GOP's voter fraud 'hysteria' bears 'striking' resemblance to 1880: columnist

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, long at the forefront of efforts to prevent any expansion of voter access in America's second-largest state, is under fire after the state sent law enforcement to search and intimidate Latino activists, including a candidate for state House, as part of an investigation into "ballot harvesting."

History is repeating itself here, wrote Karen Tumulty for The Washington Post. A similar unfounded panic over illegal voting happened in southern Texas in 1880.

"My forebears would have recognized what it is going on. Then and now, officials in Texas employed heavy-handed tactics to intimidate voters, especially immigrants," she wrote.

The story began in 1850, when a group of Polish immigrants from then-Prussian-controlled Silesia fled political instability to start a new life in South Texas.

"From the port of Indianola, they walked more than 150 miles across forbidding prairie," she wrote. "Thirteen families, including that of my great-great-great grandparents Felix and Anna Maria Tudyk, established a settlement 18 miles east of San Antonio. They named it St. Hedwig, after the Catholic patroness of Silesia. Our family’s ties to St. Hedwig remain strong. My grandmother’s funeral Mass was held at Annunciation Catholic Church, which was built by those immigrants, and some of my relatives still worship there."

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In the coming decades, the community fell under suspicion and distrust — partly because they did not understand or willingly support the cause of slavery when Texas fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and went on to do business with Black freedmen in the years after.

Tensions erupted in 1880, when Texas backed Democratic presidential candidate Winfield Hancock, even as Republican James Garfield managed a razor-thin victory nationwide.

"Back then, Texas elections were conducted in the open, not by secret ballot. Everyone knew who had voted for whom. And it’s not hard to imagine that feelings were sore. Local officials decided to take theirs out on five or six of the Silesians, by accusing them of voting illegally" — arguing that they had never become citizens.

While many of the Silesians were pressured into taking guilty pleas, Tumulty wrote, "one of them, Karl Zigmond, showed up in court with his passport, naturalization papers and a voter registration document dated in 1871" — and from there, everything was thrown into chaos.

"A subsequent investigation showed there was indeed some possible fraud going on — likely committed by the local officials who were running the election. Fourteen pages of district court records where the naturalization proceedings for some 300 immigrants were supposed to be recorded turned out to be ... blank. Two successive district clerks blamed each other."

The story here, she concluded, has some important lessons for the unfounded allegations of voter fraud being pushed by Paxton and other allies of former President Donald Trump.

"The integrity of our elections is under threat," wrote Tumulty — however, "as has been the case going far back in our history, some of those most determined to undermine it are the people who claim to be the guardians."