Since the enactment of the reform-ballot law in 1890 no organised effort has been made to watch its operation or to detect any illegal practices. The public was satisfied with the popular catch-name of the Act, and it slept peacefully upon the assurance that fraud was no longer possible; but the evidence obtained by the volunteer watchers, and the finding of over sixty indictments by the Grand Jury, mainly against election officials, demonstrate that false registration, false voting, and bribery are as easily and as safely practised as they ever were, and that perjury has enormously increased, owing to the number of safeguards which must be sworn away by the fraudulent voter and the collusive inspector.—Ib., p. 204.
There were 1,157 polling stations in New York in 1893, and it was not possible to obtain competent watchers for all of them. But the evidence obtained was sufficient to show on how colossal a scale the frauds were practised, with the co-operation or connivance of both parties. Ballot-stuffing seems to have been common. Mr. Goff says:—
Almost without exception there were more ballots found in the ballot-box than the ballot clerk’s number showed to have been delivered or the poll-list showed to have been voted, and in a great number of districts more than the registration. How they came there is to some extent a mystery: but in some places ballots were folded in duplicate, and in others the pile of ballots on the table was added to by a sleight-of-hand performance.—Ib., p. 209.
In the Thirty-sixth Election District of the Second Assembly District it was estimated that 5,000 out of the 12,770 votes counted were fraudulent. In the Seventh of the Third 567 ballots were found in the box for a district which had only 508 names on the register. Repeating and personation were almost universal. The lodging-houses played a leading part in the squalid and sordid drama. The tramps who use these dossing kens are all registered. But as they seldom pass three nights in the same place, they rarely vote where they are registered. That, however, is a mere detail. Mr. Goff says:—
The same men who registered did not, as a rule, vote upon the names given. To have them do so would require their maintenance at the lodging-house, and that would be too expensive. A more economic plan was adopted. A few days previous to election the proprietors of the lodging-houses were furnished, by the election-district captains, with lists of the names registered from their houses. Separate slips for each name were then supplied, and on election day the tramps, as they come along, were handed the slips, and they voted on the names thus given as frequently as they could get the slips. The election workers were never hard pushed to bring out the registered vote. They simply sent for the men when they wanted them, and were always supplied with the required number. Sometimes the floater forgot the name given to him or could not read the slip; sometimes a man who could not speak English wrestled with an American name, or an English-speaking man struggled with a Polish name. In all of these cases the obliging inspectors helped them out either by looking at the slip or by giving some sort of pronunciation to the unpronounceable name. In some election districts there was a rivalry as to who could vote on the most names, and the man who won the honours was an ex-convict, who voted eighteen times in two election districts of the Third Assembly District.—Ib., p. 205.
The evidence taken before the Lexow Committee abounds with vivid little vignettes of how elections were conducted in New York City only four years since.
Here, for instance, is what Mr. Louis Meyer, a Republican inspector in the Third Assembly District, heard given as official directions by Police Captain Devery to a platoon of policemen on the morning of the November poll, 1893. The Union League and the City Club had decided to send watchers to the polls to detect any illegal practices. So by way of preparing for their reception, Captain Devery told the police in Mr. Meyer’s hearing:—
There is a lot of silk-stocking people coming from up town to bulldose you people, and if they open their mouths, stand them on their heads.—Vol. i., p. 203, Lexow Report.
With such instructions it is not surprising that the police refused to interfere when their attention was called to the most flagrant breach of the law. Here is the story of Israel Ellis, Republican poll clerk at the Fifth Election District of the Third Assembly:—
When several voters came and they were handed sets of ballots, I wanted to get their names down, but the chairman and the officer told me it would be sufficient for me to take down the name and the vote.