By Donald Jeffries
While Americans scratch their heads in befuddlement at still uncounted votes and overt evidence of electoral shenanigans, it’s informative to consider the many historical precedents that led to this point.
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln and Union officers refused to furlough suspected Democratic voters among the troops, to stop them from going to the polls. In New York, then a hotbed of Copperhead Democrats, the fraud was especially blatant. Gen. Benjamin “Beast” Butler, notorious for terrorizing the citizens of New Orleans, was sent along with 5,000 troops into New York, to “control” things. Butler even threatened Gov. Horatio Seymour, who was a strong critic of President Lincoln, telling state militia troops, “I shall not recognize the authority of your governor. From what I hear of Gov. Seymour I may find it necessary to arrest all I know who are proposing to disturb the peace on election day.” This summed up the Northern view of the voting process succinctly; those who might cast ballots against Lincoln would be “disturbing the peace” by doing so. In a Nov. 7 letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Butler bluntly declared, “I have done all I could to prevent secessionists from voting.”
In 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden, who had also been a high-profile critic of President Lincoln, won the popular vote and also was ahead in the Electoral College in the race against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. The election was ultimately “decided” by a special congressional commission, which consisted of eight Republicans and seven Democrats. To no one’s surprise, Hayes was awarded the presidency on a strict partisan vote. One of the concessions granted to the Democrats in return was to end Reconstruction in the South.
In 1948, Lyndon Johnson ran for the Senate in the Democratic primary against former Gov. Coke Stevenson. Stevenson won the primary, but the results were close enough to force a runoff election. After the ballots were counted in the runoff, Stevenson had won by a narrow margin. However, the Rio Grande Valley, much as is happening in several places presently, sent in belated returns days after the polls had closed, which ultimately provided the 87-vote margin that resulted in the derisive nickname “Landslide” Lyndon. Legend has it that LBJ himself, along with other campaign aides, went through cemeteries in the Grande Valley, and copied the names of dead Mexicans off the tombstones, with the future president supposedly quipping that one particular person had “as much right to vote as the rest of them in this cemetery do.” There was a mysterious “Box 13” that appeared days after the runoff, giving Johnson a crucial 200 votes. An investigation into the obvious suspicious circumstances involved was quashed by Johnson crony (and former KKK leader) Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. George Parr, a powerful Democratic Party figure who was instrumental in LBJ’s “victory,” would kill himself, part of Johnson’s impressive body count. Election judge Luis Salas admitted in 1977 that he’d certified enough fictitious ballots to swing the election to Johnson. Salas stated that he wanted to confess for his “peace of mind and to reveal to the people the corruption of politics.”
The late James and Kenneth Collier videotaped members of the League of Women Voters tampering with ballots in the 1980s in Florida. For their efforts, then Dade County District Attorney Janet Reno targeted them for retaliation. In the 1996 Republican primaries, renegade populist Pat Buchanan was robbed in Arizona and elsewhere, after upsetting party favorite Bob Dole in the New Hampshire primary. Buchanan’s supporters cited numerous allegations of fraud in the Arizona caucuses, and combined with the entire Republican establishment and mainstream media attacking him relentlessly, his campaign soon fizzled. In 2012, libertarian Ron Paul was the clear people’s choice among Republican candidates, but despite drawing far bigger and more enthusiastic crowds wherever he went, and crushing the opposition in every online poll, he never officially won any primary. In 2016, Bernie Sanders faced the same situation; huge crowds everywhere, while establishment favorite Hillary Clinton struggled to fill a small room. In this case, the fraud was documented by Democratic National Committee emails, which openly talked about rigging the process against him, in favor of Clinton.
The 2000 presidential election, with its hanging chads and open tampering in Florida, should have opened the eyes of all Americans to our corrupted electoral process. When the Supreme Court is left to decide who is president, which may well happen again in 2020, the process is not democratic by any definition. The only electoral corruption the mainstream media has ever taken seriously is the laughable “Russiagate” conspiracy theory, which was created by totally misrepresenting the very real fraud against Bernie Sanders in the 2016
Democratic Party primaries. America has a long, unfortunate history of electoral corruption—and it does not look like it is ending anytime soon.
Donald Jeffries is a highly respected author and researcher whose work on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations and other high crimes of the Deep State has been read by millions of people across the world. Jeffries is also the author of three books currently being sold by the AFP Online Store.
