Deliver The Vote:  A History Of Election Fraud, An American Political Tradition–1742-2004, by Tracy Campbell

It is quite likely that election fraud started before 1742, the earliest example cited in this thorough book and it certainly went beyond 2004, when this book ends. In reading this book I was struck by the fact that the author appears to have been naive that political fraud happened.  It is certainly hard to avoid thinking about the many ways that this occurs, and the author tries her best to be nonpartisan although it is clear that election fraud has involved a lot more than merely fights over who gets what office, but also questions of the use (and abuse) of debts for public expenditures as well (like the St. Louis waterfront in one of the book’s more melancholy examples of how the Democrats entrenched themselves in office due to voter fraud and anti-business activities that drove out Republicans).  The author appears to have written this book in an attempt to encourage the reader to feel outraged about the way that the importance of elections has encouraged a wide variety of widespread voter fraud over the course of America’s history that shows no sign of stopping but she does not appear to be sanguine about having it end for good.  And neither am I.

This book is almost 350 pages long apart from its lengthy endnotes.  After a discussion on the inclination to injustice that human beings have the first part of the book contains various chapters that argue that America’s political corruption amounts to a failure of the democratic experiment (I), with chapters on colonial and early federal election fraud (1), the limits of popular sovereignty before the Civil War (2), the problems of the Reconstruction period (3), and the politics of the Guilded Age (4).  After that the author discusses the elusive struggle starting in the Progressive era to reclaim democracy (II), with chapters on how one steals elections in Kentucky (5), the corruption of the early 1900’s (6), the Democratic corruption of St. Louis (7), and the consistency of corruption (8).  After that the author discusses the path to popular resignation (III), with chapters on majorities in the Jim Crow south (9), legalized bribery (10), election thieves (11), and the hidden time bomb of absentee voters and vote harvesting (12), along with a personal conclusion, after which the book ends with endnotes, a selected bibliography, acknowledgments, an index, and some information about the author.

Given the large number of ways that election fraud can occur, it is worthwhile to ponder the fact that even so noble a figure as George Washington thought it necessary to appeal to the thirst of his constituents by plying them with liquor as a way of showing that he knew how to play the political name, something not everyone (see James Madison) well understood.  One thing I think that this author does not seem to understand is that there are underlying structural reasons that have nothing to do with America to explain why voter fraud is so rampant here.  For one, voter fraud is rampant everywhere where voting takes place.  It is the human desire for power that makes fraud of all kinds such an easy option when it comes to gaining positions of power.  The sort of behavior that people engage in to seek power is different based on the sort of political system that a given state has, but the willingness to do anything for power is not something that varies a huge amount in different places.  If we as Americans tend to think that our political system is less fraudulent than that of others, that impression surely is not held by many currently.