====================== October 6 6 “ 7 8 “ 8 379 “ 9 668 “ 10 717 “ 12 723 “ 13 901 “ 14 523 “ 15 857 “ 16 721 “ 17 633 “ 19 955 “ 20 944 “ 21 773 “ 22 675 “ 23 587 ---------------------- Total 10,070 ====================== The significance of these great totals of applications for naturalization within a few days before election appears in Mr. Davenport’s summary of the behavior of the judges:[11] But the essential aid rendered by these judges need not be further detailed. It was mainly comprised of one or more of the following derelictions of duty: I. Hasty and incomplete examination of applicants and witnesses. II. Total neglect at times to examine the one class or the other. III. Through negligence, imposition, which might easily have been guarded against, or direct complicity, the issue of certificates in the names of persons who never appeared in Court, applied therefor, produced a witness, or took an oath. IV. Similar issue of certificates to applicants, persons of assumed or fictitious names and others, upon the oath of residence and moral character of persons of assumed and fictitious names, or of known criminals and persons of immoral character. V. Similar issue of certificates upon “minor applications” when the persons to whom such certificates issued were known, or could readily have been ascertained to be, unentitled thereto on such applications. VI. Total neglect or refusal to commit known disreputable persons and others whose business it was for pecuniary or other consideration to act as witnesses, and who in such capacity repeatedly appeared before them. VII. The conducting of naturalization proceedings in a secret manner, by causing citizens and others to be denied admission to the court-room, or ejected therefrom when observed. The Judiciary Committee of the New York State Assembly, in a report upon the first notorious election frauds made to that House of the state legislature thirty years before, or on April 6, 1838, already had registered the fact that this was no post-war state of affairs, and depicted the situation of which the frauds of 1868 were only one year’s fruit: Men vote who do not reside in the ward, often not in the state; aliens are frequently brought to the polls and their vote imposed upon the inspectors, although many of them have not been a week in the country; and voters are not infrequently taken from poll to poll, voting in three or four different wards at the same election. These are the frauds constantly practiced at our elections, to the disgrace of the state, and to the manifest wrong of the country.