Talk:1927 Liberian general election

A fact from 1927 Liberian general election appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 15 December 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the 1927 presidential election in Liberia made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the most fraudulent ever?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/December.

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Did King 'win' 243,000, or 24,000? There seems to be a lot of evidence that 24,000 was in fact the correct figure. -143.234.1.111 (talk) 12:24, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually scratch that, 243,000 seems the correct figure. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cTwXDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT50&lpg=PT50&dq=liberia+elections+1931&source=bl&ots=VBPfGX6ijU&sig=EMf07RnqpO0DgRIOP2VgQ6zQ3Vw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_zoWo6r_UAhUDPBoKHVSgDRsQ6AEIVTAI#v=onepage&q=liberia%20elections%201931&f=false -143.234.1.111 (talk) 12:33, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Number of votes

According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 10 May 1927:^[1]

Charles D. B. King has just been elected President for the time, beating T. R. Faulkner, a former American negro, by 60,000.

The currently represented margin of 231,000 (171,000 off from the contemporary number) comes from the commission head "recalling" them in 2004, 77 years after the fact. In a book compiling works by the journalist George Schuyler, the number mentioned is 243,000.^[2] Is there any more direct source for the number of votes King is supposed to have received?

References

^ "The Third Term—In Liberia". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 10 May 1927. p. 8. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
^ Schuyler, George (2001). Leak, Jeffrey B. (ed.). Rac(e)ing to the Right: Selected Essays of George S. Schuyler. University of Tennessee Press. p. 28. ISBN 9781572331181. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2023 – via Google Books.

IceWelder [✉] 11:10, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Per Charles S. Johnson's Bitter Canaan pp. 149-150 (written 1930, revised 1948, published 1987):

The election officers printed 250,000 ballots, over forty times the number of voters and more than enough for the entire hinterland population, and these were distributed on the streets in large bundles...The returns showed 9,000 votes for Faulkner and 235,000 for King. In Bassa Country, for example, where there were not more than 3,000 legal voters, 32,000 names were registered and 72,000 voted. The case was protested in court...When the legislature was compelled to get the ballot boxes from the State Department for a recount, they found stacks of ballots unfolded and even uncut. They ordered them burned at once. The president entered his third term, and the commissioner of elections was sent to prison for the illegal registering of voters. No satisfactory explanation was ever made of the figures.

I guess I probably wouldn't put much stock in whatever wire was sent to the Eagle; it was also clearly fabricated, but not considered official. Perhaps court records have survived in some form? That may be the likeliest place to find whatever the official tally was. Star Garnet (talk) 15:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have also seen some sources stating King received 24,000 votes (not 240,000), but figures around 240,000 (particularly 243,000) seem to be the most common. Interestingly Joseph Saye Guannu's A Short History of the First Liberian Republic gives some actual figures – 229,527 for King and 8,992 for Faulkner (p45), but these do not seem to be repeated in any other publication available online from what I can see. Number 5 7 19:08, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I've found some more sources with those exact figures, including this journal. Number 5 7 20:33, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good stuff. I wanted to look these numbers up on Newspapers.com but the Wikipedia Library proxy seems down right now. When I was still looking into this a few days ago, I found this 1929 article that first mentions that "250,000, more or less" votes were officially cast. This was then expanded on in 1931:

Although only property owners enjoy the right of franchise in Liberia and not over 15,000 persons were qualified as electors, King received 243,000 votes while Faulker got but 9000! King's aide-de-camp alone delivered 100,000 votes from the interior.

I do wonder why sources oscillate between 243,000, 240,000, 235,000, and 229,527 votes for King, as well as the original 60,000 margin. How should we handle this? Use the most accuracte number and state the rest in an efn-note? IceWelder [✉] 16:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately it's all too common that sources give significantly difference results for elections... However, I would imagine a source that has exact numbers may be more likely to be reliable than heavily rounded ones? Cheers, Number 5 7 21:10, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] "The Third Term—In Liberia". Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 10 May 1927. p. 8. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2023 – via Newspapers.com.

[2] Schuyler, George (2001). Leak, Jeffrey B. (ed.). Rac(e)ing to the Right: Selected Essays of George S. Schuyler. University of Tennessee Press. p. 28. ISBN 9781572331181. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2023 – via Google Books.

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