It's Not Voter Fraud, It's Voter Appreciation

My very first substantive post was on April 16, 2007, and it covered the ruling of Nanette Laughrey in favor of Robin Carnahan, basically saying she had no power or responsibility to clean up voter rolls.

I bring it up because I was doing a search on a story about Gene Copeland, and Google's newspaper archives brought up some old microfiche articles about Beer-for-Votes.  The story I heard was this - Gene Copeland was a Democratic representative from the Bootheel who won election 19 times.  As Republicans started taking back seats in Missouri, they never seemed to be able to get rid of him.  While at a dinner one night, Copeland had a few too many and started bragging about his electoral success.  Seems he didn't know there were Republicans in the room, so he mouthed off about bussing "his blacks" from voting station to voting station in exchange for a fifth of liquor.

As the night went on, more and more people heard the story, and so at the next election, the Republicans were waiting.  They caught a store giving out what was called beer coupons to black voters who could prove they voted that day.  They'd walk in, give a coupon to a guy at a convenience store, and walk out with a beer. 

This was in 1996.  In 1998, Leslie Gillespie, a election worker for Gene Copeland pleaded guilty to the scheme, but claimed it was not vote buying, but instead, a grateful act, a "token of appreciation" for being a good citizen. 

Copeland was not charged, but would leave politics shortly thereafter, claiming it was no fun anymore.  Here's a great 1996 wav file of Copeland claiming this was a smear.  I couldn't find anything from 1998. 

It's a fascinating look at how things were run, and it wasn't that long ago.  It was only 9 years between this newspaper article and Laughrey's ruling, where she claims that there was no evidence of voter fraud.

My complaint was always with the idea that evidence of voter fraud meant there was no voter fraud. Prior to 1998, there was no evidence of voter fraud, either.  Mostly it was because no one was looking.  When they did get lucky, it's because an arrogant politician had one too many and started mouthing off to what he thought were safe co-conspirators who would keep their mouth shut.  

The first article only mentions the dollar coupons for beer, but an earlier article before a grand jury has one woman admitting she got a bottle of whiskey for her voting.  Presumably, this was the scheme where the bus would take black voters from poll to poll to vote (a higher class version of the beer coupon token of appreciation scheme). 

I bring this up mostly because I think it's awesome that we go back in time and see what people were saying. Most newspapers today hide their news archives after a few months.

The Post Dispatch does this.  If you look for archived stories on Kenneth Gladney, they're all gone.  They weren't taken down specifically - it's just that it's no longer there for us to see.

Which means that long-serving politicians and their families get to lie about the past.  I aim to occasionally make that just a little harder. God Bless the Internet.

Comments

[mike]

Why don't you look into Claire's recent visit to Miami Beach where she met with certain "special interest" lobbyists? It would be interesting to see whom she met with, how much they gave her or promised her and what she agreed to in return. I've asked her and she is simply stonewalling. Makes you wonder why.