Future US President At Heart of "Box 13 Scandal"

President Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th President of the United States. He served in this position following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was also directly involved in one of the most blatant cases of voter fraud in the history of the country - the "Box 13 Scandal".

This scandal very likely altered the course of history - if Johnson lost the runoff to former Governor Coke Stevenson in 1948, there is virtually zero chance that he would ever become the Vice President and President of the United States.

The race for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat in Texas was extremely close, with Johnson and Stevenson going to a runoff to determine the winner.

After the runoff, Coke Stevenson seemed to have secured an extremely close victory, winning by just a handful of votes.

Six days after the vote had ended, 202 extra votes were mysteriously added in Precinct 13 of Jim Wells County.

Of these 202 votes, 200 were for Lyndon B. Johnson, and just 2 were for Coke Stevenson - an extremely unlikely division of votes, given how close the vote was.

After adding in these 202 votes, Johnson was declared the winner by just 87 votes after a week-long recount.

Stevenson and his team smelled a rat and the 202 votes were examined.

To start, these votes were added at the end of the voter rolls, and they were added in alphabetical order - unusual, as the votes were added in order of when they walked in to vote.

On top of that, all 202 of the votes were added in the same handwriting.

Some of the people who were included in the list of the 202 votes said that they hadn't actually voted.

Some of the people who did vote said that they voted right at the end of the day, and that there was nobody behind them in line, even though there were names behind them on the list.

It is alleged that Johnson had conspired with George Parr, a Democratic Party leader in Texas, to steal the vote via falsified vote totals.

The judge who had certified the allegedly fraudulent votes, Judge Luis Salas, later admitted in a 1977 interview that Parr had ordered the 202 fraudulent votes to be added to Precinct 13 - aka "Box 13". Salas said that he had watched as the votes had been added to the sheet, but decided to certify them anyways.

Stevenson obviously challenged the results, and the case went all the way to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that jurisdiction for naming a nominee rested with the party and not the federal government. The Texas Democratic Party had named Johnson the winner, and that was that.

Johnson went on to easily defeat Republican Jack Porter for the Senate seat in Texas, and this would lead to Johnson's long career in Washington.

People who are familiar with the case largely agree that the 202 votes were almost completely fraudulent, and that there were other instances of blatant vote fraud that took place in other counties due the 1948 runoff, all of which was to the benefit of the future President of the United States.

Filed under: General Knowledge