The Exhausting Wait: How Seattle's 1874 Election Paralyzed the City
After election clerks were locked in a hall for thirty hours to tally votes, local journalists decried the bureaucratic slog as a 'quarry slave' ordeal that turned even the most patient men into irritable, sleep-deprived ruins.
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.
It is said that experience is a master, but politics teaches at an exorbitant figure. Experience has taught us a lesson in the last election just held. It has burned its own fingers for it. If anyone doubts this, let him ask the clerks of election in this precinct, who have been shut up in Slaughter's Hall for the last thirty hours, toiling like quarry slaves, and without sleep. When they all got through, they were about the sourest and sleepiest set of individuals we ever saw. We have no better virus for imposing this protracted canvass upon the election clerks, and keeping the public in suspense for over twenty hours as to the result of the vote in this precinct, than Thompson's colt had for going across the brook to drink. These 500 votes might have just as well been divided up into three separate lots, at three different wards. There is no reason why the great city of Seattle should be over twice as long in its vote-taking as the little village of New York. A hint to the wise is sufficient.
“Toiling like quarry slaves, and without sleep. When they all got through, they were about the sourest and sleepiest set of individuals we ever saw.”
Long before modern ballot-counting anxieties, Seattle voters in 1874 were already grappling with the agony of a slow, manual tally. While technology has changed, the public's impatience with election delays and the grueling toll on poll workers remain a persistent feature of the democratic process.
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