Machine Politics, Police Corruption, and the Persistence of Vote Fraud: The Case of the Louisville, Kentucky, Election of 1905

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 269-300

  Campbell, Tracy A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34248052942     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jph.2003.0017     Document Type: Article

References (158)

1. Most of the scholarship concerning the effects of the secret ballot have focused on voter turnout, not partisan outcomes. Highlighting the Australian ballot as the source of honest elections in the Gilded Age has a lengthy history in historical and political writing. In 1918, Charles Seymour and Donald Paige Frary concluded that since the introduction of the Australian ballot, “the purity of elections is incomparably higher” and that “fraud is not common.” How the World Votes: The Story of Democratic Development in Elections (Springfield, Mass. 1918), 256.
2. In another southern city, New Orleans, George M. Reynolds concluded that to suggest that the local machine “by concerted effort, stole elections, by the use of stuffed ballot boxes, crooked count, false registrations, floaters, and police coercion is far from true.” Machine Politics in New Orleans, 1897-1926 (New York, 1936), 129-30.
3. In The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (Chicago, 1971)
4. Richard Jensen asserted that with the introduction of the Australian ballot, “save for isolated pockets of corruption, the elections of the Midwest entered an era of honesty” (43). More recently, this historiographical trend has continued. A critical article is Howard W. Allen and Kay Warren Allen, “Vote Fraud and Data Validity,” in Jerome M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zingale, eds. Analyzing Electoral History: A Guide to the Study of American Voter Behavior (Beverly Hills, 1981): 153-93.
5. Allen and Allen conclude that stories of widespread vote fraud were “probably gross exaggerations,” and, more to the point, even if vote fraud was more prevalent than they admit, “the greatest portion of fraudulent election activities probably posed no major threat to the validity of election data” (179). See also Paul Kleppner, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 1893-1928 (New York, 1987), 164-71.
6. Alexander Keyssar, in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2000), mostly agrees with the Allens that widespread claims of early 1900s election fraud were exaggerated.
7. see Clinton Rogers Woodruff, “Election Methods and Reforms in Philadelphia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March 1901): 181-204, and
8. Abram C. Bernheim, “The Ballot in New York,” Political Science Quarterly 4 (March 1889): 130-52.
9. An important article is Genevieve B. Gist, “Progressive Reform in a Rural Community: The Adams County Vote-Fraud Case,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (June 1961): 60-78.
10. See also Herbert J. Bass, “The Politics of Ballot Reform in New York State, 1888- 1890,” New York History (July 1961): 253-72;
11. Peter H. Argersinger, “New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age,” Political Science Quarterly 100 (Winter 1985-1986): 669–87, writes that “the subject of election fraud thus not only represents a challenge to the methodology of the new political history in terms of raising the problem of data validity, but also raises questions of deeper significance concerning the portrayal of political culture and the party system” (673). For a recent treatment of the realities of Nashville city politics
12. see James D. Squires, The Secrets of the Hopewell Box: Stolen Elections, Souther n Politics, and a City's Coming of Age (New York, 1996.
13. See also Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986).
14. A recent work on some vivid examples of Gilded Age election fraud is Mark Wahlgren Summers, Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 (Chapel Hill, 2000).
15. In his classic Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949)
16. V. O. Key wrote, “The conduct of elections is the most neglected and primitive branch of our public administration” (443).
17. Paul Kleppner, Who Voted? The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout, 1870-1980 (New York, 1982), dismisses any claims that election fraud was widespread in the late 1800s.
18. “Extensive and routine vote fraud in cities was unlikely,”
19. Although a number of students of this period disagree on whether the Australian ballot had a significant role in altering voter turnout, there is general agreement that it certainly curtailed fraud and corruption. See the extended exchange by Walter Dean Burnham, Philip E. Converse, and Jerrold G. Rusk in The American Political Science Review 68 (September): 1002–57;
20. Gary W. Cox and J. Morgan Kousser, “Turnout and Rural Corruption: New York as a Test Case,” American Journal of Political Science 25 (November 1981): 646—63;
21. Jac C. Heckelman, “The Effect of the Secret Ballot on Voter Turnout Rates,” Public Choice (82): 107–24;
22. Idem, “Revisiting the Relationship Between Secret Ballots and Turnout: A New Test of Two-Institutional Theories,” American Politics Quarterly 28 (April 2000): 194-215;
23. John F. Reynolds and Richard L. McCormick, “Outlawing ‘Treachery’: Split Tickets and Ballot Laws in New York and New Jersey, 1880-1910,” Journal of American History (March 1986): 835-58;
24. Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 49
25. Jerrold G. Rusk, “The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split-Ticket Voting, 1876-1908,” American Political Science Review 64 (December 1970): 1220-38.
26. For an antebellum argument that runs similar to the Gilded Age claim that minimizes the extent of fraud, see William E. Gienapp, “‘Politics Seem to Enter into Everything’: Political Culture in the North, 1840-1860,” in William E. Gienapp et al. Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860 (College Station, Tex. 1982), 22-33.
27. In “‘The Silent Dollar’: Vote Buying in New Jersey,” New Jersey History (Fall-Winter 1980)
28. John Reynolds notes that “new” political historians “have not disproved the existence of fraud so much as they have chosen to ignore the question altogether” (194). See also V. O. Key Jr. Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York, 1942), 624-49.
29. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Population, part I (Washington, D.C. 1901), lxix;
30. George C. Wright, Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985), 68-72;
31. James T. Wills, “Louisville Politics, 1891-1897” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1966), 2-4.
32. During the electoral crisis following the 1876 presidential election, Henry Watterson's Courier- Journal, in the estimation of C. Vann Woodward, was the “strongest Southern exponent” of violent resistance to ward off a Republican victory. Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (Boston, 1951), 110-11.
33. Lowell Harrison and James C. Klotter, A New History of Kentucky (Lexington, 1997), 118, 265.
34. Louisville Courier-Journal, December 1, 6, 7, 1887;
35. Charlene M. Cornell, “Louisville in Transition: 1870-1890” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1970), 93-100, 124-32.
36. Cornell, “Louisville in Transition,” 134;
37. L. E. Fredman, The Australian Ballot: The Story of an American Reform (East Lansing, 1968), 31-32;
38. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Why Americans Still Don’t Vote: And Why Politicians Want it That Way (Boston, 2000).
39. Writing in 1887, William M. Ivins claimed that a secret ballot “would remove every one of the foundation stones that lie at the base of our present organized political machinery.” Machine Politics and Money in Elections in New York City (New York, 1887), 90–91, 119;
40. Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 142-43. In 1902, a European observer, Moisei Ostrogorski, noted that the Australian system “has, in fact, put an end to the open intimidation and to the coercion which were practiced on the electors; the elections are now, with few exceptions, conducted in an orderly manner.”
41. Quoted in Arnaldo Testi, “The Tribulations of an Old Democracy,” Journal of American History 88 (September 2001): 422.
42. Proceedings of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention, (December 1890), 1805–12.
43. The Louisville ballot listed the names of all candidates for a particular office without regard to party affiliation. Although the February 1888 legislation in Louisville prohibited party designation on printed tickets, legislation passed in 1892 stipulated a “party column” ballot, allowing illiterates to easily distinguish between individual candidates, as well as a registration system in cities such as Louisville that was more elaborate than the statewide registration created in 1886. See Robert M. Ireland, The Kentucky State Constitution: A Refer ence Guide (Westport, Conn. 1999), 124-25;
44. see also Alan Ware, “Anti-Partyism and Party Control of Political Reform in the United States: The Case of the Australian Ballot,” British Journal of Political Science 30 (January 2000): 1-29, who argues that the parties supported the secret ballot reform because they were successful in designing ballots that preserved party control of the electorate.
45. In Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1999), J. Morgan Kousser writes that although historians treat the secret ballot as a reform measure, it was employed mainly “with the intent and effect of disfranchising illiterates, who were very disproportionately African- Americans or immigrants” (34).
46. C. Vann Woodward, in Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge, 1951), 54-57, understood that the various ways of stealing votes in the South “were all highly developed arts” (56).
47. Undated newspaper clipping, J. H. Haager Scrapbook, Louisville Police Records, Filson Club Library;
48. undated clipping from Hugh McCullough Scrapbook, Louisville Police Records, Filson Club Library. For Whallen's rise to power
49. see Karen R. Gray and Sarah R. Yates, “Boss John Whallen: The Early Louisville Years (1876-1883),” Journal of Kentucky Studies (1984): 171-86;
50. Idem, “John Henry Whallen,” in John Kleber, ed. The Encyclopedia of Louisville (Lexington, Ky. 2001), 935;
51. Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 December 1913;
52. Kentucky Elk, n.d. Filson Club Clippings File
53. Wills, “Louisville Politics,” 29–31.
54. See also Wright, Life Behind a Veil, 71–75;
55. Idem, “The Billy Club and the Ballot: Police Intimidation of Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1880-1930,” Southern Studies 23 (1984): 23.
56. Arthur Krock, Myself When Young: Growing Up in the 1890s (Boston, 1973), 212-13.
57. The Critic, 9 October 1892;
58. Louisville Post, 12, 15 October 1892;
59. Louisville Courier-Journal, 4, 6, 11, 14 October 1892.
60. Gary M. Cox and J. Morgan Kousser have noted the difficulty of locating vote fraud in contemporary sources. It is, after all, an illegal activity and ripe for exploitation by partisan sources. Even legislative hearings and court records, they contend, “were inherently biased, since the lawyers for each side were more interested in making a case for their clients than in dispassionately uncovering facts.” In their study, Cox and Kousser examined fortyeight local newspapers in New York. In so doing, they admitted to casting “a wide and lengthy research net, and to counteract the bias of individual papers and reporters” by balancing their respective ideological and geographical persuasions. “Turnout and Rural Corruption,” 651–53.
61. The Courier-Journal concluded that “the voters of Louisville spoke in thunder tones against the continuance in office of the worst administration with which this city has ever been cursed.” Louisville Courier-Journal, 3 November 1897;
62. Wright, “The Billy Club and the Ballot,” 26–27;
63. Wills, “Louisville Politics,” 117–18.
64. Zane L. Miller, Boss Cox's Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (New York, 1968), 93-96, 165-67;
65. William D. Miller, Memphis During the Pr ogressive Era, 1900-1917 (Memphis, 1957), 100-101, 141-45, 169-70;
66. Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cambridge, Mass. 1977), 2-5, 33-34, 67-68;
67. Cyril D. Robinson, “The Mayor and the Police—the Political Role of the Police in Society,” in George L. Mosse, ed. Police Forces in History (London, 1975): 281-82, 295-97.
68. For a wider discussion of the techniques of police corruption, particularly the role of ward and precinct leaders in protection rackets, see V. O. Key Jr. “Police Graft,” American Journal of Sociology 40 (March 1935): 624-36.
69. While not specifically discussing the role of the police, Peter McCaffery writes that boss rule in Philadelphia was dependent on its control over the process of city elections, “through a variety of extralegal and illegal practices.” See When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia: The Emergence of the Republican Machine, 1867-1933 (University Park, Pa. 1993), 136-40;
70. for an extended discussion of the methods of controlling votes as well as the use of police and firefighters on election day, see David Harold Kurtzman, “Methods of Controlling Votes in Philadelphia” (Ph.D. diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1935).
71. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Population, part I, 172;
72. Wright, Life Behind a Veil, 186, 190;
73. Ernest Collins, “The Political Behavior of the Negroes in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky” (Ph.D. diss. University of Kentucky, 1950), 50.
74. Undated clippings, Haager Scrapbook, Filson Club; Louisville Times, n.d. For a discussion of a similar boss-ruled system in nearby Lexington and its connection to Whallen, see James Duane Bolin, Bossism and Reform in a Southern City: Lexington, Kentucky, 1880—1940 (Lexington, Ky. 2000), 54.
75. Louisville Courier-Journal, 10, 11 November 1899;
76. Louisville Evening-Post, 17 August, 7 November 1899;
77. Cincinnati Enquirer, 6 November 1899;
78. Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 147.
79. Future Kentucky Governor Augustus Willson was one of the members of the League who did not support violence, but called attention to the Declaration of Independence and the right of the people to “alter, reform, or abolish” any form of government. Willson added, “I do not believe in violence, but I would say to Goebel and his followers, ‘you have gone far enough!’” Among those supporting Whallen was none other than Arthur Wallace, author of the Louisville Australian Ballot law. The evidence of Whallen's complicity in Goebel's murder was very thin. Weeks before the assassination, Whallen allegedly attempted to bribe a Kentucky state senator to oppose Goebel's contest. Whallen replied that he had merely given the senator #x0024;5,000 “to act according to what he represented to be the true dictates of his conscience.” Also, a significant aspect of Goebel's election contest concerned the election proceedings in Louisville, where Whallen was mentioned specifically as an “agent” of the L & N railroad. James C. Klotter, William Goebel: The Politics of Wrath (Lexington, Ky. 1977), 46-48, 93-95;
80. see also Urey Woodson, The First New Dealer: William Goebel (Louisville, Ky. 1939), 208-12.
81. Robert W. Bingham to undisclosed person, 10 August 1905, box 30, Robert W. Bingham Papers, Filson Club Library, Louisville; Louisville Herald, 14, 18 July 1905; Louisville Evening-Post, 23 May 1907. In Political Corruption in America (Lexington, Mass. 1978)
82. George C. S. Benson concludes that “most election frauds occur in areas of one-party dominance” (169). For an extended analysis of various political insurgencies that sought to upset the existing two-party system, as well as the efforts by the major parties to end them, see Peter H. Argersinger, “‘A Place on the Ballot’: Fusion Politics and Antifusion Laws,” American Historical Review 85 (April 1980): 287-306.
83. For an example of the success of fusionists in nearby Cincinnati, see Miller, Boss Cox's Cincinnati, 165–67.
84. Thomas D. Clark, Helm Bruce, Public Defender: Br eaking Louisville's Gothic Political Ring, 1905 (Louisville, Ky. 1973), 32-34;
85. Wright, “The Billy Club and the Ballot,” 27–28.
86. Louisville Evening-Post, 20 October 1905;
87. Kentucky Irish-American, 14 October 1905;
88. George H. Yater, Two Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County (Louisville, Ky. 1987), 147—48.
89. Scholl v. Bell, vol. V, 31–35.
90. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 231–44;
91. see J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880—1910 (New Haven, 1974).
92. Cox and Kousser, “Turnout and Rural Corruption,” 655, discuss the process of paying people not to vote as a form of vote-buying. Vote buying has a peculiar place in the annals of vote fraud.
93. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 634.
94. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 230–31.
95. The Fusionist fund was considerably smaller, totaling #x0024;23,078, which included #x0024;3,100 for registration day costs, and #x0024;6,120 for election day expenses. Scholl v. Bell, vol. IX, 1–3.
96. As a comparison, James Bryce wrote in the early 1900s that “as much as #x0024;50,000” was being spent on a congressional race in New York. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, vol. II, (London, 1901), 148.
97. Scholl v. Bell, vol. II, 190, 197–99.
98. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 202–3;
99. Louisville Evening-Post, 6 November 1905;
100. Helm Bruce, Public Defender, 36–38.
101. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 204–9.
102. Although Kentucky has a considerable reputation for election fraud, there is relatively sparse scholarship relating to the dynamics of voting and vote fraud in Kentucky. Exceptions are Malcolm E. Jewell and Everett W. Cunningham, Kentucky Politics (Lexington, Ky. 1968), 16-18, 30-37, 53-71, 225-33, and
103. Larry J. Sabato and Glenn R. Simpson, Dirty Little Secrets: Persistence of Corruption in American Politics (New York, 1996), 298-300.
104. Serious lapses in such inquiries can be applied to the other southern states as well. A state that has received fuller coverage is New Jersey, in Richard P. McCormick, The History of Voting in New Jersey: A Study of the Development of Election Machinery, 1664— 1911 (New Brunswick, 1953), 171-73, 206
105. John F. Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Pr ogressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880—1920 (Chapel Hill, 1988).
106. Bruce L. Felknor places vote fraud in the context of overall political corruption in Political Mischief: Smear, Sabotage, and Reform in U.S. Elections (New York, 1992), 160-67.
107. See also John Landesco, “Election Fraud,” in John A. Gardiner and David J. Olson, eds. Theft of the City: Readings on Corruption in Urban America (Bloomington, 1974), 51-59.
108. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 446–59; vol V. 196-97.
109. Louisville Evening-Post, 2 October 1905;
110. City of Louisville, Board of Aldermen, Annual Report for 1905 (Louisville, 1906), 413-14;
111. Scholl v. Bell, vol. II, 586–87.
112. Richard L. McCormick, “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review (June 1981): 270;
113. see also Sarah M. Henry, “Progressivism and Democracy: Electoral Reform in the United States, 1888-1919” (Ph.D. diss. Columbia University, 1995), who argues that the Australian ballot was “the first of what turned into a flood of electoral reforms” in the Progressive Era since it made the ballot “a credible conduit for the deliberate will of the voters” (393).
114. Clark, Helm Bruce: Public Defender, 35–36;
115. “Fusionist Movement,” The Encyclopedia of Louisville, 325.
116. Scholl v. Bell, vol. VI, 1–5, 125-29, 289-93, 381-87, 555-63, 700-702, 823-29; vol. II, 299-304, 366, 682-84; vol. V, 272-73;
117. Louisville Evening-Post, 7 November 1905.
118. Scholl v. Bell, vol. XI, 21–29, 56-63.
119. Scholl v. Bell, vol. III, 179–86.
120. Scholl v. Bell, vol. V, 102–20.
121. Scholl v. Bell, vol. II, 723–25.
122. Scholl v. Bell, vol. VII, 368–72.
123. Scholl v. Bell, vol. IX, 250–56.
124. Louisville Evening-Post, 7, 11 November 1905;
125. Louisville Courier-Journal, 8, 9 November 1905. The same election saw another contested mayoral race, which received much more national attention. In New York, William Randolph Hearst lost to George McClellan amid wide reports of vote fraud. The Evening-Post reprinted an editorial that appeared in Hearst's New York American calling for a recount. Despite his considerable economic and political resources, Hearst was unsuccessful in challenging the election's results.
126. A recent treatment is David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Boston, 2000), 196–201.
127. Louisville Evening-Post, 11 November 1905. Ironically, a constitutional amendment was also on the November 1905 ballot that would have banned the Australian ballot, but it was defeated.
128. Louisville Evening-Post, 13 November 1905.
129. Helm Bruce, “What Kind of City Do You Want?” 26 September 1917, pamphlet at the Filson Club Library. William Marshall Bullitt was appointed by President Taft in 1912 to be U.S. Solicitor General.
130. Scholl v. Bell, vol. XI, 1–5, 125-29, 289-93, 381-87, 700-702; vol. XIII, 1- 42, 128-29; vol. V, 423-24.
131. Louisville Election Contest Case, “Opinion of Chancellors Miller and Kirby, April 16, 1907,” Filson Club;
132. “Twelve Plain Facts About Col. Whallen and Judge Miller—Their Relations for Twenty Years,” Bingham Miscellaneous Files, Bullitt Papers
133. Clark, Helm Bruce, Public: Defender, 44–49.
134. Speech of Marshall Bullitt, n.d. Bullitt papers.
135. Louisville Evening-Post, 18 April 1907.
136. Louisville Evening-Post, 22 May 1907;
137. Louisville Courier-Journal, 23 May 1907;
138. Louisville Herald, 23 May 1907;
139. Outlook, 15 June 1907, 306–7;
140. Clark, Helm Bruce, Public Defender, 49-51, 84–85;
141. Scholl v. Bell, vol. XIII, 23–50.
142. Louisville Evening-Post, 27 June 1907;
143. William E. Ellis, Robert Worth Bingham and the Southern Mystique: From the Old South to the New South and Beyond (Kent, Ohio, 1997), 31-48.
144. Louisville Courier-Journal, 1, 3, 4 November 1909;
145. Louisville Evening-Post, 1, 2, 3, 5 November 1909;
146. Louisville Herald, 15 November 1909;
147. Kentucky Irish-American, 30 October 1909;
148. Ellis, Robert Worth Bingham and the Souther n Mystique, 42–48;
149. Yater, Two-Hundred Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 149–52.
150. Louisville Police Department Records, Force Book, 1904-1921, Filson Club;
151. Robert I. Cusick Jr. “The History of the Louisville Division of Police from the Founding of the City to 1955” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1964), 48-51.
152. Kleppner, Who Voted? 59–60;
153. Idem, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 167–69;
154. Allen and Allen, “Vote Fraud and Data Validity”
155. Walter Dean Burnham, “Those High Nineteenth-Century American Voting Turnouts: Fact or Fiction?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Spring 1986): 613-41;
156. Philip E. Converse, “Change in the American Electorate,” in Angus Campbell and Philip E. Converse, eds. The Human Meaning of Social Change (New York, 1972): 263-301;
157. Key, in Southern Politics, understood that even where there is healthy party competition, “such bipartisan arrangements in assuring electoral honesty are vastly overrated” (443). A helpful recent corrective is Mark Wahlgren Summers, “Party Games: The Art of Stealing Elections in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States,” Journal of American History 88 (September 2001): 424-35.
158. “Theory and Voting Research,” American Political Science Review 68 (September 1974): 1022.