It turns out that attempts to rig elections aren’t new at all. A tipster sent us this account from historian James Banner on the political tactics of the James Buchanan administration. Some of it may sound familiar to the modern reader.
The Democrats made startlingly effective use of their control of the federal government…
Some of the money at least was used to buy votes in Indiana and Pennsylvania. Thousands of aliens, moreover, were illegally naturalized and marched to the polls by the Democrats. Elsewhere the Democratic machine transported immigrant voters to crucial states, where they were not legal residents. Before the important congressional elections in October 1856, Buchanan’s henchman in Philadelphia, John Forney, wrote him, “We have naturalized a vast mass of men and assessed many of the native-born citizens. The Opposition are appalled. They cry fraud. Our most experienced men say all is well.” …
After the election, Virginia fire-eater Edmund Ruffin heard in Washington “that enormous sums of money were sent from the city of New York and a good deal also from the Democrats of New England to buy votes in Pennsylvania and which turned the vote in that state.”