Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-25T00:32:09.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Symbiotic Relationship: Vote Fraud and Electoral Reform in the Gilded Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

John F. Reynolds
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1892 fifty-five former election officials began serving prison terms at hard labor for their actions at 16 precincts during the election of 1889 in Jersey City, New Jersey. A legislative investigation had concluded that approximately 10,000 fraudulent ballots were cast that year—more than one-third of the city’s votes (Sackett 1895: 321–55; McCormick 1953: 171–73). For many observers the episode’s most remarkable feature was not the criminal behavior but the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators. Contemporary accounts of Gilded Age politics attest to electoral chicanery in virtually every state (Davenport 1881; Harris 1929: 1–20; McCook 1892; Summers 1987: 51–67; Benson 1978: 169–85). Many present-day scholars contend that electoral corruption reached its nadir in the nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Summer 1993 , pp. 227 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1993 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Howard W., and Allen, Kay Warren (1981) “Vote fraud and data validity,” in Clubb, Jerome M. et al (eds.) Analyzing Electoral History: A Guide to the Study of American Voting Behavior. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage: 153-92.Google Scholar
Argersinger, Peter H. (1985-86) “New perspectives on election fraud in the Gilded Age.” Political Science Quarterly 100: 669-87.Google Scholar
Benson, George C. S. (1978) Political Corruption in America. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Board of Aldermen of Jersey City (1893) Manual . . . for the Aldermanic Year of 1892-93. Jersey City, N.J.: Jersey City News.Google Scholar
Boyd, W. Andrew (1889) Gopsill’s Jersey City, Hoboken, West Hoboken, Union Hill and Weehawken Directory, 1889-90. Washington, DC: W. Andrew Boyd. (In Jersey City Public Library.)Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean (1965) “The changing shape of the American political universe.” American Political Science Review 59: 7–28.Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean (1986) “Those nineteenth century American voting turnouts: Fact or fiction?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16: 613-44.Google Scholar
Converse, Philip (1972) “Change in the American electorate,” in Campbell, Angus and Converse, Philip (eds.) The Human Meaning of Social Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 263–337.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and Kousser, J. Morgan (1981) “Turnout and rural corruption: New York as a test case.” American Journal of Political Science 25: 646-63.Google Scholar
Davenport, John I. (1881) The Election Frauds of New York and Their Prevention. 2 vols. New York: John I. Davenport.Google Scholar
Gienapp, William E. (1982) “‘Politics seem to enter everything’: Political culture in the North,” in Maizlish, Stephen E. and Kushma, John J. (eds.) Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840-60. College Station: Texas A&M University Press: 25–32.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Gerald (1986) “Computing antebellum turnout: Methods and models.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16: 579–611.Google Scholar
Gist, Genevieve B. (1961) “Progressive reform in a rural community: The Adams County vote fraud case.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 48: 60–78.Google Scholar
Harris, Joseph P. (1929) Registration of Voters in the United States. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Jensen, Richard (1971) The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kincaid, John (1980) “Political success and policy failure: The persistence of machine politics in Jersey City.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Temple University.Google Scholar
Kleppner, Paul (1982) Who Voted?: The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout, 1870-1980. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Kleppner, Paul (1987) Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 1893-1928. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Kleppner, Paul, and Baker, Stephen C. (1980) “The impact of voter registration requirements on electoral turnout, 1900-1916.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 8: 205-26.Google Scholar
Knights, Peter R. (1969a) “Population turnover, persistence and residential mobility in Boston, 1830-60,” in Thernstrom, Stephen and Sennett, Richard (eds.) Nineteenth Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Knights, Peter R. (1969b) “City directories as aids to ante-bellum urban studies: A research note.” Historical Methods Newsletter 2: 1–7.Google Scholar
Kousser, J. Morgan (1974) The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McCook, J. J. (1892) “The alarming proportion of venal voters.” Forum 14: 1–13.Google Scholar
McCormick, Richard P. (1953) The History of Voting in New Jersey: A Study in the Development of Election Machinery, 1664-1911. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
McGerr, Michael E. (1986) The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McSeveney, Samuel T. (1972) The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-96. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Reynolds, John F. (1980) “‘The silent dollar’: Vote buying in New Jersey.” New Jersey History 98: 191–211.Google Scholar
Sackett, William E. (1895) Modern Battles of Trenton. Trenton, NJ: J. L. Murphy.Google Scholar
Secretary of State (1890) Annual Returns for the General Election of 1889. Trenton, NJ: Naar, Day and Naar.Google Scholar
Shaw, Douglas V. (1977) “Immigration, politics and the tensions of urban growth: Jersey City, 1850-80,” in Schwartz, Joel and Presser, David (eds.) Cities of the Garden State. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt: 31–51.Google Scholar
State of New Jersey (1890) Journal of the Forty-Sixth Senate of the State of New Jersey. Trenton, NJ: Sharp Printing.Google Scholar
State of New Jersey (1911) Report of the Committee to Investigate the General Election Held in Atlantic County on November 8th, 1910. Trenton, NJ: J. L. Murphy.Google Scholar
Summers, Mark W. (1987) The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1849-61. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Winkle, Kenneth J. (1983) “A social analysis of voter turnout in Ohio, 1850-60.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 13: 411-35.Google Scholar
Winkle, Kenneth J. (1988) “The social context of election fraud in the nineteenth century Midwest.” Paper presented at the Missouri Valley Historical Conference.Google Scholar