Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #2)

by Robert A. Caro

Then Stevenson’s lawyers turned to the 201 names listed after Soliz on the poll list of voters—200 of whom, the tally sheet said, had voted for Lyndon Johnson. Brownlee had taken nine of these names down during his brief look at the poll list, and the young lawyers had jotted down additional names. They asked each of these people if they had voted for Lyndon Johnson. No, they replied, they had not; they had not, they said, voted for anyone. Without exception, the voters questioned said they had not been to the polls at all on Election Day. For one of these persons, twenty-one-year-old Hector Cerda, a college student, voting in Jim Wells County would have been difficult. He hadn’t been in Jim Wells County that day, he explained; he had spent the day in the town of Pharr, 109 miles away, and had not returned until late that night, long after the polls had closed. For three other persons whose names were listed as voting, voting would have been even more difficult. They had been dead for some years.