Tag Archives: Election Day

November 4, 2024

November 5th: What’s in a Date?

By daseger

I’m anxious about our election, and when I am anxious, I always go back into history to find reassurance in relativity. Everything is relative, we’re just dust in the wind. I didn’t really know where I was going, but I started looking into the history of suffrage in our country, as those women really struggled and ulimately succeeded so I thought they would be inspiring and reassuring. And then I came across the date November 5th, 1872, when Susan B. Anthony voted for Ulysses S. Grant, and was arrested ten days afterwards for playing man at the polls. Well, I thought, we could have a nice bookend moment ahead of us on November 5, 2024! But as stalwart as Susan was, she did not ease my anxiety, I needed more historical immersion: so after a brief survey of twentieth-century US electoral November Fifths, I went back into the eighteenth, seventeenth, and sixteenth centuries just to stretch things out a bit and put my 21st century problems in perspective. I found struggles against tyranny in the 18th and 17th centuries, represented by the November 5 birthday of General John Glover, a Revolutionary hero who is ignored here in his native city of Salem but has quite a following in neighboring Swampscott, where avid preservationists are struggling to preserve his retirement farmhouse. Further back, William of Orange landed at Torbay on November 5, 1688, to unseat his father-in-law James II and establish a “glorious” contractual/constitutional monarchy. Earlier in that same century, there was of course the most memorable event, the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605, an attempted coup foiled, and the inspiration for the observation of “Pope’s Night” in colonial Massachusetts. And right in the midst of the Renaissance, Copernicus gazed at the lunar eclipse while in Rome for the Golden Jubilee, germinating new ideas about the heliocentric universe. November 5th has indeed been both an innovative and momentous date throughout history, and I’m hoping that November 5th, 2024 will also break new ground.

Wonderful eclipse painting in background by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo.

14 Comments | tags: Anniversary History, Current Events, Election Day, Gunpowder Plot, Renaissance, Revolutions, Suffrage | posted in Women's History

November 5, 2016

Electoral Ephemera Euphoria/Escapism

By daseger

I’m still very preoccupied with the large collection of nineteenth-century ballots at the American Antiquarian Society: if I had time I would drive down to Worcester and immerse myself in the real paper; because I do not, I have to settle for digital immersion. Every little slip/image fascinates me–I woke up at 4:00 the night before last thinking why is the image of an upside-down chained beast associated with the movement AGAINST the incorporation of Boston as a city in 1822? Would livestock no longer be able to roam freely on the Common? That was my 4:00 am thought, but in the light of morning I realized the image probably had a more metaphorical meaning.

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I still don’t know what the symbol of the chained beast means, but these particular ballot tickets represent the failing side: Boston did indeed become a city in 1822. So today, I’m going to focus on referenda, something we should all be familiar with as I believe nearly every state has ballot questions to decide on Election Day. Here in Massachusetts, our measures pertain to: 1) slot licenses; 2) charter schools; 3) the containment of farm animals (here we are, back to the chained beast!); and 4) recreational use of marijuana. In the nineteenth century, it was all about municipal incorporations, infrastructure, and above all, liquor. And taxation, of course: you know that old saying about death and taxes.

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election-liquor-no

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Some of these private party tickets offered a public service by reminding voters when the polls were open–and where they where. Vote early [vote often?] and vote no.

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This last ticket obvious refers to the presidential election rather than a contemporary referendum, but I had to include it because it’s just so great: eminent historian George Bancroft weighing in on the [1864?] election. Imagine a world where an historian’s words could sway votes!

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All images courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society: their digitized collection of nineteenth-century electoral ballots and ephemera can be found here.

4 Comments | tags: American Antiquarian Society, Civil War, Digital History, Election Day, ephemera, Temperance | posted in Current Events, History

November 3, 2016

That’s the Ticket

By daseger

Well now we are in this rather ominous week between Halloween and the Election. How t0 deal with it? By retreating into the past, of course! I’ve been curious about the mechanics of elections for a while, actually, and decided to indulge my curiosity by browsing through some local digitized collections of electoral ephemera. The large collection of nineteenth-century election ballots at the American Antiquarian Society is particularly engrossing: so many stories and ideas and trends are encapsulated on these little scraps of paper. For a non-Americanist such a myself, it took quite a bit of background work just to identify the myriad political parties as well as the issues that were driving their formation, and I also came to realize that the transitions from written to printed party tickets, and from party tickets to official ballots, were very momentous, almost on a par with the evolution of voting via machine or electronically. Who knew that the Australian ballot was a secret ballot, first adopted in the United States in Massachusetts as late as 1888? Certainly not me. Here’s a small sample of a great collection, beginning with a very early printed ballot which features Salem’w own Timothy Pickering and also illustrates the electoral college very clearly.

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Freedom is expressed in both words and images on nineteenth-century Massachusetts election tickets, often and in various ways: the “Free Bridge and Equal Rights” ballots from the 1820s which refer to the proposed Warren bridge over the Charles River, linking Charlestown and Boston, a liberty pole, the “Free Soil” party that split off from the Whigs over the issue of slavery, the linkage of nearly every candidate “and liberty”. The first two tickets below are also illustrations of the hybrid print-script tickets produced before printed “party tickets” became the norm after 1840 or so.

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ticket-3-liberty-pole-1829

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And after the Civil War: color, more elaborate typography and imagery, and a spectrum of emergent political affiliations, including various Labor and Greenback parties, Prohibition, Liberal, Independent, Citizens’, Peoples’ parties and both regular and varietal Republicans and Democrats. The party ticket evolved into such an familiar form that it would even be mocked through caricature. And then it became much the official ballot, much more private, and consequently much less interesting.

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Election tickets from 1800, 1829, 1848, n.d., n.d., 1870, 1876, 1883, n.d, and n.d., all Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society and available here.

5 Comments | tags: American Antiquarian Society, Digital Humanities, Election Day, ephemera, Federalists, Graphic Design, Timothy Pickering | posted in Current Events, Design, Salem

November 4, 2015

Calm Descends on Salem

By daseger

It always takes me a few days to recover from Halloween here……two nights ago I had an all-too-vivid nightmare about a bacchanalian orgy in the Charter Street cemetery. But I woke up to a calm and beautiful day: Election Day, always a hopeful day for me. You’ve got to love off-year, local elections when the big issues are new trash barrels and cobblestones! Actually I am trivializing our election quite a bit: the large, looming development projects that I’ve been writing about all year are also big issues (but trash is big too). After I voted, I walked to work and checked the cemetery and Witch Trials Memorial along the way: all was calm and a few respectful people were walking around, really looking at the grave- and memorial stones rather than sitting on them! Salem has been returned to its residents, the dearly departed are not being trespassed, and I slept much better last night.

Feeling fortunate that two great, smart people ran for councilor of the ward that I live in, and that I can walk by the beautiful PEM garden on a 70-degree day in November.

Feeling fortunate that all those disrespectful people are GONE………

and that someone left an appropriate memorial to their ACTUAL ancestor, and that I get to walk by my favorite Salem house, now artfully adorned with pumpkins, several times a week.