Memoir of an election crusader
The day the vote-buying stopped In 1976, the fixers finally got tired of swapping cash and whiskey for votes in Searcy County. BY TOM GLAZE
Tom Glaze: An eyewitness to voting history.
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his week, the Times is pleased to run an excerpt from retired Supreme Court Justice Tom Glaze’s new book from the University of Arkansas Press, “Waiting for the Cemetery Vote.” It’s a memoir that focuses on Glaze’s long work to end election fraud in Arkansas. Times’ columnist Ernest Dumas collaborated with Glaze in the writing of the book. And the book is sprinkled liberally with the work of the late George Fisher, who became the Times’ editorial cartoonist after the death of the Arkansas Gazette. No book on Arkansas election fraud would be complete without tales from Conway County, where the legendary Sheriff Marlin Hawkins raised election chicanery almost to an art form, if of the dark political arts. And Glaze was in the thick of that sometimes violent battle. But it also includes a rousing account of 19th century vote fraud, to set the stage for what was to come. As the UA Press catalogue notes: “Glaze describes the manipulation of absentee ballots and poll-tax receipts; votes cast by the dead, children, and animals; forgeries of ballots from nursing homes; and threats to body or livelihood made to anyone who would dare question these activities or monitor elections. Deceptive practices used to control election results were disturbingly brazen in the gubernatorial elections in the 1960s and were especially egregious in Conway and Searcy Counties in the 1970s and in special elections for the state Senate in Faulkner, Conway, and Van Buren Counties. “A clean-election movement began in the early 1970s, led not by party or political leaders but by individual citizens. These vigilant and courageous Arkansans undertook to do what their public institutions persistently failed to: insure that elections for public office were honest and that the will of the people was scrupulously obliged.” Glaze, who served 22 years on the Supreme Court, closes on a somewhat down note, with accounts of modern-day voting problems and political corruption that reached into the court system during his Supreme Court days. But there’s little doubt that things have improved from many situations Glaze observed, including in our excerpt, the open buying of votes in Searcy County. There it was a bipartisan pastime. The paperback is now in bookstores. It costs $19.95.
10 JUNE 29, 2011 • ARKANSAS TIMES
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few weeks after the 1976 Democratic as he was, or else they were distrustful of a young Little runoff in Conway County, I received a Rock lawyer who wanted them to put down on paper call from Rex Elliott of Marshall, who how they had for years violated the law. None of them said he was active on the Searcy County would own up to ever paying for a vote or taking money Republican Committee. He had followed the Conway or whiskey for their votes or knowing anyone who did. I County battles in the newspapers and he thought electold Rex that it was pointless to file a voting-fraud suit if tion conduct in his county merited as much attention as no one was willing to testify that they had brokered votes Conway County’s. He wondered if The Election Law Inbecause I was quite sure that no one on the other side, stitute could undertake the same legal action at Marshall whom we would name in the suit, would admit it. Withthat produced stunning results in Morrilton. He described out a proffer of proof, no judge was going to entertain the the vote-buying system and admitted that he and the Recomplaint or our petition for a restraining order. A few publican leadership as well as Democrats had bribed votdays later, Rex showed up at my office in Little Rock ers for years. They were tired of it and Rex thought most with two longtime Republican election workers, John Eapeople wanted to have honest elections as long as everyton and Olas Taylor, who were willing to tell their stories one else was made to live by the rules, too. He gave me for the record. I got a court reporter and we recorded the the names of a number of people who would tell about depositions of all three men. Rex supplied a list of dozthe vote buying and participate in ens of people whom he personally a lawsuit if I would bring one like had paid for their votes during the the Conway County suit. I drove years he was running for sheriff, up to Marshall to meet him and or running the vote-buying operahis wife, Fern, and the people who tion for the Republicans: people were ready to blow the lid off the who distributed cash to voters for vote-buying scheme. him, election judges and clerks Rex was an unlikely maverwho had voted people inside the ick. He was a friendly, easy-going polling place, or observed the votbear of a man, six-foot-four and ing and distributed the tokens. He 275 pounds, who was developidentified Republican candidates ing an ample belly after giving up and workers and their Democratic his twenty-five-year career as a counterparts who pooled money JUDGE GLAZE: The author. long-haul truck driver and taking for the bribes and distributed the up the sedentary life of radio. He payoffs to voters. and Fern had a band in the ’50s that performed country Taylor, who had served a couple of terms as the and western and gospel music around the country. Rex county treasurer in the late 1950s, and Eaton gave simiplayed guitar and bass and sang. Sometimes he played lar accounts. They told not only about vote buying but with Wayne Raney, the harmonica legend from Wolf all sorts of illegal acts. Although the voting age was then Bayou north of Heber Springs. Raney performed on 21, Eaton said he started voting when he was 16 and XERF, the big Clear Channel station at Del Rio, Texas, that later, when he became an election judge, he and the as Wayne Raney and the Delmore Brothers and popuother officials allowed anyone who showed up to vote larized “A Fast Train Through Arkansas” and “The Del whether they were of age, had a poll tax or, later, had Rio Boogie.” Raney was impressed with Elliott’s richeven registered to vote. All the ballots were tossed into timbred voice and gift for easy gab and kept telling him the ballot box and counted. It didn’t matter. No one ever to get into radio because he had known far less talented double-checked the registration affidavits to see if the men who made it big. Elliott took his advice. He convertpeople who signed at the polls matched the number of ed the garage that housed his trucks into a radio station, votes cast. No one, Democrat or Republican, ever blew of which he was the owner, manager and chief on-air the whistle on the other side. voice. He also got into politics, although without much Rex said that the Republican candidates typically personal success. He lost two races for sheriff. would raise $20,000 to $30,000 among them to pay Rex’s friends did not seem as disquieted by the fraud voters and the Democrats usually raised about the same