All good election laws provide that a definite number of
ballots shall be officially issued to each precinct; that the number
of those deposited in the ballot box, the number spoiled and those
unused shall not only tally with the number received, but the
unused ones must be counted, sealed, labelled and returned with the
certificate recording the count. This is the law of Iowa; but the
report of the investigation, as given to the press, shows that in
thirty-five counties out of the forty-four investigated no tally list
was used and there was nothing by which to check in order to determine
the correctness of the number on the certificate. In many cases no
unused ballots were returned. The poll lists did not tally with the
number of votes and even a recount could not reveal whether fraud or
carelessness had led to irregularity.
Despite the fact that the Iowa law provides that a definite number of
ballots and the same number of each kind is to be distributed to each
precinct, the separate suffrage ballots in a number of cases were
reported by election officials as not having arrived until the voting
had been in progress for some time; and in others they gave out an
hour before the polls closed.
Pages:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58