The "yes
vote" of the above four counties was 8,061; the "no vote" 18,941.
Subtract these totals from the totals of the state vote and 154,618
"yes" and 154,079 "no" remains, giving a majority of 539 for woman
suffrage.
Once more in the history of suffrage referenda a foreign and colonized
population decided the issue. Was the election an honest one? That
is a question of interest to Iowa just now. The returns revealed some
suspicious facts. Nearly 30,000 more votes were cast on the suffrage
proposition than in the primary. Where did they come from? The
president of the W.C.T.U., Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, employed a
detective after the election. His investigation covered forty-four
counties and was not confined to those wherein woman suffrage
was lost. The findings have not been given to the public in their
entirety, but they were conclusive enough to cause an injunction suit
to be filed against the Board of Elections and the Legislature to
restrain them from accepting the official returns.
Registration was necessary for the amendment, not for the primary,
yet thousands of unregistered votes apparently were cast upon the
amendment.
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