His workers would routinely gather blank or incomplete ballots, fill them in voting a straight Republican ticket, then witness the form as if the actual voter had made all the selections for candidates. Dowless trained his team to use “the same color ink as the voter who filled out other parts of the ballot,” put the completed forms in mailboxes close to the homes of the voters, and place the stamps in a certain way so as not to raise the suspicions of the county election boards. Meanwhile, other ballots were dumped at his office for special handling. In fact, there were “stacks of them on his
...more
