The Ballot-Box Stuffing of '92
When Tacoma's young reformers clashed with the political establishment, the result was a chaotic primary election featuring disappearing ballots, saloon-gang repeaters, and a hole in the ballot box.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The young Democracy of Tacoma is incensed tonight. Red-hot primaries resulted in the apparent defeat of the Hugh Wallace delegation and the election of the C. W. Griggs following. Stuffing of ballot boxes, repeating, and fraudulent counting are alleged by the Wallace men. In the Third ward, a tally was kept until an hour and a half before the polls closed, when 107 votes had been cast. During the following ninety minutes, over 600 votes were stuffed into the box at a rate of over six per minute. The Wallace men claim only one vote was actually cast per minute. There was a hole in the side of the box as well as on the top. It is intimated that 400 Griggs votes were already in the box before the balloting began. In the Fourth ward, the tally showed 180 votes cast, yet the final count showed 232 for Griggs and 72 for Wallace. Voters with pink (Griggs) ballots were not questioned, but those with white (Wallace) ballots were challenged and cross-examined. Jim Dongan's street grading gang and several saloon gangs are charged with voting repeatedly for Griggs, being marched about a block to a saloon after each ballot to repeat the act. The Wallace men call the primaries a farce and denounce the 'old heads.' Both Griggs and Wallace seek to be delegates to the Chicago convention; the former reportedly favors David B. Hill, while Wallace supports Grover Cleveland.
“During the following hour and a half over 600 votes were stuffed in the box, at the rate of over six per minute... There was a hole in the side of this box as well as on the top.”
Local political machine struggles and 'bossism' were defining features of late 19th-century urban life in the Pacific Northwest. While the methods of ballot-box stuffing have evolved into modern debates over campaign finance and voting access, the tension between populist upstarts and entrenched party power remains a recurring theme in Washington's political landscape.
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