Voter fraud in 19th century New York City politics was shameless and unparalleled, if New York state was not the first state to require voter registration it was among the first.
The original method, utilized by both democrats and republicans, concerning the vote in the heavily immigrant 6th ward of New York city had to do with voter intimidation, both sides had their thugs out to drive off the other vote. This evolved into the democrat political machine using Irish immigrants who were not naturalized to cast ballots. The republicans pressed for a New York voter registration law, which was passed.
The democrat machine merely changed its tactics.
In 1863 an Irish immigrant sailor and cabinet maker from northern Ireland named John McCunn (
http://localhistory.morrisville.edu/...mccunn-37.html ) was nominated by Tammany Hall for a state superior court bench. He was outvoted in the returns (20,000 votes down in the democrat primary and just a few short in the election itself between democrat and republican cadidates), but it seems that republican ballot inspectors were bribed to let the numbers on both sides be changed without changing the total numbers of votes and McCunn ascended the bench. This tactic continued for many years. (Note Jose Angel Gutierrez becoming a county judge in Zavala County in the 1970's)
Another was to allow the ineligible, especially immigrants who had not been naturalized, to vote. (Nativo Lopez' Hermandad Mexicana Nacional during the Bob Dornan - Loretta Sanchez middle 1990's congressional race).
The most utilized method was to have groups who would vote multiple times under different names.
Some of this was accomplished by Irish immigrant judge McCunn and judge Barnard (
http://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/Br...th=May&Date=25 ) banning journalists from proceedings (witnesses who would surely question the proceedings, a good case for open government) which naturalized 37,967 immigrants in 1868 (McCunn naturalized 27897, Barnard 10,070), of which a single city denizen, Patrick Goff, "verified" the date of arrival and attested to the "good character" of 2,161 of those immigrants in the fall. In October, Goff was a witness for more than 1000 applicants in three days. Thousands of naturalization certificates were awarded in the name of fictional immigrants, others were given to ineligible immigrants.
In each ward groups of paid voters were given multiple false identities, addresses, and voting districts to register and vote under ("vote often, and vote for me"). One election a group operating in the 6th, 8th and 14th wards were given hundreds of identities to vote under. There may have been over a thousand fraudulent registrations for the 1868 elections in the 6th ward alone. One man voted the democrat ticket 16 times for $30.00, another 9 times for $8.00 in the 10th and 7th wards.
On at least one occasion, the democrat voting inspectors waited for the early voting crowd to thin out, then copied names from the registration book. They left momentarily, and soon after returning the the polling station was inundated with voters casting ballots on those names. Republicans who came later in the day to cast their vote found that their name had been already voted on.
It seems that republican election inspectors were physically threatened, bribed, drugged, or had their registration books stolen.
It was revealed from the 1870 census that there were more votes cast in one five Points District than there were men, woman, and children living there, and only adult male citizens were eligible to vote then. In other districts, there were more votes cast than eligible male citizens. Between 1867 and 1869 6th ward ballots cast increased 80%, even though available lodging decreased by several tenements.
After federal laws were passed concerning voter fraud (again, Democrat political machine Tammany Hall was the inspiration for the statutes), the tactics changed again. The democrat party machine simply miscounted the votes which were cast.
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I found some video by Alfonzo Rachel which brings out a succinct version of part of what I'm trying to say about racists who harp on the distant past to "prove" their points. The man unmercifully shreds revisionist democrats:
http://alfonzorachel.com/382/i-almos...ments-of-toure You have to scroll down to get to two related videos.
Here is another location which you can get the same two videos:
http://callmestormy.com/2012/08/21/d...ory-of-racism/