On September 2, 1948, Lyndon Baines Johnson ran in the Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Texas Governor Coke Stevenson.
Governor Coke Stevenson was more popular and would have won, but there were notorious ballot irregularities to steal the election.
Mysteriously, a box of uncounted ballots was “discovered” in the south Texas town of Alice in Jim Wells County, Precinct 13.
Confusion reigned in Texas and by the end of the week, LBJ won by 87 votes. Both sides accused the other of voter fraud.
The FBI, Postal Department and other agencies investigated.
Piecing together the details, the story emerged that during the tabulation period, LBJ’s campaign manager, John B. Connally, traveled to Alice, Texas, in Jim Wells County.
George Parr – The Duke of Duval, the wealthy “political boss” of Jim Wells County and neighboring Duval County, gave John Connally access to be present when the ballots were “counted” and the returns amended.
George Parr later committed suicide.
When the dust settled, the newly recounted ballots showed 202 additional voters, some of whom were deceased and buried in the local cemetery or were absent from the county on election day.
These voters “lined up” in alphabetical order at the last minute, signed in the same blue ink in the same handwriting and all cast their ballots for LBJ.
The New York Times published an article July 30, 1977, titled “Ex-Official Says He Stole 1948 Election for Johnson”:
“The disclosure was made by Luis Salas, who was the election judge for Jim Well’s County’s Box 13, which produced just enough votes in the 1948 Texas Democratic primary runoff to give Mr. Johnson the party’s nomination for the United States Senate …
‘Johnson did not win that election – it was stolen for him and I know exactly how it was done,’ said Mr. Salas, now a lean, white-haired 76 year old …
… George B. Parr, the South Texas political leader whom Mr. Salas served for a decade, shot and killed himself in April of 1975. Mr. Johnson is dead and so is his opponent … Mr. Salas said he decided to break his silence in quest for ‘peace of mind’ … ‘I was just going along with my party’ …
… He said Mr. Parr ordered that 200-odd votes be added to Mr. Johnson’s total from Box 13.
Mr. Salas said he had seen the fraudulent votes added in alphabetical order and had them certified then as authentic on order from Mr. Parr …
… Parr was the Godfather … He … could tell any election judge: ‘give us 80 percent of the vote, and the other guy 20 percent.’ We had it made in every election …”
The New York Times article continued:
“The Associated Press interviewed … a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, T. Keilis Dibrell … He confirmed Mr. Salas’ statement that ‘the last 200 votes had been in alphabetical order’ …
Mr. Dibrell said ‘Also, the last 202 names were made with the same colored ink, and in the same handwriting, whereas the earlier names in the poll list were written by different individuals and in different color inks.’
The final statewide count, including the Box 13 votes, gave Mr. Johnson an 87 vote margin … earning him the tongue-in-cheek nickname ‘Landslide Lyndon.'”
The Democrat Central Committee was deadlocked 28 to 28 on whether or not to certify the questionable election results.
John Connally persuaded Frank W. Mayborn, publisher of the Temple Daily Telegram, to cut short a business trip in Nashville, Tennessee, and return to cast the deciding Committee vote to certify the election results.
Coke Stevenson took LBJ to court and on September, 24, 1948, and won.
Judge T. Whitfield Davidson ordered LBJ’s name to be removed from the general election ballot.
LBJ turned for help to Washington attorney and former FDR appointee Abe Fortas.
Abe Fortas persuaded Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who was also appointed by FDR, to intervene.
On September 28, 1948, Justice Black overturned the lower court ruling, letting the decision in the Johnson-Stevenson race rest with the Texas Democrat Central Committee.
In return for his favor, Abe Fortas was nominated in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson to be a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
During LBJ’s term as President, many of the records of his contested 1948 race disappeared.
In 1966, Abe Fortas accepted money from a Wall Street financier investigated for securities violations. Abe Fortas resigned in 1969.
In the Washington Post article, “HOW ‘LANDSLIDE LYNDON’ EARNED HIS NAME,” March 4, 1990, David S. Broder reviewed Robert Caro’s book “The Years of Lyndon Johnson”:
“The slimy creature who stole the 1948 Texas Senate election … Lyndon Johnson … driven by a boundless ambition … his career had been a story of manipulation, deceit and ruthlessness … the morality of the ballot box … in which nothing matters but victory and any maneuver that leads to victory is justified …
… Johnson … stole the victory in the 1948 Senate race … That campaign was an American classic … Johnson battled … a strongly favored opponent to win by the narrowest of margins — the 87-vote victory that earned him the derisive nickname of ‘Landslide Lyndon’…
Johnson went through an equally breathless battle in the state convention and the courts to make his clearly tainted victory stand up.”
In March of 2006, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott posted a column on the Texas State Attorney General’s website, stating:
“Voter fraud is no newcomer to the Lone Star State. Six decades ago, the votes ‘found’ in Jim Wells County’s infamous Ballot Box 13 helped Lyndon Johnson squeak into the U.S. Senate in that 1948 primary.”
WHAT ABOUT VOTER FRAUD?
As America experienced moral decline, there have been increased reports of voter fraud:
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members of one party voting in the other party’s primary to eliminate the most viable candidate;
- same day registration and voting, which makes verification of voter status impossible;
- unsecured mail-in ballots;
- multiple mail-in ballots sent to same voters;
- delaying military ballots being sent out;
- delay in counting military ballots sent back in;
- unmanned ballot drop-off locations;
- stuffing ballot boxes;
- loosing ballots;
- insecure absentee voting;
- tampering with voting machines;
- foreign ownership of voting machine companies.
- refusal to purge voter rolls of dead voters or voters who had moved away, allowing for fraudulent ballots to be cast in their names;
- inaccurate ballot preparation;
- allowing non-citizens to vote;
- orchestrated computer glitches;
- rigging of electronic voting machines;
- deep-state interference, with allegations U.S. Department of Homeland Security hacking into state election systems, which, as expected, they would deny, blaming it on foreign interference (Georgia, U.S. News, 12/18/16; Indiana, The Daily Caller, 2/21/17).
- Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney exposed a deep-state computer hacking “Scorecard” voter fraud superweapon “On the latest episode Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney issues a dire warning to the Trump administration to investigate and shut down ‘Scorecard’ and ‘Hammer’ immediately.” (NOQ Report, 11/2/20).
Other headlines read:
“Racine County Sheriff Refers Criminal Charges Against Five Top Wisconsin Elections Commissioners in Nursing Home Voting Scam” (GP, Nov. 4, 2021)
“More Fraud in New Jersey’s Election Uncovered – Voting Machines Would Not Allow Citizens to Vote Republican Governor Candidate.” (GP Nov. 4, 2021)
“New Jersey Governor Race for Democrat Murphy by 20,000 Votes After He Mysteriously Gained 40,000 Ballots Overnight.” (GP Nov. 4, 2021)
“One Year Ago on Election Night All State Reporting Was Zeroed Out on the Edison Election Reporting System and Then” (GP, Nov. 4, 2021)
“Stunning! On Anniversary of 2020 Election 56% of Voters Now Believe There Was Cheating – Up from April – including 47% of Black Voters.” (GP Nov. 4, 2021)
In an act which perplexed those working for honest elections, Supreme Court Justice Amy Comey Barrett shockingly “recused” herself from cases which would have prevented voter fraud.
“Justice Barrett recuses herself from Pennsylvania voting case” (MSNBC 10/28/2020).
The Heritage Foundation has an entire online database of documented Election Fraud Cases.
Joseph Stalin remarked in 1923 (The Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary by Boris Bazhanov, 2002):
“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
One may ask, would a political party actually participate in voter fraud?
In response, it must be asked, if members of a political party can mentally justify killing innocent unborn babies, even including in their party platform, is there any act they could not justify?
What is voter fraud compared to that?
“Consequentialism” is a political belief that any act, no matter how immoral, is justifiable if the consequence is considered politically advantageous.
Politicians and their operatives, with hardened consciences, can justify any act, including voter fraud, if it helps them get elected because then they can implement their agenda, which they are persuaded is “good.”
Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, considered a father of political science, wrote that in politics, “one must consider the final result” and “politics have no relation with morals.”
Saul Alinsky wrote:
“In war, the end justifies almost any means.”
Psychological or cognitive warfare tactics developed during the Cold War where both KGB and CIA agents, in orchestrating coup d’états, would have media release false polling data prior to a rigged election so that citizens would become demoralized and not challenge the fraudulent results.
If perpetrators of the fraud came under suspicion, the media would be manipulated to cover it up by using a tactic called “psychological projection,” where the guilty party shifts the blame by accusing the innocent party, thus discrediting those exposing the fraud.
Joseph Goebbels, a master at mass manipulation, stated of the Nazi deep-state:
“It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion … Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
He added:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it …
It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
False “experts” are interviewed by the media, as noted in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky:
“The propaganda model also incorporates … ‘experts’ to confirm the official slant on the news … taken for granted by media personnel and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population.”
After two terms as a U.S. Senator from Texas, LBJ became John F. Kennedy’s Vice-President.
Rumors swirled that Kennedy was considering dropping Johnson as his running-mate on the Democrat reelection ticket.
Life Magazine was planning to publish an edition November 24, 1963, with information damaging to LBJ.
Life Magazine was about to break the story linking LBJ with Bobby Baker, LBJ’s advisor, who had been his secretary when Johnson was Senate Majority Leader.
Bobby Baker reputedly arranged sexual favors for Congressmen and Senators in exchange for their votes, essentially acting as that era’s version of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.
Baker organized the “Quorum Club,” where lawmakers could meet ladies, admitting:
“The Quorum Club was a place where a guy wanted to get away, you know, from being at the bar downstairs at the Carroll Arms, where there were too many reporters … It was an easy place for a lobbyist to get together with a Senator, or a Senator’s girlfriend … All had girlfriends. And the Quorum Club was a place that you could be met there and nobody would know about it. It was a social club.“
James Wagenvoord, assistant to Life Magazine’s executive editor, accused the Department of Justice of leaking information to the press:
“Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine, based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major news break piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker (adviser to Johnson accused of bribery and arranging call-girls) …
… On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the 1964 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time.
At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US.
The top management of Time, Inc. was closely allied with the USA’s various intelligence agencies and we were used … by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public …
The LBJ/Baker piece was in the final editing stages and was scheduled to break in the issue of the magazine due out the week of November 24.”
Two days before the article was to be published. the story was preempted by news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Johnson demanded that Jacqueline Kennedy, still in her blood-stained dress, stand next to him to add legitimacy as he swore in aboard Air Force One.
As no Bible could be found on Air Force One, Johnson put his hand upon a Catholic missal that had been upon Kennedy’s desk.
Shortly afterwards, Johnson established the Warren Commission to “investigate” Kennedy’s assassination.
19th century British Statesman Lord Acton once wrote: “Official truth is not actual truth.”
Researchers and historians, such as Aleksandr Fursenko, Tim Naftali, and others, debate whether or not Johnson’s Warren Commission was simply designed as an obfuscation operation for covering up evidence, similar to Robert Mueller’s investigation covering up Hillary Clinton’s private email server and deleted emails.
Many individuals, including Robert Kennedy, Billie Sol Estes and Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis implicated LBJ in JFK’s assassination.
“Jackie Onasis tapes reveal how she believed Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the assassination of her husband, John F. Kennedy.”
During Johnson’s term, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968.
Two days after JFK was shot, LBJ escalated U.S. involvement in war.
An account from ancient Athens, was when Pericles was facing scrutiny for usurping power, he diverted attention away from himself by allowing relations with Sparta to devolved into the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC.
This became an example to later ambitious politicians, as nations always support a strong leaders in time of war.
Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Anne Heche starred in the 1997 film Wag the Dog, where a President was involved in a sexual scandal shortly before an election.
To divert public scrutiny and falling public opinion polls, a spin-doctor and a Hollywood producer were hired to fabricate a war in order to cover up the President’s sex scandal.
Even King David,
after he was involved in a sex scandal with Bathsheba, orchestrated a temporary battlefield loss killing Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to cover up his sin.
Number 32:23 warns: “Be sure your sin will find you out!”
After World War II, the Cold War began.
Through infiltration and military conquest, dozens of countries aligned as satellites of Socialist/Communist dictatorships:
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Angola
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Benin
- Bulgaria
- Cambodia
- China
- Cuba
- Congo-Brazzaville
- Czechoslovakia
- East Germany
- Egypt
- Estonia
- Ethiopia
- Georgia
- Hungary
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lithuania
- Moldova
- Mongolia
- Mozambique
- Nicaragua
- North Korea
- Poland
- Romania
- Russia
- Somalia
- South Yemen
- Syria
- Tajikistan
- Tibet
- Turkmenistan
- Ukraine
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
- Yugoslavia
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident took place August 2, 1964, after which the U.S. directly engaged in stopping the spread of communism by entering the Vietnam War.
U.S. forces inflicted over a million enemy fatalities, yet involvement by politicians thwarted victory.
North Vietnamese colonel, Bui Tin, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975.
Bui Tin explained how the protests by “anti-war peace demonstrators” was key to the Communist victory:
“Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement …
… Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses …
… We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.”
After the war, Bui Tin became vice chief editor of the Communist Party’s official newspaper in Vietnam, People’s Daily, but he grew disillusioned with Communist corruption and, in 1990, fled to Paris.
In an interview, Bui Tin stated:
“The roots of the Vietnam War – its all-encompassing and underlying nature – lie in a confrontation between two ideological worlds: socialism versus capitalism … totalitarianism versus democracy …
The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.”
Commenting on this dangerous trend is retired Major General Patrick Brady, considered the most decorated living veteran.
A Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Patrick Brady flew over 2,500 combat missions in Vietnam, rescuing over 5,000 wounded.
As told in his book, Dead Men Flying, Brady once rescued 51 wounded in one day, flying 3 different helicopters which were shot up with over 400 holes from enemy fire and explosions.
Major General Patrick Brady wrote, June 4, 2013 (WND.com):
“The greatest danger … the feminization, emasculation and dismantling of our military.
The two most important elements of national survival are the media and the military …
We know the media are failing – God help us if the military does also …
… Let’s begin with Benghazi. It is incomprehensible that any commander, let alone the commander in chief, would go AWOL during a crisis such as Benghazi, but he was …
Unprecedented rates of suicide … Cut benefits to veterans … Quad-sexual military with all the health, readiness and moral issues that come with exalting sodomy … Sexual assault …
Women will be tasked to lead bayonet charges … Billions of defense dollars are unaccounted for … Christianity is under military attack, and Bibles have been burned to appease Muslims …
Just as the way forward for America is a return to the morality and values of the past, so too must the military return to the readiness standards and common sense of the past.”
Many heroic Americans fought with faith and courage.
A first-hand account of the Vietnam War is from Marine Sergeant George Hutchings in his book, Combat Survival-Life Stories from a Purple Heart.
George Hutchings wrote that on October 12, 1967, during Operation Medina, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Division, was ambushed by North Vietnamese in the Hai Lang jungle:
“Thirteen men were killed in front of me and countless more behind me. I was in shock; never had I heard such noise or saw so many dead.
Nevertheless, I returned fire and my M-16 jammed…We had walked into an ambush of an enemy four times our size …”
Pinned down in the jungle on top of a hill, George Hutchings continued:
“We slowly crawled … to see who was alive …
The next morning … the captain ordered me to water detail … I cursed about the order and Corporal Bice said, ‘George, I’ll go for you’ …
… Just after he left, a sniper battle erupted …
By the time our perimeter was cleared, several hours passed, and I went to check on Corporal Bice. I found him – head and boots.
We knew his boots because they bore his signature. He had been hit in the chest with a light anti-tank weapon. My inner voice said, ‘He died for you; Christ died for you …'”
In 1968, George Hutchings was shot three times, bayoneted and left for dead, as he wrote:
“On March 14th I stepped on a pungie stick.
Luckily … it went through the bottom of my boot and out the side …
… March 18th … shot rang from the right rear. I hit the dirt. Was I shot? …
Remembering my training, I didn’t look at the wound, If you look … you might go into shock.
I felt my hip with my hand and it came back bloody … I was better off than the two men who had been directly in front of me. They lay dead …
Corporal Ed Grant … crawled over to me … with a shotgun … ‘If you get overrun, you’ll need this,’ he said …
… Laying there with no cover, a machine gun battle raged just over my helmet … ‘Oh God, get me out of here and I’ll live for you the rest of my life.'”
More than 58,000 American troops who died in the war.
The Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated NOVEMBER 13, 1982, to honor them.
George Hutchings said:
“On that wall is the name of Corporal Quinton Bice, who was hit in the chest with a rocket while running a patrol in my place.
A Christian, Corporal Bice had shared the Gospel with me, but I didn’t understand it till he gave his life in my place.”
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Image Credits: The New York Times, “Ex-Official Says He Stole 1948 Election for Johnson, July 31, 1977.
This post originally appeared at https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/landslide-lyndon-democrat-voter-fraud-in-a-1948-senate-race-how-u-s-entered-vietnam-war