The ballots are of regulation size, nobody has had access to the boxes but the managers, and the opening is too small for the introduction of any quantity of ballots without detection. The law for legalizing fraud is invoked. It requires the managers to draw ballots from the box until the number in the box tallies with the total number of votes cast. The law has been obeyed and the rights of all protected. The ballot shall be without ornament, designation, mutilation, symbol, or mark of any kind whatsoever, except the name or names of the person or persons voted for, and the office to which such person or persons are intended to be chosen.
Advantage is taken of the law by Democratic managers to perpetrate a fraud of their own.
The opening in the ballot-box being small, a ticket inserted does not fall to the bottom of the box. The obliging and attentive manager pushes it down with his lead-pencil, managing to leave a mark on the ballot. At the count the marked ballots are thrown out as mutilated, and are not included in the vote. At any election in Beaufort County, a dishonest manager was caught performing the trick. The people at the polls prevented the ballots from being destroyed, but one of the commissioners of election, when the box reached Beaufort, obtained and destroyed them to prevent me from using them as part of my evidence.