Waiting for the Cemetery Vote: The Fight to Stop Election Fraud in Arkansas

5. Petition Parties

CHAPTER 5 Petition Parties “If I was 20 years younger, I would go to Little Rock, and knock your teeth down your throat for your determined attempt to deny me the right to vote for the party of my choice.” —LETTER FROM AN ADMIRER Soon after leaving the attorney general’s office and setting up a solitary office in Little Rock in the spring of 1970, I went to see Robert W. Faulkner, Governor Rockefeller’s executive secretary, and proposed that the governor contribute to a new organization called The Election Laws (TEL) Institute, which would monitor the conduct of elections and educate people on the proper and legal ways to hold elections, count votes and maintain voting records. I did not anticipate conducting large-scale investigations of vote fraud like the Election Research Council did in 1964 and 1965. TEL Institute would not have the resources nor would I have the time for it while trying to build a fledgling law practice. My notion was that laws were finally in place to control the wholesale abuse that had marked elections in many counties for a century. Voters had amended the state constitution in 1962 to permit voting machines as a substitute for paper ballots, and the largest counties were beginning to buy the electronic machines that we thought promised greater secrecy and security for the franchise. The permanent-voter-registration system, which was installed by the voters at the general election two years later, had ended the terrible abuses that accompanied the poll-tax system. While I was disappointed that the new election code that we had drafted in the attorney general’s office and that the legislature had adopted in • 83 • 1GLAZE_pages:Layout 1 4/22/11 11:27 AM Page 83 1969 did not fix the source of the most flagrant corruption, the absentee ballot, it did streamline the election process, guarantee the secrecy of a person’s vote, and spell out clearly how voting was to be conducted, the duties of election officials, and the penalties for ignoring them. If everyone involved in the electoral process knew what the law required or forbade them to do and the consequences of flouting the law, surely it would deter all but the most desperate vote thief. Widespread public knowledge of the voting laws would be extra insurance against the conniving of solitary vote thieves and political machines. That is what we proposed to accomplish with TEL Institute. Rockefeller was instantly agreeable and put $20,000 into TEL that year. We incorporated in May and set up a board to govern its work and raise money. Board members mostly were lawyer friends who had supported my work and who I knew were independent and impervious to political pressure: James B. Wallace of North Little Rock, Robert F. Morehead of Pine Bluff, Oliver L. Adams of Rogers, and Rice Van Ausdall of Harrisburg. They also included Henry Ketcher Jr. of North Little Rock, a roofing contractor; Mrs. H. W. Badley of Mountain Home, president of theLeagueof WomenVotersof BaxterCounty; and Sam Hodgesof Little Rock, the irreverent owner and publisher of the Benton Courier. Many people and both major political parties would contribute to TEL over the next five years. But the first two years, we struggled day to day with financing while my law practice was maturing slowly. I obtained abankloantogetusthroughthefirstmonths. ButRockefeller’sgiftsmade our survival possible. Counting small gifts from his estate after his death in 1973, he gave us $90,778 and never asked for or expected the smallest favor for himself or the Republican Party. He merely asked that I do what I could to give people an honest voice in their government that was undiluted by fraud and deception. For the first two years, TEL Institute tried to carry out my idea of perfecting elections through education. We began to provide local officials opinions on election questions much as I had done as a deputy attorney general for the three previous years, although now those opinions did not carrythe stamp of officialdom. I worked with the Pulaski County Election Commission to train election judges and clerks. I began a drive to reapportion the seats on the City Council in North Little Rock, where I lived, to bring representation in the city’s hugely disparate wards into rough 84 • Petition Parties 1GLAZE_pages:Layout 1 4/22/11 11:27 AM Page 84 population parity, as the United...