Election Day: An American Holiday, An American History
By Kate Kelly
Election Day: An American Holiday, An American History is the first popular history of Election Day from the 18th century to the present. Against a tapestry of the political history of the day, this highly readable book describes the voting and reporting process of the American electoral system and the activities and celebrations of American campaigns and election days. How popular voting came about, how the secret ballot was developed, women's suffrage, and voting during the civil right era are all examined in detail, together with numerous documentary excerpts and provocative illustrations.
More than just a history of the electoral system, Election Day: An American Holiday, An American History is a history of the day itself, how it was spent and celebrated throughout the generations. Readers accustomed to thinking of our autumn election days as orderly, well supervised events will discover the boisterousness, fraudulence, hard drinking, and not infrequent rioting that have marked the holiday in the past. Peppered with lively anecdotes and rich with the results of extensive research, Election Day is the perfect sourcebook for civics classes, historians, and American a buffs of all ages.
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Excerpt from a speech about the events described in Election Day: An American Holiday, An American History
I have one final story that I particularly like concerning women and the vote, but before going on, I want to share with you a couple of facts. Some people may feel that 1920 and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was the beginning of women voting, but this is not the case. Women in Wyoming gained suffrage rights in 1868, and several other western states gave women the vote shortly after. Interestingly, a few states gave women the right to vote in school elections only—even then guiding the education of the young was primarily a female concern.
But long before 1868, women in New Jersey were permitted to vote. As a matter of fact, they were eligible to vote from the first American elections on. Unfortunately, their downfall came all too soon, but it happened amidst more election shenanigans than you can even imagine.
It was a political fight over a county court house that finally provided the impetus for suffrage change in New Jersey. Newark had been the original seat of the Essex County court house, but now that a new one was to be built, Elizabethtown wanted it. They resolved that a vote was the best way to decide. The county was alive with excitement over the issue, and it got to the point that it was unsafe for residents of one town to visit the other. Cases of assault could and did happen.
On February 10, 1806 voting began at a poll on Day's Hill, where Elizabethtown wanted the court house to be. Reports were that all proceeded calmly for a time, but with the opening of the poll on the second day, irregularities began to appear. By the third day, with the opening of a poll near Newark, fraud became rampant, with no effort to conceal what was going on. Men and boys voted unchallenged as they went from poll to poll casting repeat votes. Vehicles were used to transport the voters more quickly. Newark sent spies to Elizabethtown to find out how many votes they needed to win. Women, black, white, married and single voted again and again, and finally men and boys disguised as women voted once more.
The largest number of votes ever before cast in the county had been 4500; for this election, there were nearly 14,000 votes cast. The township of Acquacknonk, said to contain about 350 voters, polled nearly 1900. Newark had won, but the election was finally declared void.
The episode brought attention to the suffrage law and the irregularities possible through it. In 1807, a bill was introduced limiting the franchise to free while male citizens. It passed by heavy majorities.
From the women, there did not seem to be much reaction. There was little follow-up in the press, nor did there seem to be any public outcry. The women of the day seemed to greet with indifference the loss of rights, leaving it to their grandchildren's generation to begin a fight for suffrage rights that would last eighty years. As for the blacks, not even a civil war completely solved their problems, and it would be a good number of years before they, too, could vote again.
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