Participation

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

At 5 am on November 7, 2023, our executive director arrived at work to unlock the museum’s doors. It was New York State’s General Election Day, and the Chemung County Historical Society welcomed voters from county districts 09-05/11-04, and 11-05. Poll workers arrived, set up, and were open for voters at 6 am. Polls closed at 9 pm. Before the end of the day, more than 200 people walked through the doors and our archivist stayed until 10 pm to lock up.

Many voters had never been in our building before. After voting, they took advantage of the museum’s free admission for the day to explore. Others took a quick look around, vowing to come back to see more. We even had a few tell us they wanted to donate items to our collection.

It was the first time CCHS was a polling site. In the United States, the majority of polling places are located in public schools. This makes sense because they are situated throughout the community. Most school buildings have good accessibility features, and are designed with large rooms, like gymnasiums or cafeterias, which can accommodate polling equipment and poll workers. Schools also have sufficient parking to handle the flow of traffic.

Unfortunately, what makes less sense, is the disruption Election Day can bring to schools and student routines. Concerns about safety make it more problematic.

We thought we could help and in the fall of 2022, we contacted the Chemung County Board of Elections. We have ample parking, a good-sized education room, and our museum is all on one level. Local Election Board officials visited then sent an independent inspector to evaluate voter accessibility. There were a few things that needed to be addressed, but overall, the officials agreed CCHS would be a good site and we were granted the right to host an election in the spring.

The New York State Board of Elections is responsible for defining all New York State election laws and rules for each of the state’s 62 counties. The Board mandates what the national, state, county, city, and town elections look like on the local level tasking local administration to the Chemung County Board of Elections. Local boards also provide election supplies to villages, fire districts, and school districts that conduct their own elections. They register eligible citizens to vote, and they perform various public education services including providing information to candidates seeking elective office. Local boards also accept and rule on voter petitions.

 

The Chemung County Board of Elections consists of two Election Commissioners. The commissioners are elected by county committees of their same political party and must be approved by the county legislature. Each are supported by two Deputy Commissioners and office staff.

 

According to the Chemung County Board of Elections, as of May 2023, the county has 55,480 registered voters. The unofficial results from November 7th, indicate that only 9,063 voters or 16% of eligible voters cast their vote. The election results aren’t official until after the required recount on November 22^nd since races in Districts 1, 2, and 4 remained too close to call.

Voting, or having a voice in their government, is a key part of democracy. The United States is founded on the idea of freedom, and our nation’s history contains the struggle of different groups of Americans fighting to secure their vote. Voting reflects how engaged the public is.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy and law institute inspired on the work of United States Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., more states, about 19, have recently passed legislation making it harder to vote. Some of these laws require people to present IDs, or they take away the vote from anyone previously convicted of a felony. Others severely restrict early and absentee voting, and remove voters’ names from lists if they haven’t recently voted. Since 2020, only 17 US states have passed legislation making it easier to vote. Is voting important? In reference to the 16% of Chemung County voters who voted on November 7^th, Chemung County’s Democratic Committee Chair Jamal Malik recently said, “The future of the city council is in the hands of a very few people. I think it was like 17% of the eligible voters came out and voted. So, every vote counts, and it's important that people get engaged, civically get engaged, not just be registered to vote, but actually go out and vote and that's the message that needs to be crystal clear to everyone.”

We hope that county voter engagement grows. Since the Chemung County Historical Society collects history through artifacts and documents of the County, we have items from elections more than 100 years old. We’ve been sharing some of these online in our weekly posts. This past fall, we were also pleased to be selected by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museums on Main Street program to be one of twelve sites to host a traveling exhibit called Voices and Votes. We won’t be getting the exhibition until fall of 2025, but have started planning for an accompanying display and programs to highlight voting in Chemung County. We’ll be sharing more details about this exciting project in the future.

Granted, 5 am was a pretty early start to the day, but well worth it to participate in local democracy. 

To see more about voting in Chemung County's past, check out our online exhibit Vote! Chemung County  

 Voting machine used from 1962 - 1982, CCHS Collection

Absence Makes the Vote Go Yonder

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

President Trump has claimed that universal mail-in ballots will mean that no Republican will ever be elected again, but the original absentee ballots were introduced by Republicans in order to ensure their victory in the 1864 election. Between 1862 and 1864, every state in the Union except Illinois and Indiana passed a bill allowing active duty soldiers to cast ballots in their home election districts. Democrats pushed back, citing the potential for fraud and abuse. Nine state supreme courts heard cases regarding the constitutionality of the laws and they were ultimately struck down in four states. All told, approximately 150,000 out of 1 million Union soldiers voted in the election of 1864 under the new absentee voting laws. Lincoln carried a whopping 78% of the soldier vote, although, in the end, he probably would have won without them anyway.

New York passed its absentee voting law in April 1864. The rules were byzantine to say the least. In order to vote, a soldier had to authorize someone in their home district to cast their ballot on their behalf. In addition to their completed ballot, each soldier needed to sign a document granting power of attorney to a registered voter back home. The document needed to be signed by them, the surrogate voter, a witness, and their commanding officer. New York State dispatched representatives to military encampments to oversee the process and ensure the ballots made it back to their home districts.

New York State soldiers have voted in every war since. In the 1898 election during the Spanish American War, it wasn’t until December that the soldiers’ votes were counted, mostly because it took so long to ship them from Hawaii and the Philippines. By then the process had changed somewhat. Instead of having surrogate voters, soldiers would fill out and seal their ballots in a special envelope. All the ballots for the regiment would then be collected by the commanding officer, sealed inside a special pouch which was then sent to the secretary of state. The secretary was then responsible for sending off the competed ballots to each voters’ home election district to be included in the count.

 

Official war ballot, 1898

In the election of 1917, the soldier vote played a decisive role in two contests in the county. When the polls closed on election day, George A. Douglas, candidate for alderman in Elmira’s 10^th ward, and his opponent were neck and neck with 401 votes for Douglas and 402 for his opponent. Then they counted the soldiers’ absentee ballots. Eight of the fourteen ballots were for Douglas, pushing him over the top. In Big Flats, Democrat Dan Lloyd and Republican John Markle had tied in the race for Assessor. The town’s two soldier voters won Lloyd the election. Chemung County’s soldier voters also voted overwhelmingly in favor of the amendment for women’s suffrage with 76 ballots in favor and 16 opposed. The ballot initiative still failed in Chemung County by 798 votes, but points for effort or at least feminism.

 

Alderman George A. Douglas, Elmira's 10th Ward

In 1919, a ballot initiative for civilian absentee voting was passed. Starting in 1920, voters who knew they would be out of town on election day owing to duty, business, or occupation could cast their vote by mail. Those permitted to vote absentee were subsequently expanded to include voters out of town for any reason as was as those too ill or infirm to make it to the polls; those caring for someone who is sick or physically disabled; residents or patients of a Veterans Health Administration Hospitals; people in jail awaiting trial; and people in jail for convictions other than felonies. Today, every state in the country has absentee ballots and several western states vote entirely by mail.

Although some have argued that absentee voting grants Democrats an advantage, a recent study by Stanford University showed that the party affiliations of absentee voters do not differ significantly from other voters in their states. Despite certain claims about fraud and abuse, voting by mail is actually quite safe. A study by the Washington Post found that, in 20 years and 250 million mail-in votes, there have been only 143 criminal convictions related to fraudulent absentee ballots.

If you are a resident of New York State and need to apply for an absentee ballot, you have until October 27 to request one from your local board of elections. Once you’ve filled your ballot out, you have until November 3^rd to either mail it or drop it off at the board of elections or any polling site. Remember to vote in this and every election.

NOTE: THIS BLOG WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2020 AND THE GENERAL ELECTION DATE FOR 2024 IS NOVEMBER 5TH.

The Woman Candidate: Chemung County’s First Female Politicians

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

 

The other day, our curator Erin Doane commented how she always liked the photograph below, which depicts the 1920-1921 Chemung County Board of Supervisors. 

We chatted about it, wondering who the lone woman in the group was. Since this photo was taken just a couple of years after women got the vote, we wondered if she might be the first elected woman in Chemung County politics. I took on the task of tracking her down and I learned that her name was Marie Carr Fraser. Carr Fraser’s own history is interesting and is outlined below, but she was actually just one of several local women who sought to exercise their new political rights by running for office. 

Minnie Clark was Chemung County’s pioneer female politician. In 1911, years before women won the vote in New York, Clark’s name was submitted on a certificate of nomination for the Socialist ticket for supervisor of Elmira’s tenth ward. The nomination proved a “puzzler” for the election commissioners, so they called in County Attorney Thurston. Thurston told Clark that she would not be able to serve even if she was elected. According to his interpretation of the law, “only an ‘elector’ can be elected to office, and the law says that an ‘elector’ must be a member of the male sex.” With this legal blow, Clark’s name was removed from the nomination.

Headline from Elmira Star-Gazette, 7/30/1918

That wasn’t Clark’s last attempt to get into politics. After the successful New York suffrage campaign, Clark was the first Chemung County woman to enroll in a political party. She registered as a Socialist. By mid-June 1918, there were 1,411 Elmira women registered to vote. She also was credited as the first woman to run for office in the county (this wasn’t taking into account her failed 1911 nomination). In 1918, she ran on the Socialist ticket for Chemung County Sheriff.  She never had any real shot at winning, but at least the process wasn’t a financial drain for her; she claimed she spent only $1 on her campaign.

Marie Carr Fraser was an 1895 graduate of Elmira College and was a well-known soprano and voice teacher who gave countless local performances. She was a widowed mother of a young daughter and was very active in the community.

Marie Carr Fraser

In July 1919, Democrats in Elmira’s seventh ward nominated Marie Carr Fraser as their candidate for the upcoming election to represent the ward on the Chemung County Board of Supervisors. Carr Fraser was a Prohibitionist, and her nomination was seen as a way to siphon voters who felt strongly about that issue. 

Carr Fraser ran against Republican Nelson Powell. Each candidate, regardless of party, sought the Prohibition ticket nomination, showing how significant the “dry” issue was in that election. In the September primaries, Carr Fraser won the Prohibition endorsement over Powell, despite the fact that historically, the city’s Prohibitionists had voted Republican.

Carr Fraser wasn’t the only woman in the supervisor race that year. Jane W. Gillett, on the Prohibitionist ticket, and Mary Painton, on the Democratic ticket, opposed incumbent Dana L. Smith in the ninth ward. When the election results were in, Carr Fraser won, earning the distinction of being the first woman ever elected as a member of the Chemung County Board of Supervisors. Gillett and Painton both lost their bids in the ninth ward. Carr Fraser took her seat on the Board and was soon named to the Committee for County Home Improvements. 

Coming off her two-year term as supervisor, Carr Fraser ran for Chemung County Clerk on the Democratic ticket. Her campaign ads, pictured below, highlighted her role as a mother.

She opposed Asaph B. Hall, the Republican candidate, and Robert Weaver, the Socialist candidate. Hall, a popular young World War I veteran, was a tough opponent (Hall also later served as the president of the Chemung County Historical Society). When the election was over, Carr Fraser lost to Hall. Hall secured 14, 177 votes to her 9,727. Weaver came in a distant third, with 304 votes.

This Asaph Hall campaign ad, 1923, provides some contrast to Carr Fraser's. His is focused far more on his accomplishments while hers are mostly about her role as a mother. This is particularly interesting since by this point, she had held elected office while he never had.

Clark and Carr Fraser weren’t the only early female candidates. Decades before, in 1892, Myra L. Daggett made “a lively canvas for office” for the school commissionership of school district No. 2. Mrs. George Pickering lost the election for that same post in 1920, in part due to rumors that she was a Socialist. She denied any affiliation with that party.  In 1919, May Stewart ran for Alderman in Elmira’s first ward, but lost to Fred West. Celia O. Hoke, won the most votes of any candidate in the 1925 primaries in her reelection campaign for the position of County Superintendent of the Poor. These women were just some of the pioneers who paved the way for more Chemung County women to seek elected office in the ensuing decades.