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The US Didn't Always Have Secret Ballots · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
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Speaker 1: welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. If you are
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Speaker 1: listening to today's episode the day that it publishes, then uh,
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Speaker 1: we are in the midst of election day. This is
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Speaker 1: a November three, Uh, the presidential election in the United States. Hi,
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Speaker 1: I'm Ben, Hi, I'm no a k A. The day
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Speaker 1: that will live in infamy or fami. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:55
Speaker 1: Is that's a good, good question, Ben, What is the
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Speaker 1: opposite of infamy? Yeah, I don't know. We're not a
1:00
Speaker 1: political show. Well, we're obviously human beings and have opinions.
1:04
Speaker 1: But whatever your opinions are about the current political regime
1:08
Speaker 1: or which direction it may or may not be heading,
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Speaker 1: I think we can all kind of agree that politics
1:13
Speaker 1: in general are a little weird and a little based
1:16
Speaker 1: on some kind of wacky historical stuff and precedence. That's true.
1:21
Speaker 1: That's true. It turns out it was a democracy the
1:24
Speaker 1: way it's practiced here and abroad. Uh was a long journey.
1:28
Speaker 1: It's a long road. It's a road we're still walking
1:30
Speaker 1: down or up, depending on who you ask. I will
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Speaker 1: say that I once again exercise one of my favorite
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Speaker 1: rights as a citizen uh here, you know, like any
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Speaker 1: other place in the US, when you vote, even in
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Speaker 1: a presidential election, you'll often have local stuff that you
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Speaker 1: vote on too, right, like commissioner or control or whatever.
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Speaker 1: So I have once again, uh written in super producer
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Speaker 1: Casey pegram uh, this time as surveyor for our fair
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Speaker 1: county in which I vote. So Casey Uh, I would
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Speaker 1: like to be the first to congratulate you. Yeah, look
2:08
Speaker 1: for me out there on the corner with that stick
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Speaker 1: in the you know the thing, the camera ask thing.
2:12
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure what it does. I guess it's
2:15
Speaker 1: like a tell us. I don't know who doesn't. But
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Speaker 1: here's a question if you if enough people write somebody
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Speaker 1: in and they don't don't even know what happens, then
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Speaker 1: do they like Okay, So, unbeknownst to you, sir, you
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Speaker 1: were written in enough times to beat you know, the
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Speaker 1: the other person running for surveyor? Um. Do you accept
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Speaker 1: the charge? Do they give you an option or are
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Speaker 1: you just kind of like you can say no? I
2:37
Speaker 1: guess you could say no. I mean, keep in mind
2:40
Speaker 1: there are places where there's some places where animals have
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Speaker 1: legally been elected to office. Man, they probably don't know
2:47
Speaker 1: what's going on. They just think they're the village's favorite labrador,
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Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They're like, Wow, all the
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Speaker 1: humans here are super cool. Uh. This is interesting because
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Speaker 1: voting gets in politics and general get so ridiculous so quickly.
3:03
Speaker 1: It's something we've talked about in the past, and no
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Speaker 1: country is immune to this, and no period of time
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Speaker 1: or days of yore wherever not ridiculous when it came
3:13
Speaker 1: to politics and bringing up this survey example, because you
3:16
Speaker 1: guys wouldn't have known unless I chose to say something
3:21
Speaker 1: about it on air. Uh. And to be clear, in
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Speaker 1: our in at least where I was voting, it was
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Speaker 1: just as straight up right in I did. There wasn't
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Speaker 1: a people to choose from. Oh no, that's what I
3:35
Speaker 1: remember that when there was, there was no other option.
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Speaker 1: It was just a right end, yes, exactly. There was
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Speaker 1: not even like what does that mean? That does that
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Speaker 1: mean the person who was the previous surveyor is retiring?
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Speaker 1: And nobody ran I didn't even know surveyor was an
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Speaker 1: elected office. We can get off of this train shortly,
3:51
Speaker 1: but it is a good question. I was. I saw
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Speaker 1: that too, and I was like, how come there's just
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Speaker 1: the one right in. I would think right in would
3:57
Speaker 1: be like, there's always a right you can you can
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Speaker 1: write in a candidate for president, you can write in
4:01
Speaker 1: a candidate for anything. But this one it even gave
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Speaker 1: me a red flag at the end. And I didn't
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Speaker 1: write somebody in, right, You're forced to, You're forced to
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Speaker 1: write someone. So how many people wrote themselves, etcetera. The
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Speaker 1: thing is it is a secret because of the way
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Speaker 1: the voting works here in the US. UH. We have
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Speaker 1: a system that is meant to in theory, allow people,
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Speaker 1: individual citizens to keep their votes secret unless they choose
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Speaker 1: to publicly say their political beliefs or their intentions or
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Speaker 1: who they voted for, YadA, YadA, YadA. But this wasn't
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Speaker 1: always the case, which blew my mind, and we talked
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Speaker 1: a little bit off air about this. There are reasons,
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Speaker 1: like clear compelling reasons that we have secret ballots now,
4:51
Speaker 1: and it involves some stuff that we mentioned in an
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Speaker 1: earlier episode. What was that one, Noel, It was just
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Speaker 1: about drinking at the poll and and kidnapping and just
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Speaker 1: this one particular period um where the voting process was
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Speaker 1: a bit of like a kind of a show UH
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Speaker 1: carnival type atmosphere, and we're gonna go back into that
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Speaker 1: period a little bit as well, but then move on.
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Speaker 1: And it all kind of stems from the fact that,
5:17
Speaker 1: you know, in a similar way to what we see now,
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Speaker 1: we're going through with the idea of the electoral college
5:22
Speaker 1: and how the states are able to use this like
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Speaker 1: all or nothing principal to essentially award all of the
5:27
Speaker 1: electoral college votes, you know, to a single candidate rather
5:31
Speaker 1: than the popular vote or as anyway, it's still confusing.
5:35
Speaker 1: I sound very confused, but it is something that has
5:37
Speaker 1: always been a state decision, certainly not the overall election process,
5:42
Speaker 1: but at least the way of counting the votes. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and the electoral college is its own bag of badgers
5:50
Speaker 1: there for sure that that maybe an episode for future day.
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Speaker 1: Uh oh man, Yeah, I mean it's it's one. It
6:00
Speaker 1: still um keeps me up nights, just in terms of
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Speaker 1: a how it actually works and be what the function
6:06
Speaker 1: of it is. Um. But at least it's just mired
6:10
Speaker 1: and kind of like, you know, a pedantic procedural political convolution,
6:15
Speaker 1: whereas the stories that we're gonna talk about today are
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Speaker 1: on the very very surface, completely outrageous. Yeah, absolutely so.
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Speaker 1: It's no secret that democracy is important. Voting is important,
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Speaker 1: but it can also be a paint in the butt, right,
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Speaker 1: It's a paint in the keyster sometimes real kick in
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Speaker 1: the pants. Uh. In our previous episode, we talked about
6:38
Speaker 1: this thing called cooping. So people were political operatives for
6:43
Speaker 1: one corrup party or another, think like Tammany Hall level.
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Speaker 1: They would kidnap voters. They would get them blind, stinking, drunk,
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Speaker 1: and then they would like keep them in basements and
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Speaker 1: send them out to vote multiple times. And there's different outfits, yes,
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Speaker 1: and uh okay, so that does sound like a really
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Speaker 1: fun ragor weekend right kind of, but consider that if
7:07
Speaker 1: the voters did not play along, they could get the
7:11
Speaker 1: snot beating out of them and they could get murdered.
7:15
Speaker 1: Around the same time, it was quite common for different
7:20
Speaker 1: political gangs too have dead people or fictional characters like
7:25
Speaker 1: Captain a Habit suddenly voting, you know, and these folks
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Speaker 1: with voting elections as well as their pets, and their
7:31
Speaker 1: votes would be counted. So people had a lot of
7:36
Speaker 1: problems with this, understandably, and there were all these accusations
7:41
Speaker 1: of voter fraud and calls for reform. Folks if you
7:45
Speaker 1: think it's crazy in the weeks leading up to um
7:49
Speaker 1: the biggest events of November three, which I think we
7:52
Speaker 1: can agree as this episode. Uh right right, Uh, if
7:59
Speaker 1: we ourselves two are will knock ourselves over that. That's
8:03
Speaker 1: the thing. Though it was much crazier back in the day,
8:07
Speaker 1: like second half of the nineteenth century. You think accusations
8:10
Speaker 1: of voter fraud are kind of wild now, Uh, they
8:13
Speaker 1: were both much more vocal back then and arguably much
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Speaker 1: more valid. So today we want to talk about how
8:23
Speaker 1: we got from that chaotic time to a time in which, uh,
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Speaker 1: like the recent days when people voted in secret and
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Speaker 1: you didn't have to tell people who you voted for,
8:33
Speaker 1: like right now. I mean. The weirdest thing about the Constitution.
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Speaker 1: It's one of those things everybody, so many people say
8:40
Speaker 1: they love and a lot of them haven't read it.
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Speaker 1: But the thing about the Constitution says, you know, you
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Speaker 1: should vote, it's important for democracy, but it doesn't exactly
8:50
Speaker 1: say how US voters should cast their ballots. And that's
8:56
Speaker 1: really where the problems begin, and that is to say
8:59
Speaker 1: that over the past two years, the methods for voting
9:03
Speaker 1: that aren't laid out in the Constitution, for that very
9:06
Speaker 1: reason have varied and evolved widely. Uh. For the first
9:12
Speaker 1: fifty years of American elections, people didn't secretly write their
9:18
Speaker 1: vote down on a scrap of paper and shove it
9:20
Speaker 1: in a box or a bag um, you know, for
9:23
Speaker 1: only the select few counters to see. They actually had
9:27
Speaker 1: to shout it out and own it. And honestly, it's
9:31
Speaker 1: such an interesting concept because it seems like there's intent
9:34
Speaker 1: behind it, where it's sort of like, if you really
9:37
Speaker 1: believe in this person, you will shout their names from
9:39
Speaker 1: the rooftops so that everyone knows. It's like literally the
9:42
Speaker 1: exact opposite of our philosophy of of what voting should
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Speaker 1: be now. Um. And as you can imagine, that created
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Speaker 1: a lot of problems because everyone knows who you vote for, Um,
9:53
Speaker 1: they can pretty easily formulate some opinions about you and
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Speaker 1: possibly even you know, to do you harm and target
10:01
Speaker 1: you in that way. Um. Yeah. Because and it was
10:06
Speaker 1: there was intent behind it, because a lot of the
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Speaker 1: founding fathers thought that secrecy was suspicious and that it
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Speaker 1: made for people, you know, leaning into self interest as
10:18
Speaker 1: opposed to again, owning it and shouting it from the
10:22
Speaker 1: rooftops so that people would know exactly where you stood,
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Speaker 1: and that it's like in the same way that we
10:27
Speaker 1: know that when we can be anonymous on the internet,
10:29
Speaker 1: it gives people a lot of opportunity to not have
10:32
Speaker 1: to own up to their actions and to be like
10:34
Speaker 1: completely horrible versions of themselves. I think the Founding Fathers
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Speaker 1: are taking sort of a similar approach cognitively to this. Yeah, yeah,
10:42
Speaker 1: I agree, because they're clearly their intentions were good in
10:48
Speaker 1: a pretty limited way because they be white dudes who
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Speaker 1: controlled the country wanted to make sure that at all
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Speaker 1: the people they considered people, again, white dudes were above
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Speaker 1: board so that the country could be ruled in an
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Speaker 1: equal manner, again for white dudes. So here's how voting worked.
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Speaker 1: If you were in the uh, if you were in
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Speaker 1: the eight hundreds up up to the eighteen hundreds or so,
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Speaker 1: here's how voting worked. You would practice something called viva
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Speaker 1: vote voice voting without that terrible accent. And it's just
11:27
Speaker 1: as it's just as you described. NOL voters would arrive
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Speaker 1: at the courthouse, the judge would have them swear on
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Speaker 1: a Bible, you know, hand in the air, one hand
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Speaker 1: on the Bible. Uh. My name is Erasmus shoe, and
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Speaker 1: I guarantee it's me, and I swear on God that
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Speaker 1: I haven't already voted, and so they get sworn in,
11:51
Speaker 1: and then the voter would literally yell at the clerk.
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Speaker 1: I'd say, you know, I'm real guy, last name, and
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Speaker 1: I voting for two steps Tommy for surveyor. And then
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Speaker 1: the clerk would be like, okay, uh, real guy last
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Speaker 1: name voted for two steps Tommy, and everybody around would
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Speaker 1: hear it, they would know, and then the next person
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Speaker 1: would shout, and then the next person would shout. Think
12:18
Speaker 1: of all the problems here, especially because campaign was allowed
12:22
Speaker 1: in the voting place, So like, if you want to
12:24
Speaker 1: vote for an unpopular candidate, you have to go into
12:27
Speaker 1: a room full of your opponents supporters who are probably
12:31
Speaker 1: also drunk and rowdy, and you physically have to yell out,
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Speaker 1: I'm voting for the guy you hate, and then just
12:38
Speaker 1: hope you get out safely. Yeah. I mean, like again,
12:41
Speaker 1: a separated even from just like the actual uh event itself,
12:46
Speaker 1: putting that information out there basically by design, could have
12:50
Speaker 1: followed you home from the polls. But this is you're
12:53
Speaker 1: talking about the atmosphere that was created at the polls.
12:56
Speaker 1: Or people were showing up you know, uh tanked, and
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Speaker 1: it could genuinely cause like brawls and very much did um.
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Speaker 1: Moving on to colonial Pennsylvania, where the common practice for
13:09
Speaker 1: voting was tossing beans into a hat. I like that, simple, straightforward.
13:15
Speaker 1: But you could still see which hat people were tossing
13:17
Speaker 1: their beans into, you know, and it's all employed by
13:21
Speaker 1: big being of course it is Boston or otherwise. Um,
13:25
Speaker 1: but yeah, it was essentially the eventual adoption of the
13:32
Speaker 1: paper ballot was less about anonymity and more just about
13:37
Speaker 1: the logistics of counting the things, right, like counting all
13:40
Speaker 1: the beans. Imagine that job, especially in a big election.
13:44
Speaker 1: You're the person who has it's almost like something to
13:47
Speaker 1: have a terrible fairy tale. You have one night to
13:50
Speaker 1: count these thousands of beans, and don't get it wrong,
13:55
Speaker 1: because uh, the people who were hanging with you tomorrow
13:58
Speaker 1: are gonna be hungover and angry at you. Uh so
14:02
Speaker 1: you're right. The first paper ballots start appearing in the
14:05
Speaker 1: early They don't roll out across the country at once.
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Speaker 1: In fact, they weren't even standardized or printed by the
14:13
Speaker 1: government in the beginning. They were just they were scraps
14:17
Speaker 1: of paper and you would just write your name right
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Speaker 1: the name of the candidate you were voting for on
14:23
Speaker 1: the paper, drop it in the box. Paper all look different.
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Speaker 1: People's handwriting then as now was wildly different, at times illegible,
14:31
Speaker 1: and newspapers even started printing out blank ballots with the
14:36
Speaker 1: title of each office up for vote, and then you
14:39
Speaker 1: could cut those out like a coupon and use those
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Speaker 1: to vote. Think about think about how corrupt that could be,
14:46
Speaker 1: because then, let's say the editorial board of a newspaper
14:49
Speaker 1: likes one candidate but not another, or they just don't
14:53
Speaker 1: want people to vote on certain things and just don't
14:55
Speaker 1: put it in the ballot. It's insidious. Oh man. It
14:59
Speaker 1: gets way more crooked than that when they actually do
15:03
Speaker 1: start adopting these paper ballots. Um, because we've got political
15:07
Speaker 1: parties who are very wrapped up in their own selfish
15:12
Speaker 1: political ends. You know, nothing like it is today. Um.
15:16
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's pretty much exactly like this today, but
15:18
Speaker 1: just a lot more aggressive and with a lot fewer
15:20
Speaker 1: ground rules, like the idea of you know, we're not
15:23
Speaker 1: all electioneering as the practice of going and you know,
15:26
Speaker 1: trying to force someone at the polls to vote for
15:29
Speaker 1: who you want them to vote for, or even just
15:30
Speaker 1: to like wear a T shirt. You're not supposed to
15:33
Speaker 1: wear any kind of you know, campaign garb. When you
15:36
Speaker 1: go to the polls to vote. They try their best
15:39
Speaker 1: to make it as neutral and comfortable a situation as possible.
15:42
Speaker 1: And a lot of that and the political process that
15:45
Speaker 1: we do have today is a result of all of
15:47
Speaker 1: this shenaniganry. Um. So, in the early nineteenth century, none
15:52
Speaker 1: of these documents, these paper ballots that they adopted, were
15:55
Speaker 1: standardized in any way. They weren't even printed by like
15:58
Speaker 1: a singular government body of any kind. Some of them
16:03
Speaker 1: were as simple a process as just scratching the name
16:06
Speaker 1: of your particular candidate on this scrap of paper and
16:09
Speaker 1: then stuffing in that ballot box. Um. Of course, newspapers,
16:13
Speaker 1: being kind of front and center in the printing game,
16:16
Speaker 1: started to print ballots to be helpful, uh with you know,
16:21
Speaker 1: like a column kind of situation, a little more like
16:24
Speaker 1: you think of with an old timey ballot. Uh. And
16:26
Speaker 1: that would allow folks to tear off, you know, they're
16:31
Speaker 1: one that they wanted to vote for and then put
16:33
Speaker 1: that in the ballot box. Um. But once the parties
16:35
Speaker 1: got wind of all this. They looked at this as
16:37
Speaker 1: an opportunity to stack the deck or the ballot box.
16:41
Speaker 1: By the mid nineteenth century, UM state Republican and Democratic
16:46
Speaker 1: party bosses would preprint these flyers uh and distribute them
16:53
Speaker 1: to voters, but only list their candidates for office. And
16:56
Speaker 1: again we're calling them flyers, but they were acting as ballots,
17:01
Speaker 1: you know. And it's the same thing that we're seeing
17:03
Speaker 1: today where you've got uh, these mail in ballots and
17:06
Speaker 1: like the distribution of these mail in ballots or an
17:09
Speaker 1: application to receive a mail in ballot, and it's masquerading
17:12
Speaker 1: as a campaign flyer, so you might get like something
17:16
Speaker 1: from the Trump campaign that is it looks strong intos
17:20
Speaker 1: and purposes like it is either the mail in ballot
17:23
Speaker 1: itself or an application for the mail in ballot. Either way,
17:27
Speaker 1: that's not the proper way of going about getting it.
17:29
Speaker 1: You can request that yourself, but by getting it from
17:32
Speaker 1: a particular party, it's sort of can influence your decision
17:36
Speaker 1: in some way, especially back in these days. Sort of Oh,
17:40
Speaker 1: I think it was. Yeah, I think it was much
17:43
Speaker 1: more than just just an influence. Because this reminds me
17:48
Speaker 1: of the studies on whether one should opt in or
17:53
Speaker 1: opt out of organ donations. So you know, if you
17:57
Speaker 1: get a driver's license in the US, you have the
18:00
Speaker 1: option to become an organ donor in the unfortunate case
18:03
Speaker 1: you die in a car accident or something. In some
18:06
Speaker 1: other countries they've flipped this around such that people have
18:12
Speaker 1: to consciously opt out instead of consciously opting in. And
18:16
Speaker 1: because people tend not to read a lot of fine prints,
18:19
Speaker 1: and because we use our intelligence to find the easiest
18:22
Speaker 1: solution to something, organ donation rates went up in those
18:26
Speaker 1: countries because people were just skipping the question. They didn't
18:29
Speaker 1: didn't have to do anything. And that's what's happening with
18:32
Speaker 1: people who would just trust their party automatically over whatever
18:37
Speaker 1: their own personal values were. Of course they would use
18:40
Speaker 1: this pre printed ticket. It makes it easy to say voting.
18:45
Speaker 1: Most voters accepted that pre selected you know, line up
18:49
Speaker 1: that mixtape of political picks, and they wouldn't even read
18:53
Speaker 1: the whole thing, so it may well be missing the
18:56
Speaker 1: candidate that they thought they were voting for. And for
19:00
Speaker 1: people who did read the whole thing, this is so bananas.
19:04
Speaker 1: If they saw somebody that they didn't improve of for
19:07
Speaker 1: one reason or another. On these pre printed ballots, Democratic
19:10
Speaker 1: Republican they would physically cut just that line out of
19:13
Speaker 1: the coupon, so there would just be a slit missing.
19:16
Speaker 1: What they call that knifing. Knifing, I think you're right. Yeah.
19:20
Speaker 1: And polling places also were set up just straight up
19:25
Speaker 1: in somebody's house or uh, or in like a saloon
19:30
Speaker 1: that had been taken over for that particular occasion. And yes,
19:34
Speaker 1: the election officials were kind of like picture them behind
19:38
Speaker 1: a counter or something, but there wasn't any privacy. And
19:43
Speaker 1: the thing is that the major political powers really dug
19:46
Speaker 1: this system. It worked for the big parties, but it
19:51
Speaker 1: also kind of promoted what we could call insurgency anywhere
19:56
Speaker 1: from pranksters to real political activists to like the war
20:02
Speaker 1: for tricking people at the ballot box. Oh yeah, I mean,
20:04
Speaker 1: at the very least, is a deeply flawed system with
20:07
Speaker 1: very little oversight and very little accountability. Uh. Nowadays, you know,
20:12
Speaker 1: if you try to vote twice, that's a felony. Um.
20:15
Speaker 1: And these days, you know, knifers and what was also
20:18
Speaker 1: referred to as pasterers. Um. Apparently there were buckets of
20:21
Speaker 1: paste and a lot of these, uh you know, makeshift
20:23
Speaker 1: polling places where folks would take and paste the name
20:27
Speaker 1: of their chosen candidate over another name. Uh. Just absolutely
20:32
Speaker 1: wide rife um corruption here. Even to your point, Ben,
20:35
Speaker 1: if it wasn't all entirely nefarious by the political parties themselves,
20:41
Speaker 1: there was just no way of knowing. I mean, I'm
20:43
Speaker 1: sure it was mainly that, yep. And it's a business.
20:46
Speaker 1: The candidate had to pay the local party leaders pretty
20:51
Speaker 1: much had to bribe them to get his name on
20:52
Speaker 1: the ballot and to cover the cost of printing these cheats,
20:57
Speaker 1: these tickets, these flyers by votes, and perhaps most importantly
21:02
Speaker 1: at the time, hiring thugs, hiring goons because uh, like
21:07
Speaker 1: we said, nowadays, you can't wear a t shirt legally
21:11
Speaker 1: that supports one candidate or another because it's considered campaigning
21:15
Speaker 1: if you wear it at the polling place. But back
21:17
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds, political parties would get gangs together,
21:21
Speaker 1: and they weren't there to just like support people or
21:24
Speaker 1: go you know like USA, uh Wilfred Brimley for control
21:30
Speaker 1: or no. They were there too threaten people who might
21:34
Speaker 1: vote the other way at guns. Like seriously, I don't know,
21:38
Speaker 1: and we've been hearing some whispers and stuff like that
21:41
Speaker 1: happening again today um, with like poll workers you know
21:46
Speaker 1: that are potentially armed um and uh you know there
21:51
Speaker 1: there have been images that I've seen of police officials
21:55
Speaker 1: wearing political slogans near polling places uh um, and just
22:00
Speaker 1: the presence of them alone could be intimidating enough the
22:04
Speaker 1: feeling of being watched that you wouldn't even have to
22:06
Speaker 1: have so many way of a gun in your face.
22:08
Speaker 1: So all of this stuff is very interesting and very
22:11
Speaker 1: uh insidious. So with all this, for the average voter,
22:19
Speaker 1: you can imagine that uh, being a poll worker is
22:24
Speaker 1: an even more dubious endeavor. Election officials would get kidnapped. Uh.
22:31
Speaker 1: Probably one of the well the most babist and butt
22:36
Speaker 1: head facts about the dangers of being a poll worker
22:39
Speaker 1: is this. Poll workers also sometimes had their coffee spiked
22:44
Speaker 1: with laxatives so that they would have to run to
22:48
Speaker 1: the outhouse. Uh during the most important phases of counting
22:52
Speaker 1: the vote, which is just like who came up with that?
22:55
Speaker 1: The little rascals? I don't know, man, it seems seem
23:00
Speaker 1: very literally dirty politics. And we talked about cooping. Do
23:03
Speaker 1: check out that episode, Uh, let'sten. We also talked about
23:06
Speaker 1: something else, which was the fact that drinking was actively encouraged,
23:11
Speaker 1: and one of your big for early politicians, one of
23:14
Speaker 1: your big your big expenses was going to be paying
23:18
Speaker 1: for the booze because people partied at polls. It was
23:21
Speaker 1: like a violent spring break at the polls. And and earlier, gosh,
23:26
Speaker 1: way back in the day. You guys remember when we
23:29
Speaker 1: talked about George Washington and how when he was running
23:34
Speaker 1: for I think it was the Virginia House of Burgesses,
23:38
Speaker 1: one of his big things was how much booze he
23:40
Speaker 1: had to give people. Wow, we already know if we
23:42
Speaker 1: talked about a bunch on the show, his eggnog recipe
23:46
Speaker 1: that our buddy Alex Williams, who composed our theme, makes
23:48
Speaker 1: every year around Christmas time. Um, but yeah, man, I
23:52
Speaker 1: mean talking to me, it's the coercion at its finest.
23:55
Speaker 1: I mean, they certainly weren't like funneling it into people's
23:58
Speaker 1: throats under duress and then you know, just pushing them
24:01
Speaker 1: off to the polls with a gun to their back.
24:03
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's certainly created a rowdy environment, not to
24:07
Speaker 1: mention like a whole Oh man, Jory's the best. He
24:10
Speaker 1: gave us. He gave us all this free brandy. Amazing, right,
24:16
Speaker 1: He gave us. Uh, let's he gave us gallons of
24:19
Speaker 1: rum and rum, punch wine, beer, hard cider. Uh. So
24:26
Speaker 1: much so that in that election, if you do the math,
24:29
Speaker 1: it worked out to about a half gallon of booze
24:32
Speaker 1: per individual voter. And uh one time, William Henry Harrison
24:38
Speaker 1: even ran on the idea of boozing voters up in
24:43
Speaker 1: his campaign in eighteen forty. He started calling himself the
24:47
Speaker 1: hard cider candidate. And the idea is that if you
24:49
Speaker 1: support William Henry Harrison, then you basically get free hard cider.
24:56
Speaker 1: That's it. You can't do that anymore. I think. Again,
24:59
Speaker 1: we're recording this in advance of the election, so I
25:01
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know how that's gonna work out.
25:05
Speaker 1: So voter fraud huge problem, right. Uh. In the eighteen fifties,
25:11
Speaker 1: someone had the bright idea to try and address voter
25:14
Speaker 1: fraud by like literally making a ballot box out of glass. Okay, uh,
25:21
Speaker 1: I like that. It's sort of a postmodern solution. Um. Yeah,
25:24
Speaker 1: making the ballot box out of glass only in San Francisco.
25:28
Speaker 1: To my am, I am I right, you know, it
25:30
Speaker 1: feels like a very San Franciscan kind of solution here
25:33
Speaker 1: because people were upset. The voters, the San Francisco voters
25:37
Speaker 1: were enraged in eighteen fifty six UM, and it was
25:41
Speaker 1: because of the work of a committee known as the
25:45
Speaker 1: Committee of Vigilance. They actually found that there was literally
25:49
Speaker 1: like a trick voting box that was being implemented. It
25:53
Speaker 1: was called a stuffers ballot box that had a false bottom,
25:57
Speaker 1: like so that down of a magic show, and a
25:59
Speaker 1: tin panel on the side that allowed election officials crooked
26:04
Speaker 1: ones to stuff in fake ballance to tip the scales
26:07
Speaker 1: in favor of their candidate of choice UM, and to
26:10
Speaker 1: do so without anybody knows is at the very least,
26:13
Speaker 1: as time progressed, you could not be as wantonly uh
26:16
Speaker 1: fraudulent out in the open. You had to find more
26:19
Speaker 1: clever ways to go about him. This is one of them. Yeah,
26:22
Speaker 1: I just I gotta say, the Committee of Vigilance. What
26:25
Speaker 1: I love about it is it sounds like some nineteenth
26:28
Speaker 1: century superhero group, like a very strict Victorian Avengers. You know,
26:34
Speaker 1: they use their h o A powers for good, like
26:37
Speaker 1: the modern day equivalent would be the one guy whose
26:40
Speaker 1: powers to make everybody return their shopping carts to their
26:43
Speaker 1: appropriate places. There's an anti littering person, someone who gets
26:47
Speaker 1: on you about late fees. Anyway, their hearts were in
26:50
Speaker 1: the right place because people were in Since this made
26:55
Speaker 1: national news, voters all over the nation said they were
26:59
Speaker 1: worried about the legitimacy of the voting process, which is
27:03
Speaker 1: odd that that's the one thing that set them off.
27:06
Speaker 1: People are asking the question that gets asked every four
27:09
Speaker 1: years in this country, at a minimum, how much does
27:13
Speaker 1: my vote actually count? And in the midst of all
27:17
Speaker 1: this soul searching on the part of the United States,
27:21
Speaker 1: a man from New York named Samuel C. Jolly decided
27:26
Speaker 1: that he could fix the problem with one very simple solution.
27:30
Speaker 1: What's the opposite of corruption, he thought, transparency. So let's
27:35
Speaker 1: literally do that. I'm gonna build a glass ballot box,
27:39
Speaker 1: and he patented it, and it became popular, took off
27:43
Speaker 1: states and communities within states were reproducing it. By eight
27:46
Speaker 1: fifty seven, glass ballot boxes were common. And this was
27:52
Speaker 1: in the US zeitgeist because our country was obsessed with
27:55
Speaker 1: at least the image of fairness, and glass was also
28:00
Speaker 1: were becoming cheap to produce, so this seemed both futuristic
28:03
Speaker 1: and idealistic. People thought it was corruption proof. Uh. We
28:08
Speaker 1: know a little bit about how it was constructed, because
28:11
Speaker 1: you can still see the patent online. Uh. But it
28:14
Speaker 1: was made, basically, uh, in such a way that you
28:18
Speaker 1: could not make a hidden compartment or a little side
28:22
Speaker 1: sneaky hole for your I don't know what they called
28:25
Speaker 1: it a sneaky hole. It's a sneaky hole. Yeah, I
28:28
Speaker 1: think my point earlier two and I was saying only
28:30
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and this feels like such a postmodern solution.
28:33
Speaker 1: There's something about it that almost feels like, um, symbolic
28:38
Speaker 1: rather than actually functional. And then the notion of in
28:41
Speaker 1: this paper uh called the glass ballot box and political transparency,
28:46
Speaker 1: you know, like it's what are you gonna visually see
28:49
Speaker 1: every It's like those games you play where you have
28:51
Speaker 1: like how many green eminem's are in the giant glass canister?
28:56
Speaker 1: You know, you can make a guess, but you can't
28:58
Speaker 1: really tell. So I think it's it was more of
29:01
Speaker 1: a symbolic act, more of like a early kind of
29:04
Speaker 1: political performance art than it was actually functional. Um. But uh,
29:09
Speaker 1: like you said that there was a sense to the
29:11
Speaker 1: public that this was a functional thing. Um. So there's
29:15
Speaker 1: the jury is out on there, at least as far
29:17
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned. But there were critics who declared that
29:21
Speaker 1: since the officials were still gonna be the ones counting
29:24
Speaker 1: the ballots, that's where the real fraud takes place, right,
29:27
Speaker 1: It's not like you count them in an open setting
29:30
Speaker 1: with everyone watching you do it in the back room,
29:32
Speaker 1: And they agreed with with maybe not my performance art angle,
29:36
Speaker 1: but that it was more of a symbolic act that
29:39
Speaker 1: honestly in in the opposite but a similar way to
29:43
Speaker 1: how shouting out your vote was a symbolic act because
29:47
Speaker 1: if you owned up to it and people could find
29:49
Speaker 1: out if they chose to, then you had to stand
29:53
Speaker 1: by your vote. Um. But with this it was much
29:55
Speaker 1: more about like the aftermath and like how to you know,
29:58
Speaker 1: get the results of the election. Um. So it's hard
30:02
Speaker 1: to kind of figure out exactly when this stopped being
30:05
Speaker 1: a thing. I think probably started to fizzle when folks
30:09
Speaker 1: realized the symbolic connection and that it was less of
30:12
Speaker 1: an actual, full proof way of conducting elections then they
30:16
Speaker 1: may be originally thought, because by that point the idea
30:19
Speaker 1: of transparency in elections were replaced with what we now
30:23
Speaker 1: lean on quite heavily and as the most important feature
30:26
Speaker 1: of an election um is anonymity. Yeah, that's right. The
30:31
Speaker 1: argument there is that if we are anonymous, then we
30:35
Speaker 1: are slightly more dimnified against intimidation, right or physical threats.
30:42
Speaker 1: If no one knows who you vote for, then they
30:44
Speaker 1: can't have a problem with your vote. So the opaque
30:48
Speaker 1: boxes go back to the polls and they have some
30:52
Speaker 1: more innovations, and class boxes end up being quickly donated
30:57
Speaker 1: to museums or antique shops, or my favorite, getting repurposed
31:01
Speaker 1: as fish bulls. I bet there are a lot of
31:03
Speaker 1: those in d C at the time. You know, it's
31:05
Speaker 1: kind of a conversation piece. There's another thing that happened.
31:09
Speaker 1: We should talk about it. It's a little bit of
31:11
Speaker 1: myth busting. So one of the things we hear often
31:14
Speaker 1: about rigged elections is, uh, so and so goes through
31:18
Speaker 1: a graveyard, right, and they write down the names of
31:20
Speaker 1: dead people, and then they have those dead people fraudulently
31:23
Speaker 1: vote or they cast votes in their name. It turns
31:26
Speaker 1: out there was something else that was happening that was
31:28
Speaker 1: way more common, and that is known as the tissue ballot.
31:33
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about this. Is post civil war now, right,
31:37
Speaker 1: So after the Civil War there's this resurgence in arguments
31:41
Speaker 1: about election rigging, right because the country was divided, and
31:45
Speaker 1: still culturally in very many ways, it remained divided after
31:48
Speaker 1: the war. The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in eighteen seventy.
31:52
Speaker 1: It protected the right of citizens to vote. And there
31:55
Speaker 1: was something else past that year, the Enforcement Act, which
31:58
Speaker 1: named all the time types of known voter fraud that
32:01
Speaker 1: could be punished. Congress did address dead voters specifically. Instead,
32:06
Speaker 1: it was a crime to quote knowingly personate and vote
32:10
Speaker 1: or attempt to vote in the name of any other person,
32:13
Speaker 1: whether living, dead or fictitious. I love that they say
32:16
Speaker 1: personate instead of impersonate. So the problem is, when you
32:21
Speaker 1: look at this, dead voters were only a very small
32:24
Speaker 1: part of the dilemma. Like in Jersey City, in investigators
32:29
Speaker 1: found a lot of election fraud, a lot of rigging,
32:32
Speaker 1: but only ten votes. Only ten of the fake votes
32:36
Speaker 1: came from dead people. The rest appeared to be attributed
32:39
Speaker 1: to living people who could not have physically voted. There,
32:42
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like out of state. Yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: and then it's a it's a problem that we don't
32:46
Speaker 1: mean it's I will say this. It is interesting how
32:50
Speaker 1: antiquated still our voting system is, like all of the
32:53
Speaker 1: trouble we're having with trusting and mail in ballots and uh,
32:58
Speaker 1: you know, poll um inconsistencies at polling places where the
33:03
Speaker 1: machines are malfunctioning, etcetera. And it's because it's an old
33:08
Speaker 1: system in general, the idea of voting and the government
33:11
Speaker 1: always never it always takes longer for government to catch
33:13
Speaker 1: up to technology. Um. Then obviously it does for technology
33:17
Speaker 1: to advance rapidly. So at this point, they didn't even
33:22
Speaker 1: have any of the interconnectedness that we we do, or
33:25
Speaker 1: we can at least reference if people have already voted,
33:28
Speaker 1: or you know, if people are voting twice um. And
33:31
Speaker 1: yet we still see something's like this happening from time
33:35
Speaker 1: to time. So I can't imagine how you know, the
33:38
Speaker 1: organizations in charge of of making sure voting fraud was
33:41
Speaker 1: minimized would be able to handle this in a in
33:45
Speaker 1: a non interconnected world. Yeah. Yeah, so it's crazy because
33:51
Speaker 1: we've got to report from the Chicago Daily Tribute and
33:53
Speaker 1: that gives us a sense of this. Just to summarize,
33:56
Speaker 1: we said they found ten votes in Jersey City that
33:59
Speaker 1: came from dead people, but five votes came from voters
34:04
Speaker 1: who lived at houses that didn't exist, you know what
34:07
Speaker 1: I mean, like a one four nine ash Court Lane
34:11
Speaker 1: when the street only goes up to uh. Twenty six
34:15
Speaker 1: ballots came from voters living in what turned out to
34:18
Speaker 1: be vacant lots. Sixty six were frauduently cast in the
34:22
Speaker 1: names of people who had moved away like six months
34:25
Speaker 1: before the election. Fifty three people who had never lived
34:29
Speaker 1: where any of the polls said they did. Only five
34:32
Speaker 1: names got voted twice and a couple of times I think, uh,
34:36
Speaker 1: twelve year olds and a three year old voted. So
34:39
Speaker 1: it's definitely problem. And yet they did red flag these
34:42
Speaker 1: issues and found them. But it just makes me think
34:44
Speaker 1: of what we're all the ones that that slipped through
34:46
Speaker 1: the cracks, you know, these kinds of frauds on activities
34:50
Speaker 1: were completely overwhelmed by this notion of tissue ballots, which
34:56
Speaker 1: were also sometimes referred to as joker ballots or kiss ballots,
35:00
Speaker 1: and they were essentially just you know, duplicated ballots. You
35:04
Speaker 1: could deposit what appeared to be one ballot paper ballot
35:09
Speaker 1: into one of these boxes, but in fact it was
35:12
Speaker 1: like seriously think about toilet paper. You know how it's
35:15
Speaker 1: got layers. That's how the expensive to the most layers,
35:19
Speaker 1: you can pull them apart. I used to do that
35:20
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. That's exactly what these are.
35:23
Speaker 1: So it's just a clever way of stuffing the ballot boxes.
35:26
Speaker 1: They would be duplicates. I gotta wonder how if they
35:29
Speaker 1: were stuck together in that way, how how like a
35:31
Speaker 1: person pulling it out wouldn't have realized that that was
35:34
Speaker 1: the case. But after the polls were closed, Uh, there
35:38
Speaker 1: would be folks that were in on the scam that
35:41
Speaker 1: would go and shake up the ballot boxes and it
35:43
Speaker 1: would cause these, uh, these duplicate, thin tissue ballots to
35:48
Speaker 1: to disconnect from one another. UM. And that's pretty ingenious,
35:53
Speaker 1: really is. There's a story and by the name of
35:55
Speaker 1: Robert M. Goldman, who, in A Free Ballot and a
35:58
Speaker 1: Fair Account UM, one of his books on the subject,
36:01
Speaker 1: wrote perhaps this was one of the most widespread and
36:04
Speaker 1: ingenious methods of fraud at the time. Uh. And I
36:08
Speaker 1: would tend to agree. I'd love to see this in action,
36:10
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking of a tissue paper thing. He doesn't
36:14
Speaker 1: look like the same material that a ballot would be
36:16
Speaker 1: printing on and if you shake it up, it's not
36:18
Speaker 1: going to disconnect. I'm I'm fascinated by this whole process.
36:21
Speaker 1: I want to hear more about the logistics of it. Also,
36:24
Speaker 1: I'm also fascinated by the implication here. Uh so people
36:29
Speaker 1: had had multi layered toilet paper back in the eighteen hundreds.
36:34
Speaker 1: I I had no idea, that's that's amazing what it
36:37
Speaker 1: would seem. So if not, maybe they didn't realize at
36:40
Speaker 1: the time the implications for this technology, you know, that
36:44
Speaker 1: could have led to a more comfortable bathroom experience. Maybe
36:48
Speaker 1: the inventor of tissue paper just named them after tissue
36:51
Speaker 1: votes and they were, you know, wiping themselves and they
36:55
Speaker 1: were like, ha ha, this is like voting. I gotta
36:57
Speaker 1: wonder that too. Like the word tissue, you know, I
37:00
Speaker 1: think it maybe comes from like tissue in the body,
37:03
Speaker 1: because tissue is usually kind of thin, like membrane like
37:07
Speaker 1: at times, you know, So I wonder if that's where
37:09
Speaker 1: it comes from. The first recorded use of paper for
37:12
Speaker 1: this kind of cleaning dates back to the sixth century
37:15
Speaker 1: in medieval China. And we talked about corn cobs in
37:19
Speaker 1: the past. They have a dirty history anyway, that's the
37:22
Speaker 1: story for a different day. We've outlined some of the problems, right,
37:31
Speaker 1: and now we have to look at some of the solutions.
37:34
Speaker 1: How do we get to secret voting? By the eight hundreds,
37:38
Speaker 1: people who are interested in ballot reform realized that they
37:42
Speaker 1: would need a new way to run elections. All this
37:46
Speaker 1: stuff about making different designs of ballot boxes and so on. Uh,
37:51
Speaker 1: it would always be little more than a band aid
37:53
Speaker 1: to the problem. The real problem was that the process
37:57
Speaker 1: was run or influenced so profoundly by political parties. They
38:02
Speaker 1: were buying votes, you know, and they were sending gangs
38:05
Speaker 1: to whip that ever loving tar out of people. And
38:09
Speaker 1: so they looked to Australia because since the eighteen fifties,
38:15
Speaker 1: states in Australia have been doing something a little different.
38:18
Speaker 1: They were letting people vote in secret. That's right. Uh,
38:22
Speaker 1: they were kind of early to the secret ballot party here. Um,
38:26
Speaker 1: they used official ballots that were actually supplied by the
38:30
Speaker 1: government instead of political parties. It is such a genius,
38:34
Speaker 1: forward thinking idea. Um, but not at all. I mean
38:38
Speaker 1: it is considering the time, but it just seems like
38:40
Speaker 1: such an obvious thing to do, Like you need to
38:42
Speaker 1: have it come from one place and not just from
38:45
Speaker 1: whomever um. And they, again, in an absurdly obvious yet
38:50
Speaker 1: forward thinking move, supplied the space for people to come
38:54
Speaker 1: to vote without anyone knowing who they had picked the
38:59
Speaker 1: people that were vote. So, man, I cannot believe that
39:03
Speaker 1: Australia beat us to the punch on that. Yeah, well,
39:07
Speaker 1: we definitely learned and it's a good thing that we did.
39:09
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, of course, it was not the political
39:12
Speaker 1: parties looking to Australia for reform. The political parties maybe
39:17
Speaker 1: didn't particularly want things to be fixed because, in their opinion,
39:21
Speaker 1: the system wasn't broken. Uh, there's this very very close
39:25
Speaker 1: selection in eighty four, guy may have heard of named
39:29
Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland wins New York by just a little more
39:32
Speaker 1: than one thousand votes. We think New York had the
39:35
Speaker 1: most electoral votes at the time, and because this vote
39:39
Speaker 1: was so close, a lot of other observers in the
39:43
Speaker 1: US started thinking, you know, maybe maybe Australia is onto something.
39:48
Speaker 1: So in eight just four years later, Massachusetts becomes the
39:53
Speaker 1: very first state in the country to adopt what they
39:56
Speaker 1: were calling the Australian ballot system, and then very weally
40:00
Speaker 1: other states hopped on not all New England states like
40:04
Speaker 1: Rhode Islands there, but so as Tennessee, Wisconsin, Washington, New York, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
40:11
Speaker 1: And this is where the responsibility of providing a ballot
40:16
Speaker 1: falls on, as you said, the government falls on the state.
40:19
Speaker 1: They have to provide voters with official ballots and voting booths,
40:25
Speaker 1: have to figure out what these look like, how it works.
40:28
Speaker 1: That had a lot of back and forth about how
40:30
Speaker 1: to design this thing, because you know, we have to
40:32
Speaker 1: keep in mind at this point they're physically making these
40:35
Speaker 1: little partitions or tiny rooms so that no one can
40:40
Speaker 1: see you right what you're writing. Basically, we do have
40:44
Speaker 1: to mention despite these great successes, these changes did not
40:47
Speaker 1: benefit every single American resident. Even with the government printed ballot.
40:53
Speaker 1: We have to understand that voters had to read and
40:56
Speaker 1: that made it much harder for immigrants, for people who
40:58
Speaker 1: had survived slave, for people who were illiterate or uneducated,
41:03
Speaker 1: it made it more difficult for them to vote even
41:05
Speaker 1: when they could. Still a nation soldiered on by US residents,
41:12
Speaker 1: and thirty nine out of forty five states cast secret
41:15
Speaker 1: government printed ballots. Uh, and the turnout was that's about
41:22
Speaker 1: what it had been since the eighteen thirties, and since
41:25
Speaker 1: that point it's been falling more or less steadily. Of course,
41:29
Speaker 1: you know, again, we're recording this in the past, so
41:32
Speaker 1: we don't know what's happening the day you hear this,
41:34
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. No, we do not, and
41:38
Speaker 1: I think I'm I'm fine with it that way. For now.
41:40
Speaker 1: Let's just live and our imagined reality of a utopian America.
41:45
Speaker 1: Um or at Yeah, I mean, let's just think. Let's
41:47
Speaker 1: think how far we've come. You know, at least there's
41:49
Speaker 1: no goon squads at the polls beating us with truncheons
41:53
Speaker 1: and the like. Um So I'll take that as a
41:57
Speaker 1: as a positive. I will say this, though we are
42:00
Speaker 1: still we sort of alluded to this at the top
42:02
Speaker 1: of the show, in a place where the states do
42:06
Speaker 1: still constitutionally have the right to kind of use their
42:10
Speaker 1: own voting mechanisms, which doesn't manifest itself in nearly as
42:15
Speaker 1: extreme ways as it used to. Now it's much more
42:18
Speaker 1: just about little design changes between voting booths or which
42:22
Speaker 1: vendor you go through to get your UH, to get
42:26
Speaker 1: your report, you know, to get the required devices to
42:29
Speaker 1: to cast your ballots. And um, but there still is
42:32
Speaker 1: no like central requirement for the design are these booths
42:37
Speaker 1: and some probably work a little better than others. And
42:39
Speaker 1: I remember, you know when the some states or your
42:43
Speaker 1: counties stuck with the paper ballots. Even the mandate the
42:47
Speaker 1: idea of like using electronic voting, I don't believe as
42:49
Speaker 1: a mandate, ben is it is It just kind of like, Okay,
42:52
Speaker 1: we've updated, this is the newest available technology, and we
42:55
Speaker 1: are going to do this because it sounds to me
42:57
Speaker 1: like there's no central There could not be a centralized
43:00
Speaker 1: requirements saying you can't use paper ballots anymore. By my
43:05
Speaker 1: thoughts on this better perhaps suited better for a different show,
43:09
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, but shout out to the
43:11
Speaker 1: Hanging Chad's. You guys, remember that that would have been
43:14
Speaker 1: a great band name. And the Hanging Becky's, you know,
43:17
Speaker 1: may may, may they live in prosper, long may they hang? Yes,
43:22
Speaker 1: So this is this is a look at the journey
43:26
Speaker 1: towards secret ballots, which nowadays everybody agrees are important, indeed
43:32
Speaker 1: vital to a functioning democracy. But we've used a couple
43:36
Speaker 1: of words here that are specific to elections. So we
43:39
Speaker 1: thought we'd in the episode by giving you just just
43:43
Speaker 1: a little little taste for all all the fellow etymology
43:46
Speaker 1: nerds out there. Uh, we're gonna we're gonna tell you
43:50
Speaker 1: where the word ballot comes from, as well as the
43:52
Speaker 1: word rigged. That's right, ballot, Uh, it turns out comes
43:56
Speaker 1: from an Italian word ballotta um or little ball uh.
44:01
Speaker 1: And it's funny because I think of this, I think
44:03
Speaker 1: of a ballot, I think of a little ball, and
44:05
Speaker 1: I think of sort of I guess, the opposite of voting,
44:07
Speaker 1: which is like random drawing in like a lottery or
44:10
Speaker 1: a bingo situation where you have a giant tumbling cage
44:14
Speaker 1: full of little balls with numbers on them. But apparently
44:17
Speaker 1: in the early days, a ballot was uh something kind
44:21
Speaker 1: of ball like was a ball or at least something
44:24
Speaker 1: sort of appearing to be a ball, like remember the
44:27
Speaker 1: beans that was your ballot, or a p or a
44:31
Speaker 1: tiny rock or even a bullet. That's my favorite. That way.
44:37
Speaker 1: That's just seems to a hardcore you know what I mean,
44:40
Speaker 1: It's like a mercenary vote before we go in for
44:42
Speaker 1: a black bag operation. Yeah. And then like many things
44:45
Speaker 1: that that that word it just was just adopted even
44:47
Speaker 1: though the form completely changed. So that's why we we
44:51
Speaker 1: We were a people of tradition. So what we call
44:55
Speaker 1: our paper um vote things, ballots and rigg The word
44:59
Speaker 1: rigged has nothing to do with maritime history. I think
45:02
Speaker 1: that's an assumption a lot of people have made. I
45:04
Speaker 1: made that in the past when it's like, oh, you know,
45:06
Speaker 1: you like rig the mass if your brigotine or whatever.
45:09
Speaker 1: I know what boats are, just because that's how I
45:11
Speaker 1: am sometimes, but I was wrong. Rigged refers to a prank,
45:18
Speaker 1: a scheme, a swindle, or a con like an early
45:22
Speaker 1: shell game known as thimble rig And some people think
45:27
Speaker 1: that rig comes from an old phrase to play rex
45:30
Speaker 1: to quote act like a lord or master. So by
45:33
Speaker 1: the eighteen twenties and thirties, people were saying rigged, and
45:36
Speaker 1: I don't know, did anybody else think it meant like
45:38
Speaker 1: rigging a ship? Well, it certainly is that right. It
45:43
Speaker 1: refers often to equipment or pieces of kit, you know,
45:47
Speaker 1: like a truck driver often refers to their truck as
45:50
Speaker 1: their rig or a big rig, and musicians often refer
45:54
Speaker 1: to their combination of different components, like a guitar setup
45:58
Speaker 1: with pedals and and amplifier. Aaron Penn when you know
46:01
Speaker 1: all the chords to go along with it as their rig,
46:03
Speaker 1: you know, my my scynth rig, my guitar rig, my
46:06
Speaker 1: bass rig, you know, and and ben off my I
46:09
Speaker 1: was sort of questioning, like, is this a different etymology?
46:13
Speaker 1: Is this like a diverge at some point? Is this
46:15
Speaker 1: this version of rig referring to a different origin word?
46:18
Speaker 1: And I think you um mentioning that it could have
46:21
Speaker 1: to do with just more slang uses that makes a
46:24
Speaker 1: lot of sense. Well, I mean, hey, we love slang.
46:27
Speaker 1: We make up slang all the time on this show.
46:29
Speaker 1: It's a living language, and it's a it's a living vote.
46:33
Speaker 1: We ran a little long on this episode, but we
46:36
Speaker 1: wanted to share this story and we thought it was
46:38
Speaker 1: appropriate for these are modern days. We hope that you
46:42
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, uh, and we hope that you tune in
46:46
Speaker 1: for our next episode when we finally cover something that
46:50
Speaker 1: we've just started calling stove goblin. Yeah but stylized with
46:54
Speaker 1: spaces in between like vapor wave aesthetic. Yes, yeah, actually
46:58
Speaker 1: I have. I was writing the episode description and I
47:02
Speaker 1: was thinking, are they gonna let me get away? Which
47:04
Speaker 1: is writing this is just stove goblin? Yeah. Oh, yeah,
47:09
Speaker 1: I'll let you get away with plenty of Ben. Yeah.
47:11
Speaker 1: So thank you Noel, and thank you super producer Casey
47:15
Speaker 1: Pegram and as always, thanks to Alex Williams who composed
47:18
Speaker 1: our theme. Christopher hasciotis here in spirit, Jonathan Strickland the Quister,
47:23
Speaker 1: long may he rain. I hope we have them back
47:25
Speaker 1: pretty soon. I think it's around that time. Or should
47:28
Speaker 1: I say about that, damn gentleman. Yes, yes, it is
47:33
Speaker 1: a very likely scenario that we will have him return soon. Uh.
47:38
Speaker 1: And of course, as always, thanks to Christo Rosciotis. Thanks
47:41
Speaker 1: to Eve's Jeff co. We want to hear your ridiculous
47:45
Speaker 1: voting stories of yesteryear, the wildest stuff you've ever heard
47:49
Speaker 1: about the history of voting. Let us know we're on
47:51
Speaker 1: the internet. Uh, not just as this show, but as individuals.
47:55
Speaker 1: It's true. If you wish, you can find me on
47:57
Speaker 1: Instagram exclusively at how Now Noel Brown, how about you, Ben?
48:01
Speaker 1: You can find me Ben Bulleen hs W on Twitter.
48:05
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram at Ben Bolan. Uh.
48:09
Speaker 1: And I gotta say you know I I voted early
48:13
Speaker 1: this time. You guys did did you vote earlier? You?
48:16
Speaker 1: Day of Oh? No, I voted earlier. I voted as
48:18
Speaker 1: early as I possibly could, and it was a delight.
48:21
Speaker 1: I pity the fools who have to stand in those
48:23
Speaker 1: crazy lines on actual election day. Yeah, I if it
48:27
Speaker 1: wasn't a pandemic. I actually really love going and doing
48:30
Speaker 1: it day of. But if you think about it, that's
48:33
Speaker 1: the last day to vote. It's not really the voting day,
48:36
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's exactly right. We'll see
48:39
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
48:49
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
48:52
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.