The Captain's Voting Mistake
A steamboat captain accidentally votes for the entire Republican ticket while trying to vote against them, leading to a frantic attempt to retrieve his ballot.
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 steamboatmen along the water front have quite a joke on Capt. Hansen, of the steamer Quickstep, for having voted the straight Republican ticket through mistake on election day, and induced his two sons to do the same thing, though they are all three ardent Democrats. Capt. Hansen misinterpreted the instructions to electors, and thought the cross was to be placed opposite the names of the candidates he desired to vote against. Being especially antagonistic to Republicans, he carefully marked every candidate on that ticket, and showed his two Democratic sons how to prepare their ballots in a similar manner. All three ballots went in thus marked, but before leaving the polls they discovered the mistake and the captain demanded the return of the ballots. The judges refused, but he was so worked up over it he stopped there until the vote was being counted to identify the ballot he had cast and try to have it returned. When the ballot was reached, he at once identified it, and sure enough, there was a big black cross opposite every Republican candidate.
“He was so worked up over it he stopped there until the vote was being counted to identify the ballot he had cast and try to have it returned.”
This captures the anxiety surrounding the 'Australian ballot'—the secret ballot system that was relatively new and prone to user error in the 1890s. It serves as a reminder that voter education has been a civic struggle for over a century.
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