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1876.] OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES. 1285
disorders on the day of election, shown in evidence, do not
constitute such a general condition of tumult and not as
would prevent a free expression of the popular will at the
ballot box. It is also apparent that the rejection of the vote
in the precincts characterized by disorder, would have no
effect on the result of the election.
It is also apparent, that if the city had been as free from
disorder as on the day of the municipal election, and the
Reform vote at the November election had reached 25,000.
the result would have been the same. That their full vote
was polled at the municipal election without any obstacle no
one has ever questioned.
Your Committee will only briefly allude to the charges of
fraudulent voting and stuffing of ballot-boxes by persons in
the interest of the returned members. Clearly the election
cannot be set aside because of fraudulent voting at this or
that precinct. The rules of law require a contestant, to prove
a ballot to have been illegally received, upon which it will
be rejected from the count, but its receipt can have no other
or further consequence. The proof of the contestants is
meagre in the extreme. There is almost no pr«ot of the re-
ceipt by the judges of ballots from persons not legally enti-
tled to vote.
In certain precincts in the three districts, discrepancies
exist between the number of votes recorded on the clerks
lists, and the number returned by the judges, this is, of
course, of no weight as evidence, since no one can tell wheth-
er the excess consisted of Democratic or Reform votes. It is
again urged that very many of the tickets in the ballot
boxes were narrower than other tickets, and that very many
more were found to have gotten in the ballot boxes unfolded.
It is argued that these narrow tickets and unfolded tickets
are necessarily fraudulent votes. Were they all Democratic
tickets, and had it been shown by proof that the number of
these tickets so found corresponded with the excess of the
votes in the ballot box over the votes recorded by the clerks,
the conjectural argument would have a certain plausibility,
but the attempt thus to fix a suspicion on the conduct of the
judges is futile, in view of the proof that these pudden tick-
ets, as they are termed, were voted by many persons who
testified to having voted them, and there is no correspond-
ence whatever shown by the proofs presented to the Commit-
tee between the number of such tickets and the difference be-
tween the tickets in the ballot boxes and the names recorded
on the clerks lists as having voted.
Bat if we could force ourselves to the conclusion that all of
these narrow, tissue paper, or unfolded tickets must be re-
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