A Fascinating Story on Young George Washington, Election Integrity, and Winning At All Costs

In those days, there were no secret ballot. It came with its own risk and capacity to influence elections, as the father of our country learned with great skill.

I recently finished Ron Chernow’s massive biography of George Washington, Washington: A Life. It is more than 800 pages in length, but I found it to be a fast-moving and fascinating portrayal of the life of one of history’s greatest men. I’ve taken a liking to print books once again and enjoy scribbling notes in the margins and building a personal library as opposed to stashing books on devices that constantly need to be charged, updated, and inevitably swapped out for new technology.

What I’m going to describe today is something I found fascinating when I read it, but nevertheless something I had to put on the backburner because I was busy analyzing the 2024 race and publicly refuting lies, rigged polling, and propaganda. If you’re a reader of this journal, it is a near certainty that you have interest in all things elections, so you’re going to take a little trip back in time to see how simple things were back then, and also how Washington himself played the elections game.

Washington first ran for Virginia’s House of Burgesses at age 23 after emerging as a military hero in the French and Indian War. He had been fronted as a candidate by his friends after his heroics in the Braddock Campaign in July 1755, didn’t put his heart into campaigning, and got thumped in what would turn out to be the only defeat of his political career. In those days, only free white adult males who owned property could vote, and the votes were cast by filing into the Winchester courthouse in colonial Frederick County (for Washington’s race, in any case). The method was viva voce, or by living voice – the voters would approach the election officials’ table one at a time and chose their candidates aloud. Those votes were recorded in a ledger.

There were no machines, no e-pollbooks, no mail-in ballots, and no prolonged periods of early voting or after-hours ballot stuffing. Having no secret ballot created pressure for the voters, but the transparency of the process and the lack of fraudulent voter registration prevented fraud.

Washington got serious about his political career and mounted another run for the House of Burgesses in 1758, and realized he had to get dirty in the trenches if he wanted to win. Instead of annoying advertisements and pandering, Washington approved expenditures for:

· 34 gallons of wine

· 3 pints of brandy

· 13 gallons of beer

· 8 quarts of cider

· 40 gallons of rum punch

The cost was 39 pounds, equivalent to nearly $9,000 in today’s money.

After appealing to voters in a very human way, the next step was to secure local support. Washington’s men, given the lack of ballot secrecy and the certainty of an otherwise neck-and-neck race between Washington, Thomas Bryan Martin, Hugh West, and Thomas Swearingen, had the sheriff identify Washington’s declared supporters and likely backers filed into the line first.

With only 391 total voters, and with so many of the very first voters filing up to the official table to cast a voice vote, a psychological play unfolded to give the appearance of a landslide. Those waiting in line and watching the proceedings most definitely considered it a certainty Washington would secure a seat to the House of Burgesses and joined in on the bandwagon so as to be on good terms with the new official and rising star, who earned 307 votes.

What is the moral of the story? Perhaps secret ballots, while serving the purpose of eliminating pressure, are contradictory to having real transparency in elections. Either way, I found this story about how elections were run before the founding of the country to be fascinating, and Washington’s cunning tactics a major foreshadowing of the grit and intellect it took to pull of the greatest military victory of all time decades later.

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.