The Pink Ticket Scandal: Seattle’s 1884 Ballot-Box Scheme
A sworn affidavit exposes how the Seattle Police Department and railroad interests allegedly colluded to swing an election, forcing voters into 'back-door' channels.
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.
At the Territorial election last fall, it will be remembered that the most vicious element of Seattle's population aligned itself with the railroad strikers to elect Armstrong as Delegate to Congress, the consideration being services rendered by the railroad crowd looking to the defeat of Jacobs, Lewis, Wood, and other candidates. The result of this union was the famous 'pink ticket.' Among the most active of the pink ticket workers was Chief of Police Woolery. W. W. Wardell, residing at the mouth of the Duwamish River, filed an affidavit stating that on election day, November 4, 1884, he was present at the polls in the First Ward. While there, Chief of Police James Woolery approached John Keena and said: 'Tell Jimmie Smith or Dr. Stuart to rush in them men; the coast is clear.' Immediately thereafter, about a dozen men, apparently longshoremen, sailors, or fishermen led by Jimmie Smith, marched up from the waterfront and proceeded to the place of voting. The affidavit further claims that this 'pink ticket' was a product of the lawless, and those who championed it showed a total disregard for the sanctity of the ballot.
“Tell Jimmie Smith or Dr. Stuart to rush in them men; the coast is clear.”
This account of 'pink ticket' voter manipulation and police-sanctioned corruption mirrors the perennial civic anxiety over concentrated power in Seattle. Much like the 1884 discourse on 'law and order,' modern Seattle remains a city grappling with the influence of outside economic interests—be it 19th-century railroads or 21st-century corporate lobbying—on the integrity of local democracy.
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