Eaton weekly Democrat. [volume] (Eaton, Ohio) 1866-1875, 1872-10-31
TRIUMPH OF FRAUD.
How Pennsylvania was Carried for the
Penitentiary Ticket-DeeP and Damning
Evidence of Frnud.


We have waited patiently since the Penn
sylvania election for the authentic proofs,
which we we're satisfied must soon come, that
the chief portion, if not the whole, of the
alleged majority for Hartranft in that State
was the result OF fraud and ballot-stufing.
The first of these proofs came yesterday, in
form not only authentic, but official, and SO
deep and damning in its force an argu-
ment against the entire Hartranft party as
ought at least to silence their indecent boast
ings over their dastardly overthrow of the
ballot in Pennsylvania. The following are the
beginnings of the proof that false counting
and ballot-stuhng carried the State:
To the Reform Association of Philadelphia:
GENTS: In the official count of votes for
Governor, in the Fifteenth Ward, it is repre-
sented that the majority for Governor was
1897, as follows: For Hartranft, 4,49O; for
Buckalew, 1883. The undersigned, Judges of
Election, signed no such return or paper.
The true vote for Governor was as follows,
they having signed the same For Hartranft,
1880; for Buckalew 1888; majority, ], 1897
By exposing the above fraud you will oblige
friends of reform in the Fifteenth Ward, and
the returns to suit their own partisan way of
fixing up election returns.
Respectfully yours,
JOHN PRITNER,
Judge of First Division.
JAMES NASH,
Judge of Second Division.
w. J. MURRAY,
Judge of Seventh Division.
ALFRED MURPHY,
Judge of Twenty-second Division.
One hundred votes in a single ward are
taken from Buckalew and added to Hartranft,
making difference of two hundred in the
count in the Fifteenth Ward. Our dispatches
also state that in all the wards at least two
| hundred votes were counted more than were
| polled; while in the Nineteenth Ward fifteen
hundred fraudulent votes were polled, in the
Twentieth five hundred, and in the Tenth,
| Fifth, Fourth, Sixteenth, and Seventh, five
| hundred votes each. The total false count
| and fraudulent vote in Philadelphia, accom-
| plished after the returns passed out of the
| hands of the Election Judges, amounted to
| 5000. All this was exclusive of the results
| of repeating and other frauds by voters, of
colonized voters from other States, of votes
surreptitiously changed by the election Off
| GERS, and of all similar frauds in other parts
of Pennsylvania, especially in Pittsburgh,
Harrisburg, and the other large towns, in all
which there were mysterious and systematic
= founding gains for Hartranft," }" while the
rural districts as uniformly gave gains for
| Buckalew.
1t is not the lower class of ward bummera
| who are responsible for the wholesale vii
lainy exposed by the above official certificate
and the attendant proofs. This affair has
been engineered from headquarters, and the
parties responsible for it are Cameron, Hart
ranft, and the other leaders Of the Grant
party in Pennsylvania. 1t is on an exact
| moral level with the concerted pardon OF
Yerkes and Marcer from the Penitentiary, in
consideration that they should sign an un-
|
thief which their sworn evidence had proved
him to be. Both events were preceded by
hurried conferences by the President himself
with Cameron, Geary, Hartranft, and Other
Grant leaders, and by a hasty journey of
Cameron to Washington, ostensibly, it was
said, to demand United States troops il
Philadelphia, to protect the heavy majority
of Grant voters from being dragooned, over
awed- and driven from the polls by the Gree
/ ley minority sf --
Conceding the facts shown by the above
certificate to be true, Republican institutions
in Pennsylvania have completely failed. The
State is governed by crime,-not by laws o.
constitutions. The people of that Stat
stand disfranchised, robbed of the power t.
choose their own officers, and not now TO
the first time. The ultimate and all-im
portant issue which these frauds in Pennsyl
vania bring before the so-called Republican
party in the Northwest is whether the averag
Pennsylvania ballot-stuffers. IF they ar
not, they will merely shrug their shoulders
and say, as mahy of them do, swell, if w
can carry Pennsylvania that way how are Vol
going to beat us ?"
: 1t IS the chronic and unprecedented evil O
our time that not only are high officials de
bauched and Indifferent to any phase or degre
of corruption, but large masses OF the peopl
are equally destitute of any such sense c
honesty and honor as renders them indignan
I at frauds which strike at the very existence c
Republican institutions. These will sympa
! thize with the public officer who makes none
out of his Office corruptly, or dispenses Ia
appointments for gifts, because they vi
blushingly admit that they would do the sam
; themselves were they in power. Perhaps Il
1 majority of the Republican voters of tt
Northwest, having approved SO much, will al
2 prove, also, the frauds which have struC
q down the right of suffrage IN Pennsylvania b
3 crime as fa--reaching as the assassinatio
g of Lincoln by Booth. That killed the chose
representative of the sovereign people. Tn
assassinates popular sovereignty itself. TIL
: was the individual crime of one mar
This is the organized crime of a set of me
whose audacity as swindlers elevates them
e the places of statesmen, and they boldly as
8 the so-called Republican party throughout IL
country to approve it by sustaining its maj
d ayers in power. The appeal, however. is
# the whole people. If you approve the PEN
n sylvanvia iniquity, vote for Grant. If you {
d not, vote against him. -. ..
T. Besides the official proof of heavy CORFU
d tions in Philadelphia, we have the fact of Il
l. arrest of the Mayor and Postmaster of IL
city of Scranton for buying votes and bribil
g election officers to stuff ballot-boxes, Al