Talk:1948 United States Senate election in Texas

Goals

My goals in creating this page are:

• to get the specific details (like dates for the Democratic primary and runoff)
• to get the specific allegations of ballot-box stuffing- who said what, when, etc etc
• to get the scholarly analysis of the election and its results
• to make an informative page about an issue that I have known about [1] since my childhood

Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:17, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

One of the questions I would like answered is what kind of "list" we are talking about when we say that there were 202 votes added "in alphabetical order". I don't understand how the ballots were tallied- did they just write a list of voter names and who they voted for? Doesn't that kind of mess up the whole 'secret ballot' concept? Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:46, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Runoff results (draft)

(Draft)

Texas Democratic primary election runoff

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Lyndon B. Johnson	494,191	50.00%
	Democratic	Coke Stevenson	494,104	50.00%
Total votes			988,295	100.00%

I made this via mathematical calculation based on the statement "he won by 87 votes", but it doesn't include ballots that were thrown out, write-ins, etc. Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:57, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

I added this page to the category 'Electoral fraud in the United States' because the Democratic State Central Committee's 29-28 vote shows there was at least some concern &: Ronnie Dugger, The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1982), 341. https://www.eiu.edu/historia/matteson.pdf "A few years later, Dugger interviewed Luis Salas-a Parr man and the head official at Precinct 13 in 1948. Salas admitted the late returns were fraudulent. Then Dugger was shocked when Salas pulled out a photograph-the same photograph LBJ had shown him a few years earlier!" Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:10, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

I think we should do a day-by-day, step-by-step kind of analysis of this election- from the campaign stops by Stevenson and LBJ to the court proceedings after the runoff. Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:49, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Primary & Runoff Vote Totals

• 15330 Myers, Otis C.
• 7420 Clark, F. B.
• 12327 Collier, Roscoe H.
• 477077 Stevenson, Coke R.
• 10871 Davis, Cyclone
• 13344 Cortez, Frank G.
• 7401 Saunders, Jesse C.
• 237195 Peddy, George E. B.
• 405617 Johnson, Lyndon B.
• 6692 Sledge, Terrell
• 9117 Alford, James F.

• 494104 Stevenson, Coke R.
• 494191 Johnson, Lyndon B.

from https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/71/version/1/datadocumentation#

and from https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/00071/datasets/0010/variables/V262?archive=ICPSR

Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Texas Democratic primary election

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Otis C. Myers	15,330	1.28%
	Democratic	F. B. Clark	7,420	0.62%
	Democratic	Roscoe H. Collier	12,327	1.03%
	Democratic	Coke R. Stevenson	477,077	39.68%
	Democratic	Cyclone Davis	10,871	0.90%
	Democratic	Frank G. Cortez	13,344	1.11%
	Democratic	Jesse C. Saunders	7,401	0.62%
	Democratic	George E. B. Peddy	237,195	19.73%
	Democratic	Lyndon B. Johnson	405,617	33.73%
	Democratic	Terrell Sledge	6,692	0.56%
	Democratic	James F. Alford	9,117	0.76%
Total votes			1,202,391	100.00%

percentages from https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=151515

vote total created via addition

Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:59, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

New goals

My long-term goal is to give a day-by-day account of the events in the campaign- where the candidates were on every day, etc. After August 28, I want to get even more detailed- who was ahead by how much at what times and what specific new results came in that switched the lead. The goals is to paint a picture of who could have known what and when. Although the present location of the list of 202 voters seems to be unknown to the public, I would like to add a picture to the article which shows a list similar to the way the list of 202 voters would have been. (I find it difficult to picture in my mind how voters names could be in a list in the way that the situation seems to be described.) I read in one source that 11 people on the list were contacted and said they didn't vote- who were they? Any records of those people? Local history books should be consulted. What popular legends about 1948 existed or exist today in Texas? The background of every member of the Committee that certified the election should be understood. The days and steps leading to the Hugo Black decision should be documented too. The documents related to the Hugo Black decision should be linked- shouldn't his decision be part of some kind of formal record? Commentary on the runoff from LBJ, Connally, Stevenson, Parr, Salas, Fortas, Black, Truman, etc should all be included. Changes in the understanding of the 1948 election over the past seventy years should be clearly understood, as well as defences for LBJ etc. In a separate page, events in the 1941 election should be documented as well since Connally seemed to think there were some problems in that election. Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

28/29?

Sept. 28 -- Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black today stayed a temporary injunction which kept the name of Representative Lyndon Johnson off the Texas ballot as Democratic nominee for Senator.

https://www.nytimes.com/1948/09/29/archives/texas-ballot-writ-is-stayed-by-black-democratic-nominee-fight-left.html

In a remarkable feat, LBJ’s Washington lawyers bluffed the Supreme Court Clerk into file-marking their stay motion, despite the absence of papers from the courts below; and a few days later, after an in-chambers hearing on September 29, Justice Black issued his unusual stay order — bearing no case number — that terminated the masters’ efforts to unlock the challenged ballot boxes in the Valley. Free of Judge Davidson’s injunction, the Secretary of State then promulgated the statewide ballot with LBJ on it as Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

https://www.velaw.com/uploadedFiles/VEsite/Resources/DefinedLawyering2012.pdf

Did the 'Lawyering' article get the date wrong? Did Hugo Black's stay order happen on the 28th or 29th? Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:39, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

From Caro, pp. 380-381: "on Tuesday afternoon, a clerk summoned [the lawyers] to Black's chambers. The Justice, he said, was ready to announce his verdict.... 'I am going to grant a stay until the full Supreme Court has an opportunity to consider it.' Under the procedure in such hearings, Johnson's attorneys had to draft the order granting the stay. Instructing them to do so, Black said he would sign the order on Wednesday." So Black announced his decision on Tuesday the 28th and signed the order on Wednesday the 29th. Dan Bloch (talk) 02:05, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Vote tally list

@-A-M-B-1996-, A.S. Brown, Billmckern, Danbloch, Dimadick, and Neils51: Hello all. I am so happy about the progress that has been made on this page. There's still more to be done. One of the things I would like to see addressed one day concerns the voter tally list from Box 13 in Alice, Jim Wells County. In all my civics classes, I was never taught how the ballots are counted in the USA (seems like an important point not to discuss in a democratic society!). Why would the names of the voters have been in a list at all? What is the legal name of the type of document that we are talking about when we are talking about a list of voter names plus whoever they voted for? Are there any example photographs of a similar type of document? I have a very hard time imagining the technical mechanics of this whole procedure.

Here's what I'm picturing in my mind's eye (at the moment):

Democratic Party U.S. Senate Primary Runoff Vote Tally

Date: Saturday, August 28, 1948

Location: Precinct 13, Alice, Jim Wells County, TX

Voter Name: Candidate Voted for:

• -- -- -- Stevenson
• -- -- -- Johnson
• (etc normal votes, arranged chronologically according to the order that they came to the poll on Saturday August 28th, and then suddenly)
• -- -- A-- Johnson
• -- -- B-- Johnson
• (etc abnormal votes, arranged alphabetically)

I am going to try to find out more about the official vote totals in Jim Wells (and by county generally). In doing so, I hope that I will get closer to understanding what this list really was really like. I would appreciate any suggestions or help in this area. I really can't imagine what we are talking about when we are saying that there was a list of people's names with the name of the candidate they voted for beside their name. (Or was it two lists, one with the names of people that voted for Stevenson and one with the names of people that voted for Johnson?)

Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:32, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Dear :Geographyinitiative, Caro talks a great deal about this issue, covering several chapters in The Means of Ascent. Nearly half of his 450 page book Means of Ascent is taken with the 1948 Senate race. Caro covers the election in exhaustive detail, through his super-idealized picture of the white supremacist Stevenson as a cowboy hero really does grate. In those days, the lists in Texas were drawn up by hand rather than type-written, which created a potential for fraud. In Texas, there was the poll tax, which was meant to disfranchise black voters. If even you didn't pay the poll tax, you were not allowed to vote. Because most black people in Texas were poor, they could not afford to pay the poll tax. A list of people who had paid the poll tax was necessary to ensure that county officials could turn away people who had not paid the poll tax, who were usually black-it was not really necessary, but officially all people could vote in Texas, so they had to maintain the pretense. Normally, it was county judges who oversaw the voting. Because judges were elected, they needed financial support to pay for their election costs, it was common for judges to be in the "pocket" of some rich politician. The legal document you are referring to is the tally sheet, which tended to be "corrected", i.e manipulated quite a bit by the judges overseeing the elections in Texas. One of the main issues relating to vote returns to Jim Wells county, especially the controversial Box 13, was getting access to tally sheets, which nearly caused a shoot-out between pro-Stevenson and pro-Johnson supporters. I hope this helps. Cheers!--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Box 13 list would have been just a list of voters, not their votes. This serves a purpose which continues to this day, of maintaining a list of who has voted for general records-keeping and so they can't vote more than once. In the places that I've voted, the polling place officials have a list of registered voters and you sign next to your typed name. In 1940s Texas, apparently, the names were written on a list by the polling official. The votes would have been on separate paper ballots.

As to the general issue of this not having been addressed in your civics classes, there's a huge amount of local autonomy in how U.S. elections are conducted. Each state potentially does it differently. Dan Bloch (talk) 03:33, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: In addition to Dan's analysis, I'd add that in some jurisdictions, ballots were numbered. The numbers corresponded to the numbers next to the voters' names on the poll list, so that if there was an issue, the bosses could determine who voted for whom. Reprimands or punishment might follow for those who voted "wrong". Some jurisdictions were so corrupt they used ballots that were already filled in - the "voter" received it on entering the polling place, then deposited it in the ballot box on his way out. If need be, any attempt to alter it could be traced back to the voter. In 1948, Porter also made much of the fact that Democratic primary and runoff ballots included a pledge to vote in the general election for the same candidate the voter chose earlier. This pledge was not binding, but still, if a voter made it, he wasn't likely to break his word. A lot of Porter's newspaper ads were devoted to informing voters that they weren't obligated to choose Johnson, even if they had pledged in the primary and runoff that they would so so.

We've gotten better. Where I'm from in Vermont, the election officials don't use a sign in roster like they did in Texas in 1948. Instead, they have a printed list of the registered voters. When the voter identifies himself, the worker highlights or checks off the name on the list. That way, the election officials know who voted, but not how they cast their ballots.

Billmckern (talk) 04:18, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

@A.S. Brown, Billmckern, and Dan Bloch: Thanks for all your responses!!

A.S. Brown- is there any known photograph of any official/historical "tally sheet" (maybe one that wasn't filled in, or one that is now online for some reason) from a US jurisdiction? I have seen a list of registered voters in North Carolina from the early 20th century, but I am still grasping at straws imagining this "tally sheet". The reason I'm asking about this small issue is because a list of names in alphabetical order sounds like a cartoon, not an actual reality. I hope to find an example vote tally sheet and add it as a picture to the article to give people an idea of the way the names could have been spuriously added. Would it have been like this: [2]? (see my comments to Dan below)

Billmckern- what form did the "pledge to vote in the general election for the same candidate the voter chose earlier" look like? Do you have an example of the type of advertisement that Porter used to tell people they weren't bound by the pledges they made to vote for Johnson? Is there a Wikipedia article that talks about this kind of pledge?

Dan Bloch- You're saying that the Box 13 list would have been "just a list of voters, not their votes." THIS is the problem I'm having. A.S. Brown is saying that the Box 13 list is a tally sheet, but you are saying that it was just a list of names. I'm trying to imagine exactly what kind of format the nortious "list" was like. Your way of looking at the list seems to posit more than one document, and I've never heard about a second document (one of voters and one of their votes).

Great stuff!! Geographyinitiative (talk) 03:55, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@A.S. Brown: Hey, one more question- what did JFK know about the 1948 election? Did he ever make a direct comment on the election, maybe earlier on in the 50's or whenever? Does Caro say? Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:10, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Right, just a list of voters. There's some description of this in Caro. On pp. 377-378, from the Precinct 13 investigation, "In the Jim Wells County Courthouse, Stevenson attorney Josh Groce, after hearing Salas testify that the first two copies of the crucial poll list had been lost, told Smith, 'Sir, I would like to suggest that there is one other copy of this poll list that is available. That is the one in the ballot box; and I would think that Your Honor, under the order of this court, would have the right to bring that ballot box into this court here, open the ballot box, and take out only the poll list.'" And then on pp. 381-382, "One of the two drums was indeed a ballot box from Precinct 13... Despite his efforts to confuse the court, Salas had testified that on Election Day he had signed the back of each ballot, and when Smith reached into this drum he found that the ballots inside were signed 'Luis Salas.' ... Then the Master looked through the ballot box. It contained hundreds of ballots. It did not contain a poll list, or a tally list."

I think, though I'm not 100% sure, that the tally list would have had the vote totals but not the names of the voters. Dan Bloch (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Do you have a subscription to Newspapers.com? if so you can see easily enough what Porter's ads looked like. If you don't, I can take screen shots and email them to you. Just let me know where to send them.

I think one of the issues in the 1948 Texas runoff was that in Jim Wells County, the election officials added the 200-plus names to the tally sheet, then added that many votes to the total they reported for Johnson. The Stevenson people wanted to open the ballot boxes so they could compare the number of votes to the number of reported voters - a discrepancy would have revealed the fraud.

Billmckern (talk) 06:27, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: I don't know if Kennedy ever directly addressed Johnson's runoff election, but I do know that Kennedy dealt with his own allegations of vote buying. When he won the 1960 Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, the Hubert Humphrey campaign accused Kennedy of vote buying, allegedly using sacks of cash supplied by his wealthy father. In response, Kennedy read a mock telegram from his father which said "Jack – Don’t spend one dime more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide."

Billmckern (talk) 09:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Sorry for being so late in getting back to you; all this is business of working all night long at a vile, loathsome job sometimes knocks me down. I went off to the library to research what Kennedy's thoughts on this matter were, but sadly I wasn't able to find anything-mostly I was found, going several books was confirming what I already knew, namely that Johnson and Kennedy really disliked each other. Kennedy came from a very rich family in Boston; was educated at Harvard and Stanford, and was a pseudo-intellectual (merely hiring somebody to write books for you does not you into an intellectual-Kennedy never wrote any of his books that appeared under his name). Johnson came from a poor family in rural Texas; was educated at the Southwest Texas Teacher's College; and was very proud to be almost a caricature of a macho Texas alpha male brought to life. Johnson regarded Kennedy as a pretentious snob and as a weak, shallow "dilettante", who only got ahead because of his father's wealth. Kennedy looked down on Johnson as a "white trash" guy from Texas, mixed in with a lot of fear and respect. The respect Kennedy had for Johnson was the same respect one has for a tiger-maybe it's not as smart as you, but it can easily tear you to pieces. Whatever else Johnson may have been, he was certainly the most effective Senate Majority Leader ever. The title of volume 3 of Caro's biography is aptly The Master of the Senate. I don't believe Kennedy ever made an issue out of this election, as much he may have wanted to. As a Senator, it would have very foolish to antagonize the Senate Majority Leader, especially one who dominated the Senate as much as Johnson did. Johnson did challenge Kennedy for the Democratic nomination in 1960, but he didn't make an issue out of the 1948 election, probably because he still expected Johnson to continue on as Senate Majority Leader. To cancel out Johnson's power, Kennedy cleverly made Johnson his running mate, because having him as Vice President would mean he not able to dominate the Senate anymore. The Vice Presidency is the "spare tire" of American democracy-the Vice President doesn't do very much except to cast votes if there is a tie in the Senate, and only becomes important if the current president is removed from the scene. And once Johnson was Vice President, it obliviously didn't much sense to make an issue of the 1948 election as that would not reflect well on Kennedy.

As for a photograph of a tally sheet, I'm certain there is one out there, but because these are not the most sexiest of documents to put it mildly, there not does seem to be many of them around. Perhaps I was slightly confused-all this accursed business of working all night doing vile, loathsome work sometimes scrambles my brain:(:(. According to Caro in : "Upon arriving to vote, each had his name, in accordance with Texas law, registered on a "poll list" with a number besides it-the number of the ballot he would cast. The ostensible reason for this law was to keep a person from voting more than once, but it also had the effect of allowing election judges to determine how a citizen had voted if they wished to do so. Some patrónes dispensed with all these complications. An attorney for one of them-a patrón who let his voters keep their poll tax receipts-recalls his procedure: "Go around to the Mexicans' homes. Get the numbers of their [[poll tax] receipts. Tell them not to go to the polls. Just write in a hundred numbers and cast the hundred votes yourself"". (Means of Ascent p. 183) Much of the dispute between Stevenson and Johnson revolved around the differences between the poll list showing all of the people who had paid the poll tax or had paid for them, and the tally sheet showing how many people actually voted. As for the tally sheet from Precinct 13, here again from Caro: "They [Stevenson's lawyers] noticed, moreover, something that the two Alice men had not: that the 201 names were in alphabetical order-the first few names starting with 842 began with A, the next few with B, until about 915, when the end of the alphabet was reached; then the A's began again-as if whoever had been writing the names had miscalculated and gotten to the end of the alphabet too fast, and had thereupon simply gone back to the A's and started over". (Means of Ascent p. 328).

I believe that your example of a tally sheet is indeed what one would have looked like, except for the fact that in 1948 Texas, it was all done by hand. Which would make it unlikely that an unused tally sheet ever existed in the first place-maybe one can find a photograph of a typewritten one, through it would probably not be from Texas. Caro makes much of the different colors of ink and handwriting used in the Precinct 13 tally sheet, arguing as Stevenson did in 1948 that this showed fraud. Dr. Bloch was right about the tally sheet, and I was wrong. I'm sorry, working the infernal hours doing disgusting vile, loathsome work sometimes grinds me down, and I make my mistakes:(:(. The poll list, which would contain all the names of the people who paid the poll tax would be in alphabetical order. The tally sheet showing all the people who voted, should not have been in alphabetical order, which is one of reasons why Stevenson cried fraud because the list of the "extra" 201 votes from Precinct 13 is in more or less alphabetical order. I hope this clears things up. Cheers!--A.S. Brown (talk) 07:22, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't want to smother the baby, so I am going to step back from this page and only make occasional edits here. Thanks for your work here. Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:25, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Looks good! Nice job, everybody. Dan Bloch (talk) 18:10, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

"36 year old life-long bachelor in the bedroom of the 59 year old President at night chatting about personal history"

To my eye, the Ronnie Dugger story seems to suggest some kind of close relationship between Johnson and Dugger. 1) Is Dugger's story verifiable in any way? 2) Were there other people who visited the presidential bedroom in the same kind of way that Dugger did? 3) What social status did Dugger have that could get him into the presidential bedroom? 4) Is Dugger actually a bachelor? Interesting stuff. Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:41, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Despite the fact that he sometimes operated from an idealistic point of view, I think Johnson just liked to make it appear that he was a cynical operator. Caro details pretty well (I think) how Johnson's father was ruined in part by his idealism, and how Johnson was determined not to be viewed the same way. He liked to be seen as a sharp operator who would throw elbows to get ahead -- that's why he didn't mind being called "Landslide Lyndon" after his fraudulent win in the 1948 runoff. As for whether Dugger's story can be verified, the photo definitely exists -- Parr, Salas and three others posing with the ballot box from Precinct 13 balanced on the hood of a car. In addition, Dugger has previously written that Johnson gave him a series of interviews in 1967 and 1968 because Dugger was planning to write a biography. Dugger ended the interviews after Johnson asked him if the book would be "friendly" to him, and Dugger refused to give such a guarantee. I assume Johnson showed him the photo in the early interviews, when Johnson thought he was contributing to a book that would be kind towards him.

Billmckern (talk) 11:28, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I guess this behavior is consistent with LBJ talking to staff while on the toilet. Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:38, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

County Maps

I used the 1948 Texas Almanac to find the results by county for the 1948 runoff election. I developed a program to ease this process in the future.

The program can be found here: https://github.com/Jurech/texas-election-map-generator

In the Almanac, I also found the county-by-county results for the general election of Johnson vs. Porter; however, these results are incomplete due to many counties not reporting the results in time. My question is, would it be better to include an incomplete map or no map at all for the general election? The best solution would be to find a complete set of county-by-county results, as was apparently done for the 1948 United States presidential election in Texas, but I don't know where to find the primary source for that information or any other place to find the results for the Senate election. I plan on making a map for the first round of the primary, but transcribing all of the results will take a considerable amount of time. What do the rest of you think on this issue? OutlawRun (talk) 19:03, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I managed to find unofficial county results for the missing counties in Southern Primaries and Elections 1920-1949. I will use these unofficial results for the county map for now. Some of the county results are incomplete, however. I will attempts to remedy this by looking at original documents at the Texas Legislative Library in Austin; however, I have no timeline nor plan for when I will do this.

The following counties' results in my source are both unofficial and incomplete: Atascosa, Hill, Mills, Montague, Newton, Nueces, Potter, Refugio, Starr, and Walker. Though the exact numbers for these counties are likely well below the actual results, I believe the vote ratio is close enough to the real one for them to be good enough to make a map out of. When I get the real results, I will put together a separate table for the page detailing the unofficial totals, since they are much higher than the official ones and represent all 254 counties in the state.

If these numbers are found, should they replace the numbers used in the head of the article? This is done for the 1948 United States presidential election in Texas, as the same thing happened to it. The "official" numbers are much lower than the numbers used on the page or the citation the page uses. OutlawRun (talk) 03:03, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Why is there a map with John Tower's name on it in the infobox?

Tower ran in 1960, not 1948. Billmckern (talk) 22:59, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Because I copy-pasted the caption from the 1960 election. I updated the colors, but I neglected to update the name. I just fixed it. OutlawRun (talk) 23:49, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

{{Better source needed}}

The following material was added on September 25, 2019 and a citation to Joan Mellen's Faustian Bargains was added on October 1, 2019:

"As a result of that experience, Johnson prepared for a close runoff by arranging in 1948 for his supporters who controlled votes, including Parr, to withhold their final tallies until the statewide results were announced.[28] By waiting until the statewide result was in, Johnson would know the figure he had to surpass and so could add as many votes as necessary to his total.[28]"

Joan Mellen is a well-known JFK assassination conspiracy theorist whose book Faustian Bargains has the primary purpose of promulgating a number of conspiracy theories centered around Johnson. It is possible that Mellen may get a few details correct from time-to-time, but as it would be considered an unreliable fringe source in the main LBJ article I think it should be considered similarly here. (See reviews in Jerusalem Post, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.) This material very well could be true, so I am simply tagging the material with {{better source needed}} and pinging Billmckern and Geographyinitiative who appear to be the two editors who have contributed most to the article. - Location (talk) 17:41, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Updated reference. See if this works. Billmckern (talk) 19:33, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Thanks for your excellent work on this article. - Location (talk) 21:12, 17 November 2022 (UTC)