Nostalgia for Tammany

[JackRiddler]

Yes! Since the dawn of time elections have been fixed, ballot boxes have been stuffed, and usurpers have been installed. But a city or statewide election counted by hand cannot be fixed without hundreds of conspirators involved. What happened becomes common knowledge, even if the bad guys win anyway (which they usually did). The difference between the political machines of old and machine-counted voting in the electronic age is that results can be faked in secret, so that only a handful of conspirators need know what happened. Even the candidates who benefit can be kept in the dark.

Tammany to stay in power had to serve its constituency; it was a local oligarchy, as opposed to a roving skybound predator with no need of allegiances, like Diebold.

[JackRiddler]

1. kick

[philly_bob]

2. I am a relative of a famous 19th-century Chicago politician, John Armstrong.

Three stories come down in the family:

(1) Him bouncing my mother on his knee and asking her if she said her prayers every night.

(2) Him sitting in his office with a cigar box. The city contractors would come in. They'd give him money, and he'd put that money in the cigar box. The widows and orphans would come in. He'd take money out of the cigar box and give it to them.

(3) Each election he'd send men around to pick up bums. They'd vote once with a full beard, then they'd be sent back to a bathhouse for a shave; then they'd vote a second time with a mustache; then back to the bathhouse for another shave and vote clean-shaven. Hence his nickname: "Bathhouse John Armstrong."

Yes, there's always been corruption. But, as the OP points out, to run an old-style operation like Bathhouse John's, you'd need an organization, you'd need a leader, you'd need the good will of at least a few people, and it wouldn't really be secret.

Election machine fixing is a whole new threat. Corporate. Unaccountable. Secret. You don't need a leader, just an obedient and attractive puppet. And it's theoretically unbeatable. If enough voters got mad at Bathhouse John, they could overcome his 3-1 voting advantage and vote him out of office. Not so today's election machine fixers. They just have to figure out how many votes to switch from column A to column B.

I'm not defending old-style election cheating. But I'm explaining why I think new-style election machine cheating is much, much more dangerous. It's why I want to go back to hand-counted paper ballots.

[JackRiddler]

3. Thanks for a great story!