Good Morning Cousin Ike ....I read the DallasNews this morning before going to Mass and found this "old info" ... but knowing that most of the folks on this thread aren't Texans I figured it would be of interest ...
I recall this happening and the furor it created at the time ..
In retrospect, it seems all the more chilling to me .......
This is no joke, it true ... unfortunately ...
The reason I didn't hotline the URL is I don't know how long the DMN keeps articles like this in the archives , so I cut and paste it here ....
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1948 primary snared LBJ, ex-governor in vote-fraud tangle
11/19/2000
By Scott Parks / The Dallas Morning News
A race so close you couldn't slip a thread between the candidates. Political and legal wrangling that threatens to drag on for weeks. Suspicions that votes might get added or subtracted after Election Day.
A synopsis of the epic battle between Al Gore and George W. Bush?
Maybe.
But many Texas historians and political experts have been watching the blur of events in Florida and remembering four agonizing weeks that followed the most controversial election in state history.
The 1948 Democratic primary contest for U.S. Senate between Lyndon B. Johnson and Coke Stevenson contained all of the elements of the Bush-Gore race – and much more.
Callan Graham, now 86, was a young lawyer when he volunteered to help Mr. Stevenson prove that Mr. Johnson and his South Texas supporters had stolen the election with 200 fraudulent votes in one precinct – the now-infamous Box 13 in Jim Wells County.
Mr. Johnson won the race by 87 votes out of almost 1 million cast in the Aug. 28, 1948, Democratic primary runoff. Mr. Stevenson, who had been governor and lieutenant governor through the 1940s, faded into obscurity. Mr. Johnson , tarnished by the Box 13 scandal and saddled with the nickname "Landslide Lyndon," became president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.
"If we had won it for [former] Governor Stevenson, there's no doubt it would have changed the course of our nation's history," said Mr. Graham, a retired state representative and legislative lobbyist.
The 1948 election contained high drama – a tense confrontation between armed men, allegations of fraud, missing election records, state and federal court fights and unyielding candidates. Ultimately, a U.S. Supreme Court justice resolved the contest.
Ronnie Dugger, a Texas journalist and Johnson biographer, said the major difference between the long counts in 1948 and 2000 is that no one has alleged Box 13-type fraud in Florida.
But the political game, Mr. Dugger said, appears to be essentially the same as the one that played out in 1948: "How many votes do you need to win and how long can you hold out your returns to find out the answer to that question."
In 1948, Texas voted on a Saturday. When everyone went to bed that night, Mr. Stevenson held an 854-vote lead. But all the counties had not reported their totals. Others submitted corrections well into the following week.
By Thursday, Mr. Stevenson's margin had shrunk to 351 votes. And by Friday, it disappeared entirely when counties controlled by South Texas political boss George B. Parr began reporting new votes for Mr. Johnson.
Box 13 in Alice provided the clincher when Parr loyalists reported an additional 200 votes for Mr. Johnson. The "corrected" total from Box 13 put Mr. Johnson ahead by 87 votes.
Not ready to concede
The Republican Party of Texas was virtually nonexistent outside Houston and Dallas. This meant that Mr. Johnson, a 40-year-old congressman, would sail past his GOP opponent in November and arrive in the U.S. Senate in January.1
But Mr. Stevenson was not ready to concede.
A slate of "reform" Democrats had taken over the Jim Wells County executive committee. They were ready to defy Mr. Parr and throw out the questionable Box 13 results.
Mr. Stevenson dispatched Mr. Graham and two other young lawyers to Jim Wells County to investigate Box 13. Those who understood the desolate brush country south of San Antonio advised them not to wear a suit coat so armed pistoleros could see that they were not carrying guns.
"It was scary going into town that day," Mr. Graham said. "It's pretty funny now, but all I had was a law book."
The Parr men who controlled the county would not show them the precinct tally or the signature list of those who voted. The records were locked in a bank vault, they said.
In frustration, Mr. Stevenson enlisted the aid of legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, the man who engineered the fatal ambush of Bonnie and Clyde in 1934. Together, they drove to Alice to look at the Box 13 records.
Robert Caro, another Johnson biographer, recounted the scene as Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Hamer, both in their 60s, walked through downtown toward the bank. Armed men surrounded them, and one group literally blocked the bank's entrance.
"Git!" Mr. Hamer ordered. "Fall back!" And the group parted. The young lawyers who followed Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Hamer down the street didn't remember what words were said, Mr. Caro wrote.
"They only remember how, walking behind the old Texas Ranger, they suddenly realized how big he was and how he carried himself and how his right hand was poised just above the butt of his gun, his fingers curled for the draw."
Once inside the bank, Mr. Stevenson and his team got a look at the Box 13 voter list but were not allowed to copy it. Later, they testified that the last 200 names on the list were written in the same ink, in the same handwriting and in alphabetical order.
Mr. Stevenson's lawyers memorized enough names to later take affidavits from Box 13 "voters" who said they never voted. The names of at least three dead people appeared on the voter list. *(italics mine)*
Court action
Newspaper reports reveal that Mr. Johnson was the first to initiate court action. Two weeks after the election, his lawyers obtained a state district judge's order restraining the Jim Wells County "reform" Democrats from meeting and throwing out the 200 tainted Johnson votes in Box 13.
The Johnson legal team fought to keep the restraining order in effect until the State Democratic Executive Committee could meet in Fort Worth and certify Mr. Johnson as the party's nominee for U.S. Senate.
At the moment the committee vote was taken, Mr. Stevenson's attorneys were holding forth in an Alice courtroom, trying to dissolve the restraining order. The Parr-controlled state district judge ruled against them.
The committee voted, 29-28, to certify the vote (including the 200 disputed ballots) and to name Mr. Johnson as the nominee.
Pleas from Stevenson attorney Clint Small fell on deaf ears. "The issue is whether or not Precinct 13 in Jim Wells County is to elect a United States senator," he said.
Federal review
Mr. Stevenson claimed the State Democratic Executive Committee's failure to investigate Box 13 violated his civil rights. So, he and his team went to work in the federal courts. They found U.S. District Judge T. Whitfield Davidson of Dallas and persuaded him to issue a temporary injunction against placement of Mr. Johnson's name on the November ballot.
Judge Davidson suggested that the names of both men be placed on the ballot to let the voters decide.
"Without [this compromise], you will have the feeling among some in Texas that the winner has won on a technicality," he said.
Mr. Johnson turned down Judge Davidson's idea. Instead, he decided to fight. It was a risky strategy because testimony from voters in Jim Wells County might reveal the irregularities in Box 13.
Judge Davidson appointed masters, or assistant judges, to determine the facts about Box 13. He set a hearing for Tuesday, Sept. 28, a month after Election Day.
Mr. Johnson's lawyers argued that a state election, conducted by a political party, was not subject to federal court review. They took their plea to an appeals court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The dramatic climax was close at hand.
The federal court master, holding court in Alice, was about to order the opening of all Jim Wells County ballot boxes. Mr. Stevenson's attorneys believed the fraudulent votes were about to be exposed.
At the same moment in Washington, D.C., U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black accepted Mr. Johnson's argument that Judge Davidson had no jurisdiction in a state election. He signed an order dissolving the temporary injunction against placing Mr. Johnson's name on the ballot.
Immediately, Johnson partisans contacted court officials in Alice. The hearing ended without the opening of Box 13. Over the years, researchers have tried to find Box 13 and its records, but they remain missing.
Ted Gittinger, an oral historian at the LBJ Library in Austin, said he has read dozens of interviews given by those involved in the 1948 election. And he has read the daily newspaper accounts that kept Texans riveted to their radios for more than a month.
The closeness of the election – 87 votes, or about one-hundredth of 1 percent difference – led the combatants to fight it out to the bitter end, he said.
As he watched the Bush-Gore bout in Florida, Mr. Gittinger said he wondered, "Will either man ever have the courage and the wisdom to say, "Enough is enough?'" |
