Evening star., 1933-01-14
vOTEPROBE BRINGS
NEW M'KEE COUNT
Written-In Polls Found Not
Sent in From 315 Districts
in New York.
BY the Associated Press.

BY the Associated Press.
NEW YORK, January l4.-Every
voting machine in New York City is TO
be opened to help determine whether
Joseph v. Mckee was defrauded Of his
rightful quota Of mayoraIty votes cast
by tens of thousands of -Tammany
supporters, many of whom did almost
everything but inscr1be his name on
their own collars and send them to the
laundry.
Mckee, who. as president of the
Board of Aldermen, automatically be-
came acting mayor on the resignation
of James J. Walker, was not on the
ballot as a mayoralty candidate In
November. but there was a strong move
ment looking toward the writing in of
his name by those dissatisfied with the
Tammany, Republican and other party
candidates.
7S Variations Of Name.
Almost as soon as the polls opened
charges began to fly that organization
workers were interfering with the write
in vote. There is supposed to be O
roll of paper in every machine for
write-in votes, but many machines were
reported to be unsupplied. Election
workers were said to refuse to give pen
ellis to Mckee supporters who went to
the polls without them.
The situation was also complicated
by inability of many voters to under
stand just where they should write in
the name of a candidate not on the
ballot. Many wrote the name on slips
of paper found in the booths and Just
left them there. Still more didn't know
how to spell the name of their favorite,
and 70 variations of the name were
recorded.
Hundreds Of improperly written votes
had to be thrown out, but even so
Mckee was officially reported to have
received 232, sol votes, a number un-
heard of in any past write-in CAM
paign. This number was so large that
for time there were only murmurs
that in reality it ought to have been
far larger.
Then Federal officials began an in
vestigation of the election as regards
Federal offices and they turned up suf-
ficient facts about other Offices to cause
Gov. Lehman to direct District Attor-
ney Grain of New York County to start
an investigation of his own.
Rolls Not Sent In.
Investigators checking over the voting
machines of Manhattan last Thursday
discovered that the write-in rolls from
315 of the borough's 998 election dis
trict's had not been sent to the Board
Of Elections, as the law requires.
Preparations were Immediately begun
to stake this evidence before the grand
OF the election boards in the 3l5 dis
tricts.
If it should be shown that any Of
these officials willfuily failed to send
in the rolls they might be prosecuted
for felony. If the failure was unin-
territorial they might still face prose-
cution for a miSdemeanor.
:. Upon discovery Of the unified write.
in rolls in Manhattan, the City Board
of Elections met in special session FRI
day and passed resolution asking
permission of the Supreme Court to
open the write-in rolls from every ma
chine, not only in Manhattan but In
the other four bOroughs of the city as
well.
That meeting was presided over BY
the boards president, S. Howard Cohen.
who was sentenced to two 30-day terms
in jail for contempt of court for re-
fusing to submit the voting machines
and other records for examination when
the Federal inquiry began.
He later purged himself of contempt
by making all records available.