Great Conspiracies, Stealing Seats, and Anarchy: Senatorial Elections in Disputed States, 1892–1893

Abstract While scholars are revitalizing political history, they continue to neglect the formal yet dynamic institutional framework that shaped not merely the traditional subjects of election campaigns and governance but also newer concerns dealing with political participation, representation, power, legitimacy, and conflict. This article focuses on the 1893 senatorial elections in the six states where neither major party held the legislative majority on joint ballot necessary to elect a U.S. senator. This fraught situation derived from the success of the new Populist party and threatened the customary Republican control of both state politics and the U.S. Senate. By examining the previously overlooked actions and interactions of election and canvassing boards, state courts, and party committees with electoral rules, judicial norms, and legislative procedures after the general election of 1892, this article demonstrates that election outcomes were often contingent upon factors other than electoral mobilization, great issues, and popular opinion. Partisanship and the search for power produced “conspiracies” that corrupted basic electoral institutions, subverted voting results, denied rightful representation, violated democratic norms and practices, and provoked popular unrest.