Election law has certainly earned its eccentric reputation. From zombie voters to hanging chads, the strange history of modern election law has become ingrained in the public consciousness. But, as odd as the last decade has been, the previous centuries of election law have been even more bizarre. So, in this series of articles, State of Elections will take a closer look at some of the stranger moments in election law.
One such moment happened in California’s Siskiyou County. In 1895, Clarence Smith was elected school superintendent of that county by a single vote. His opponent, George Tebbe, contested the result. When the ballots were recounted, the court found three additional votes for Tebbe, and declared Tebbe the new winner by two votes. However, until the ballots could be counted in open court, they had been stored under the desk in the county clerk’s office. This sounds all well and good, except that Tebbe was deputy clerk at that office, and worked in the same room where the ballots were stored. Imagine Tebbe, sitting just a few short feet from the ballots, the ballots that would decide his political future. Even if there was no actual vote tampering, surely even the appearance of impropriety would warrant a stern rebuke from the court. Of course, no such rebuke was forthcoming. Instead, the court praised the “prudence of the clerk and the fair dealing of all concerned”, and required that Smith prove that ballot tampering took place before taking any action.
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