The Strict Rules of Territorial Ballot Boxes
Before the secret ballot was standardized, Washington Territory enacted stern penalties to prevent election-day fraud, coercion, and liquor-fueled chaos.
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 following sections in Chapter X of the act of 1867 prescribe penalties for misconduct at elections: Section 1. If any person shall directly or indirectly use any threat, menace or force, or any corrupt measure or device, at or previous to any election held pursuant to this act, towards any elector, or hinder or deter him from voting at such election, he shall upon conviction thereof, be fined in any sum not exceeding five hundred dollars. Section 2. If any person shall furnish any elector who cannot read with a ticket, informing such elector that it contains a name or names different from the name or names which are written or printed thereon, such person shall be fined in any sum not less than fifty or more than five hundred dollars. Section 3. If any person shall defraud any elector by deceiving and causing him to vote for a different person for any office than such elector desired, he shall be fined. Section 7. If any inspector, judge or clerk of any election shall, previous to putting the ballot of any elector in the ballot box, attempt to pry into or find out any name or names on such ballot which shall have been handed in in a folded form, or if any inspector, judge or clerk of any election shall open or suffer the folded ballot of any elector to be opened with a view to ascertain the name of any person for whom such elector shall have voted, every such inspector, judge or clerk so offending shall be fined.
“If any inspector, judge or clerk of any election shall, previous to putting the ballot of any elector in the ballot box, attempt to pry into or find out any name or names on such ballot... he shall be fined.”
In an era of intense political polarization, the 1867 election laws remind us that the struggle to ensure the 'free exercise of suffrage' is as old as the territory itself. While we now have secure, mail-in ballots, these regulations reflect a time when the physical ballot was a vulnerable, public document subject to intimidation and trickery.
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