It was 1948 Texas in Democratic politics. In a Sentate run-off election Coke Stevenson led LBJ at midnight by 2,119 votes out of 939,468 counted. Several days later Stevenson was declared the winner. Then, six days after the election, a funny thing happened: 203 votes turned up in Box 13 from the primarily Hispanic town of Alice, Texas. Even funnier: 202 of those votes were for Lyndon Johnson. The Stevenson campaign smelled a rat when it was discovered that the votes had been cast at the last minute and in alphabetical order. Charges of election fraud ensued, and the disputed...
