoying the state offices, are opposed to a political upheaval of any kind, the parties which are permanently in the minority feel very differently. Their organizations and their members will welcome any reasonable reform which promises to alter materially the existing unsatisfactory situation. Also in sympathy with a reform so meritorious and non-partisan would undoubtedly be found a considerable portion of the adherents of the dominant party.

Yet even with a clear majority of the voters of any state earnestly in favor of a given amendment to the constitution, it does not follow that its adoption would be easy. In every state, with scarcely an exception, it is the party whose membership comprises nine-tenths of the total wealth, which, with few brief and partial interruptions, controls every department of the government. For the past decade this has been the situation more than ever before, and every year finds the power of money to determine the results of elections gaining in strength—notwithstanding a rising public sentiment against abuses which are ignored, if not encouraged, by the authorities.

The situation seems almost hopeless, as is very near being the case, if the reforming elements pursue for the future the same course as in the past.

If the leader of the party in power were permitted to dictate the action of opponents, his command would be: “Divide your forces.” Its boss would say: “Split among yourselves into several separate and distinct parties, attack one another with the same virulence that you attack me. Call yourselves Democrats, Populists, Socialists, Prohibitionists, Labor, and have whatever platforms or principles you please. In fact, the stronger and nobler the men and the issues over which the small parties wave their banners the better I am pleased, for the more minute will be the subdivision and the more attractive and combative each fractional part.”

And these hopelessly minor parties offer few inducements to the dissatisfied members of the major party to change their political affiliations. Such a transfer is altogether too much like removing one’s bed on a bitter cold night from a warm room to a vacant lot. Discomforts, and even hardships, patriotic citizens may be willing to endure, but they can scarcely be blamed for refusing to embrace them merely for the fun of being come-outers.

In order to contend successfully against the party in power, however well known its abuses, there must be a co-operation of the dissatisfied and antagonistic voters. By co-operation it is not meant that an attempt should be made to create a single party with a platform composed of the planks of half a dozen parties. Such a composite is but a rope of sand; and, in fact, the stringing together of a collection of unrelated questions, such as prohibition, socialism and labor, is quite as likely to end in mutual hostilities as in a combined charge upon the common enemy.

The use of money for carrying a state election by corrupt practices can only be offset by the exercise of great wisdom on the part of those who depend upon other agencies. The second party, which in the Northern states generally means the Democratic, must furnish the nucleus about which the third, fourth and fifth parties gather. Indeed, it devolves upon the second party to invite the other minor parties to join forces with it. And, in order to have such invitation accepted, it must fix upon one or two paramount issues so fundamental and important as to attract strongly all who are offended with the doings of the party in power. If two issues are elected, one of them may well be a constitutional amendment such as has been outlined in this article, the other might be a legislative measure—such, for instance, as direct primaries, which serve excellently the purpose of a corrupt practices act.

Each of the minor parties, besides educational work, wishes to preserve its organization and to measure its strength at each succeeding election by the number of votes cast in its support. The wish is natural and proper; but the objects aimed at can be accomplished in a state election without putting full tickets into the field. The nomination and support of a single candidate for a minor state office will fully answer both purposes.

The means of stopping most surely and speedily corrupt practices by the party in power, lies in an open and aboveboard fusion of all its opponents upon a few issues, together with a united support of one set of candidates for all offices whose incumbents can aid or hinder the adoption of the measures agreed upon. This, I believe, offers the best chance of accomplishing the very difficult task of establishing in a state good and pure government.