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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Tracy A. Campbell
Tracy A. Campbell
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Extract

Although vote fraud is an acknowledged component of American political culture, scholarship on the inner workings of stealing elections is rather thin. Despite popular exposés by nineteenth-century muckrakers, the functioning dynamics of vote stealing remains somewhere beneath the visible layer of political analysis. The Gilded Age has been the recipient of some extensive studies of ballot corruption, but scholars have generally concluded that the extent of fraud in changing the actual outcome of a specific race was exaggerated, and with the advent of the Australian, or secret, ballot in the early 1890s, American elections took on a decidedly freer and fairer tone. The scholarship surrounding vote fraud has also tended to focus on a secondary issue: Did the secret ballot diminish fraud to the point where earlier turnout levels could be seen as inflated? Following the lead of Walter Dean Burnham, numerous scholars have answered decidedly in the negative—the level of fraud was so insignificant as not to change turnout totals in any meaningful way.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 2003 , pp. 269 - 300
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Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2003

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References

Notes

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,Seymour, Charles and Frary, Donald Paige 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), 256Google Scholar. In some well-known areas of corrupt southern politics, historians have followed Seymour and Frary. Miller, William D., for example, dismissed suggestions of widespread fraud in Mr. Crump of Memphis (Baton Rouge, 1964), 73–76Google Scholar. In another southern city, New Orleans, Reynolds, George M. 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), 129–130Google Scholar. In The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (Chicago, 1971), 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 Allen, Howard W. and Allen, Kay Warren, “Vote Fraud and Data Validity,” in Clubb, Jerome M., Flanigan, William H., and Zingale, Nancy H., eds., Analyzing Electoral History: A Guide to the Study of American Voter Behavior (Beverly Hills, 1981): 153–193Google Scholar. 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 Kleppner, Paul, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 1893–1928 (New York, 1987), 164–171Google Scholar. Keyssar, Alexander, in The Right to V ote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2000)Google Scholar, mostly agrees with the Allens that widespread claims of early 1900s election fraud were exaggerated. “Most elections,” Keyssar writes of the Gilded Age, “appear to have been honestly conducted: ballot-box stuffing, bribery, and intimidation were the exception, not the rule” (160). For some contemporary accounts, see Woodruff, Clinton Rogers, “Election Methods and Reforms in Philadelphia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (03 1901): 181–204Google Scholar, and Bernheim, Abram C., “The Ballot in New York,” Political Science Quarterly 4 (03 1889): 130–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An important article is Genevieve Gist, B., “Progressive Reform in a Rural Community: The Adams County Vote-Fraud Case,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (06 1961): 60–78Google Scholar. See also Bass, Herbert J., “The Politics of Ballot Reform in New York State, 1888–1890,” New York History (07 1961): 253–272Google Scholar; Argersinger, Peter H., “New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age,” Political Science Quarterly 100 (Winter 1985–1986): 669–687CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 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, see Squires, James D., The Secrets of the Hopewell Box: Stolen Elections, Souther n Politics, and a City's Coming of Age (New York, 1996Google Scholar. See also McGerr, Michael E., The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar. 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). In his classic Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949), V. O. Key wrote, “The conduct of elections is the most neglected and primitive branch of our public administration” (443).

2. Kleppner, Paul, Who Voted? The Dynamics of Electoral Turnout, 1870–1980 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar, dismisses any claims that election fraud was widespread in the late 1800s. “Extensive and routine vote fraud in cities was unlikely,” Kleppner writes, “because the contending parties had strong incentives to watch each other” (59–60). 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 Burnham, Walter Dean, Converse, Philip E., and Rusk, Jerrold G. in the American Political Science Review 68 (09): 1002–1057CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, Gary W. and Kousser, J. Morgan, “Turnout and Rural Corruption: New York as a Test Case,” American Journal of Political Science 25 (11 1981): 646–663CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heckelman, Jac C., “The Effect of the Secret Ballot on Voter Turnout Rates,” Public Choice (82): 107–124Google Scholar; idem, “Revisiting the Relationship Between Secret Ballots and Turnout: A New Test of Two-Institutional Theories,” American Politics Quar terly 28 (April 2000): 194–215; Reynolds, John F. and McCormick, Richard L., “Outlawing ‘Treachery’: Split Tickets and Ballot Laws in New York and New Jersey, 1880–1910,” Journal of American History (03 1986): 835–858CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perman, Michael, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 49Google Scholar; and Rusk, Jerrold G., “The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split-Ticket Voting, 1876–1908,” American Political Science Review 64 (12 1970): 1220–1238CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an antebellum argument that runs similar to the Gilded Age claim that minimizes the extent of fraud, see Gienapp, William E., “‘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), 22–33Google Scholar. In “‘The Silent Dollar’: Vote Buying in New Jersey,” New Jersey History (Fall–Winter 1980), 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 Key, V. O. Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York, 1942), 624–649Google Scholar.

3. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Population, par t I (Washington, D.C., 1901), lxix; Wright, George C., Life Behind a V eil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865–1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985), 68–72Google Scholar; Wills, James T., “Louisville Politics, 1891–1897” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1966), 2–4Google Scholar. During the electoral crisis following the 1876 presidential election, Henry Watterson's Courier-Journal, in the estimation of Woodward, C. Vann, 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), 110–111Google Scholar.

4. Harrison, Lowell and Klotter, James C., A New History of Kentucky (Lexington, 1997), 118, 265Google Scholar.

5. Louisville Courier-Journal, December 1, 6, 7, 1887; Cornell, Charlene M., “Louisville in Transition: 1870–1890” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1970), 93–100, 124–32Google Scholar.

Municipal elections were a prime target for election fraud because they were the easiest to manipulate. Larger elections, such as for governor or Congress, meant more votes to steal and a greater likelihood for discovery and federal investigations. Municipal contests, on the other hand, promised a lucrative reward in return for controlling a few precincts or wards.

6. Louisville Courier-Journal, 14, 23 January, 19 February, 5, 6 December 1888; 24 January 1892; Nation, 13, 20 December 1888; 10 August 1889; 30 April, 22 October 1891; 14 January, 4 February 1892; Cornell, “Louisville in Transition,” 134; Fredman, L. E., The Australian Ballot: The Story of an American Reform (East Lansing, 1968), 31–32Google Scholar; Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Why Americans Still Don't Vote: And Why Politicians W ant it That Way (Boston, 2000Google Scholar). Writing in 1887, Ivins, William M. 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 Y ork City (New York, 1887), 90–91Google Scholar, 119; Keyssar, The Right to V ote, 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.” Quoted in Testi, Arnaldo, “The Tribulations of an Old Democracy,” Journal of American History 88 (09 2001): 422CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1888, Massachusetts became the first state to adopt the Australian ballot, and by 1891 thirty other states had followed suit.

7. Proceedings of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention, (December 1890), 1805–12. 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 Ireland, Robert M., The Kentucky State Constitution: A Refer ence Guide (Westport, Conn., 1999), 124–125Google Scholar; see also Ware, Alan, “Anti-Partyism and Party Control of Political Reform in the United States: The Case of the Australian Ballot,” British Journal of Political Science 30 (01 2000): 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who argues that the parties supported the secret ballot reform because they were successful in designing ballots that preserved party control of the electorate.

In Colorblind Injustice: Minority V oting 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). Woodward, C. Vann, in Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 (Baton Rouge, 1951), 54–57Google Scholar, understood that the various ways of stealing votes in the South “were all highly developed arts” (56).

8. Undated newspaper clipping, J. H. Haager Scrapbook, Louisville Police Records, Filson Club Library; undated clipping from Hugh McCullough Scrapbook, Louisville Police Records, Filson Club Library. For Whallen's rise to power, see Gray, Karen R. and Yates, Sarah R., “Boss John Whallen: The Early Louisville Years (1876–1883),” Journal of Kentucky Studies (1984): 171–186Google Scholar; idem, “John Henry Whallen,” in Kleber, John, ed., The Encyclopedia of Louisville (Lexington, Ky., 2001), 935Google Scholar; Cincinnati Enquir er, 4 December 1913; Kentucky Elk, n.d., Filson Club Clippings File; and Wills, “Louisville Politics,” 29–31. See also Wright, Life Behind a Veil, 71–75; idem, “The Billy Club and the Ballot: Police Intimidation of Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1880–1930,” Southern Studies 23 (1984): 23. In the harsh winter of 1912, the Whallen brothers distributed over $10,000 in cash to needy Louisvillians. Louisville Times, 7 February 1912. John Whallen died in 1913, and his funeral was one of the largest the city had ever seen, with more than one hundred carriages in the procession. He was succeeded as party boss by his brother, James.

9. Krock, Arthur, Myself When Young: Growing Up in the 1890s (Boston, 1973), 212–213Google Scholar.

10. The Critic, 9 October 1892; Louisville Post, 12, 15 October 1892; Louisville Courier-Journal, 4, 6, 11, 14 October 1892. 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 forty-eight 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. In this study of Louisville, numerous newspaper accounts of various political persuasions, in addition to court and police records, have been used in a similar effort to balance all possible partisan loyalties in order to understand the scale and scope of the local corruption.

In “The Effect of the Secret Ballot on Voter Turnout Rates,” Jac C. Heckelman asserts that within a “rational voter framework,” the secret ballot eliminated a market for buying votes, and therefore voters “were rational to stay away from the polls.” (107). As the example of Louisville affords, the secret ballot eliminated no such market. In “Revisiting the Relationship Between Secret Ballots and Turnout,” Heckelman concludes that “income, rather than race or literacy, was the crucial determinant for voting in secret ballot elections” (211), in that with a decreased ability to bribe voters, those of lesser means were less likely to vote. The case study of Louisville calls into question the entire evidentiary base of such studies, which rely on voter turnout and not on the social reality surrounding the polls on election day.

11. 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; Wright, “The Billy Club and the Ballot,” 26–27; Wills, “Louisville Politics,” 117–18.

12. Miller, Zane L., Boss Cox's Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Pr ogressive Era (New York, 1968), 93–96, 165–67Google Scholar; Miller, William D., Memphis During the Pr ogressive Era, 1900–1917 (Memphis, 1957), 100–101Google Scholar, 141–45, 169–70; Fogelson, Robert M., Big-City Police (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 2–5, 33–34, 67–68Google Scholar; Robinson, Cyril D., “The Mayor and the Police—the Political Role of the Police in Society,” in Mosse, George L., ed., Police Forces in History (London, 1975): 281–282, 295–97Google Scholar. For a wider discussion of the techniques of police corruption, particularly the role of ward and precinct leaders in protection rackets, see Key, V. O. Jr., “Police Graft,” American Journal of Sociology 40 (03 1935): 624–636CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 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; for an extended discussion of the methods of controlling votes as well as the use of police and firefighters on election day, see Kurtzman, David Harold, “Methods of Controlling Votes in Philadelphia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1935)Google Scholar.

13. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Population, par t I, 172; Wright, Life Behind a V eil, 186, 190; Collins, Ernest, “The Political Behavior of the Negroes in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1950), 50Google Scholar. Within the 1891 Kentucky Constitutional debates, there was extended discussion of the secret ballot and worries of election fraud, but no public proclamations of the intentions to disfranchise African Americans, such as occurred in numerous other southern conventions. In fact, in their public expressions the Kentucky framers were anxious not to disfranchise illiterate voters and took steps to ensure their suffrage rights. As this article contends, the absence of such “legal” disfranchisement schemes in Kentucky made the Democratic machine in Louisville especially willing to disfranchise African Americans and well-to-do Republicans by illegal means on election day.

14. 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 Bolin, James Duane, Bossism and Reform in a Southern City: Lexington, Kentucky, 1880–1940 (Lexington, Ky., 2000), 54Google Scholar.

15. Louisville Courier-Journal, 10, 11 November 1899; Louisville Evening-Post, 17 August, 7 November 1899; Cincinnati Enquir er, 6 November 1899; Yater, Two Hundr ed Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 147. 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 $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. Klotter, James C., William Goebel: The Politics of Wrath (Lexington, Ky., 1977), 46–48, 93–95Google Scholar; see also Woodson, Urey, The First New Dealer: William Goebel (Louisville, Ky., 1939), 208–212Google Scholar.

16. Speech of Marshall Bullitt before the Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1905 Election Speeches, Bullitt Family Papers, Oxmoor Collection, Filson Club. Louisville Evening-Post, 10 October, 3, 4 November 1903. After the 1903 election, Thomas W. Bullitt and Judge W. O. Harris issued a report, finding that “there was a preconceived plan to subvert the will of the electors and to prevent a fair election.”

17. 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), 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 Argersinger, Peter H., “‘A Place on the Ballot’: Fusion Politics and Antifusion Laws,” American Historical Review 85 (04 1980): 287–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an example of the success of fusionists in nearby Cincinnati, see Miller, Boss Cox's Cincinnati, 165–67.

18. Scholl v. Bell, no. 41519, and Peter v. Wilson, no. 41524, Jefferson Circuit Court, vol. I, 16–17, 46, vol. III, 91–93, Special Collections, University of Kentucky (hereafter referred to as Scholl v. Bell). This case formed the core of Helm Bruce's appeal to the Kentucky Court of Appeals and, as such, comprises thousands of pages of detailed sworn testimony concerning the 1905 election. It is a rare piece of social history that contains hundreds of Louisville citizens stating in their own words how an election was systematically stolen. Louisville Evening-Post, 3, 4, 5 October 1905; Clark, Thomas D., Helm Bruce, Public Defender: Br eaking Louisville's Gothic Political Ring, 1905 (Louisville, Ky., 1973), 32–34Google Scholar; Wright, “The Billy Club and the Ballot,” 27–28. Upon reading that the Louisville Evening-Post had accused him of hiring repeaters from St. Louis, John Whallen promptly charged the paper with slander and sued for $25,000 in damages.

19. Louisville Evening-Post, 20 October 1905; Kentucky Irish-American, 14 October 1905; J. F. Bullitt to Thomas W. Bullitt, 18 October 1905, file 308, Bullitt papers; Yater, George H., Two Hundr ed Years at the Falls of the Ohio: A History of Louisville and Jefferson County (Louisville, Ky., 1987), 147–148Google Scholar. McAuliffe was dismissed from the Louisville police force in April 1906 for “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Louisville Police Force Book, 24, Louisville Police Records.

20. Scholl v. Bell, vol. V, 31–35.

21. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 231–44; vol. II, 292–93. For an extended analysis of turn-of-the-century methods of disfranchising African Americans and thereby diminishing Republican totals in southern states, see Kousser, J. Morgan, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880–1910 (New Haven, 1974Google Scholar). 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. In Testing Democracy, John F. Reynolds notes that in New Jersey, vote buying was not so much “bribery” as it was a cash transaction, and that bought voters “simply expected some consideration for losing a day's pay and taking the time and trouble of going to the polls” (35).

22. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 634.

23. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 230–31. The Fusionist fund was considerably smaller, totaling $23,078, which included $3,100 for registration day costs, and $6,120 for election day expenses. Scholl v. Bell, vol. IX, 1–3. As a comparison, James Bryce wrote in the early 1900s that “as much as $50,000” was being spent on a congressional race in New York. Bryce, , The American Commonwealth, vol. II, (London, 1901), 148Google Scholar. Nearly fifty years later, V. O. Key found that a suitable candidacy for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina had to spend $50,000. Southern Politics, 465.

24. Scholl v. Bell, vol. II, 190, 197–99.

25. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 202–3; Louisville Evening-Post, 6 November 1905; Clark, Helm Bruce, Public Defender, 36–38.

26. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 204–9. 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 Jewell, Malcolm E. and Cunningham, Everett W., Kentucky Politics (Lexington, Ky., 1968), 16–18, 30–37, 53–71, 225–33Google Scholar, and Sabato, Larry J. and Simpson, Glenn R., Dirty Little Secrets: Persistence of Corruption in American Politics (New York, 1996), 298–300Google Scholar. 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 McCormick, Richard P., The History of Voting in New Jersey: A Study of the Development of Election Machiner y, 1664–1911 (New Brunswick, 1953), 171–173, 206Google Scholar; and Reynolds, John F., Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Pr ogressive Refor m in New Jersey, 1880–1920 (Chapel Hill, 1988)Google Scholar. V. O. Key outlined some of the parameters of southern vote fraud in Southern Politics, 443–62. Felknor, Bruce L. places vote fraud in the context of overall political corruption in Political Mischief: Smear, Sabotage, and Refor m in U.S. Elections (New York, 1992), 160–167Google Scholar. See also Landesco, John, “Election Fraud,” in Gardiner, John A. and Olson, David J., eds., Theft of the City: Readings on Corruption in Urban America (Bloomington, 1974), 51–59Google Scholar.

27. Scholl v. Bell, vol. I, 446–59; vol V., 196–97.

28. Louisville Evening-Post, 2 October 1905; City of Louisville, Board of Aldermen, Annual Report for 1905 (Louisville, 1906), 413–14; Speech of Marshall Bullitt before Kentucky Court of Appeals, Bullitt papers; “Louisville Election Contest Cases: Report of James P. Helm, Chairman of the Committee of One Hundred,” pamphlet, Filson Club; Scholl v. Bell, vol. II, 586–87.

29. McCormick, Richard L., “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review (06 1981): 270Google Scholar; see also Henry, Sarah M., “Progressivism and Democracy: Electoral Reform in the United States, 1888–1919” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995)Google Scholar, 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).

30. Clark, Helm Bruce: Public Defender, 35–36; “Fusionist Movement,” The Encyclopedia of Louisville, 325.

31. 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; Louisville Evening-Post, 7 November 1905.

32. Scholl v. Bell, vol. XI, 21–29, 56–63.

33. Scholl v. Bell, vol. III, 179–86.

34. Scholl v. Bell, vol. V, 102–20.

35. Scholl v. Bell, vol. II, 723–25.

36. Scholl v. Bell, vol. VII, 368–72.

37. Scholl v. Bell, vol. IX, 250–56.

38. Louisville Evening-Post, 7, 11 November 1905; 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. A recent treatment is Nasaw, David, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Boston, 2000), 196–201Google Scholar.

39. 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.

40. Louisville Evening-Post, 13 November 1905.

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. Louisville Election Contest Case, “Opinion of Chancellors Miller and Kirby, April 16, 1907,” Filson Club; “Twelve Plain Facts About Col. Whallen and Judge Miller—Their Relations for Twenty Years,” Bingham Miscellaneous Files, Bullitt Papers. Outlook, 15 June 1907, 306–7. In 1910, Whallen chose Miller to replace Judge Henry S. Barker on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Barker had decided against the Democrats in the 1905 contest case; Louisville Evening-Post, 23 March 1907; Clark, Helm Bruce, Public Defender, 44–49.

44. Speech of Marshall Bullitt, n.d., Bullitt papers.

45. Louisville Evening-Post, 18 April 1907.

46. Louisville Evening-Post, 22 May 1907; Louisville Courier-Journal, 23 May 1907; Louisville Herald, 23 May 1907; Outlook, 15 June 1907, 306–7; Clark, Helm Bruce, Public Defender, 49–51, 84–85; Scholl v. Bell, vol. XIII, 23–50. Judge Lassing noted that had the disfranchised voters all voted for the defeated candidates in the various municipal races, “they would have been elected by majorities ranging from 3,425 to 5,332” (50).

In February 1907, the Court of Appeals had invalidated an election in rural Princeton, Kentucky, on grounds of vote fraud. Louisville Evening-Post, 22, 23 February 1907. Writing for the majority, Judge Henry S. Barker wrote that the court understood it “ought not, for light and trivial causes, undo the work” of the voters, but if sufficient evidence warranted such drastic action, there was a fundamental principle at stake: “Whenever elections are not free and equal, the democratic principle is dead, and the republican form of government will exist in name only.” Orr et al. v. Kevil et al., 100 S.W. 314. Barker's reputation as a judge later propelled him to the presidency of the University of Kentucky.

47. Robert W. Bingham to Bon Robinson, 22 August 1907, Bingham Papers; Louisville Evening-Post, 27 June 1907; Ellis, William E., Rober t Worth Bingham and the Southern Mystique: From the Old South to the New South and Beyond (Kent, Ohio, 1997), 31–48Google Scholar. Helm Bruce wrote to Bingham following Barth's suicide and called the Courier-Journal's charges “brutal outrages” that “should bring down on the head of the writer the scorn of all right thinking men.” Helm Bruce to Bingham, 23 August 1907, Bingham Papers.

48. Bingham to Eames MacVeagh, 8 August 1910, box 34, Bingham Papers; Louisville Courier-Journal, 1, 3, 4 November 1909; Louisville Evening-Post, 1, 2, 3, 5 November 1909; Louisville Herald, 15 November 1909; Kentucky Irish-American, 30 October 1909; Ellis, Robert Worth Bingham and the Souther n Mystique, 42–48; Yater, Two-Hundr ed Years at the Falls of the Ohio, 149–52. When Bingham ran for a seat on the state Court of Appeals in 1910, Whallenites forcefully kept African Americans from registering and other such intimidating tactics. Bingham lost the race by 1,600 votes. “It is true,” Bingham wrote Governor Augustus E. Willson, ”that we should have won, but for the most general and flagrant intimidation and bribery, and a victory won by such methods is always very dearly bought.” Bingham to Willson, 22 November 1910, box 34, Bingham Papers. Bingham later bought the Courier-Journal and was appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James's by Franklin Roosevelt.

49. Louisville Police Department Records, Force Book, 1904–21, Filson Club; Cusick, Robert I. Jr., “The History of the Louisville Division of Police from the Founding of the City to 1955” (M.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1964), 48–51Google Scholar. One officer involved in the vote corruption, Lt. James W. Kinnarney, resigned in July 1907 and later became chief of the special police of Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. In 1930, Kinnarney, along with Australian ballot pioneer Arthur Wallace, was an honorary pallbearer at James Whallen's funeral. Louisville Herald-Post, 16 March 1930; Krock, Myself When Y oung, 138.

50. Kleppner, Who Voted? 59–60; idem, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 167–69; Allen and Allen, “Vote Fraud and Data Validity”; Burnham, Walter Dean, “Those High Nineteenth-Century American Voting Turnouts: Fact or Fiction?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Spring 1986): 613–641Google Scholar; and Converse, Philip E., “Change in the American Electorate,” in Campbell, Angus and Converse, Philip E., eds., The Human Meaning of Social Change (New York, 1972): 263–301Google Scholar; 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.

51. Although Walter Dean Burnham argued that the secret ballot had lowered opportunities for widespread fraud, he also understood local research could yield new insights. In 1974, he suggested that in order to “recover the historical and sociological dimensions of American electoral politics,” historians and political scientists should examine elections at the local level: “This effort may require pursuit of exemplary ‘case studies’ down to a very microscopic ‘local history’ level.” “Theory and Voting Research,” American Political Science Review 68 (September 1974): 1022.