The Elderberry Wine Defense: How a Contested Election Collapsed in Laughter

The Populists have given up the fight for the county commissionership from the Second, or southern, district. The contest was brought by James Jones against F. O. Nickerson, Republican, whom the official canvass declared elected by a decisive majority. When court convened for the afternoon session yesterday, Judge Langley dismissed the contest under stipulation by the attorneys. Each side is to pay its own costs, but the costs owing to the county will of course have to be paid out of the public funds. The dismissal leaves the official canvass in effect and puts Nickerson fairly in office.

When court adjourned at 5:30 all the oral testimony had been introduced in the contests for sheriff and coroner, and Judge Langley is now ready to inspect the ballots challenged during the recount. The first witness called was E. O. Marsh, city clerk of Duwamish, who testified as to registration of voters there prior to the election of November 6, saying that Louis Whatney and L. A. Coffin, who, the Populists claimed, voted illegally, were not on the book when registration closed. Being shown the book, he stated that the pencil entry of their names had afterwards been made by someone else.

In a statement to the court during cross-examination, Mr. Gay said those two men were sailors and that, in accordance with a popular belief that sailors could vote anywhere, they had gone to the polls and cast their votes under protest.

The next witness of consequence was W. B. Williams, of Franklin, for whom a bench warrant was issued because of his failure to appear in court in response to the subpoena. He came in, however, before the officer served the warrant. The object of his testimony was to establish charges of drunkenness at the polls. He said he had received a written order from Inspector Bailey to go to Sam Hyde's saloon and bring up a grip sack. He went to the back door, presented the order, and the saloon keeper came back with a carpet bag containing some bottles and lunch. Williams took the carpet bag to the schoolhouse where the election was being held and put it in the wing, which was not being used as a polling place. He did not know what was in the bottles.

Inspector Bailey was recalled and said the carpet bag was a straw grip bought by his wife in Chicago for lunches when they came West. "What was in the bottles?" demanded Mr. Winsor. "Well, one of them contained elderberry wine, and the other had cold tea in it. Besides this there was a piece of pie, a ham sandwich and a biscuit." "What were the bottles doing in Sam Hyde's saloon?" "Well, you see, we had made a good deal of elderberry wine and stored some of it in Hyde's cellar. When I came down town that morning I left my lunch up there and when I got hungry I sent up for it by Williams, giving him a note letting Hyde put in a bottle of the wine."

The explanation of how elderberry wine came to be stored in a Franklin saloon amused even the Populists. Everybody laughed, probably because Warner had previously in a loud voice and with a confident manner offered to prove that the election board had been too drunk to perform its duties.

This closed the oral testimony for Meyer and Askam, except that of A. S. Warner, who gave expert testimony as to the size of the hole in the ballot box, he having made careful and elaborate measurements during the recount. J. J. Smith, Oregon Improvement Company physician at Franklin, was called for Van de Vanter and James. He said he was at the polls when they opened and voted then. He noticed no irregularity then or subsequently during the day. On cross-examination he was questioned minutely as to the affidavits of the judges and clerks of election, and said that he himself had drafted the affidavits and that they had been signed in his office.

Dr. Smith was the only witness called by Van de Vanter and James, and his testimony was no sooner in than Mr. Gay surprised his opponents by informing the court that the contention as to Martin creek would not be pushed. He had in his pocket, he said, a list of men who, he asserted, lived outside of King county but who had voted in that precinct, and there were others. Nevertheless, as he did not think it necessary to go into the vote, he would waive all objections to the poll. This narrows the contest to miscellaneous, two-name, and uninitiated votes and the vote at Franklin, Highline and Novelty. The judge is now merely to decide whether Meyer and Askam are entitled to their seats.