This day in history: A neck-and-neck election marked by fraud concerns in Adams County spurred a recount

From 1975: A judge ordered a new election for Adams County commissioners after allegations of vote fraud.

Kenny Foulkes had originally been declared the winner by 37 votes. Yet a recount indicated that Gordon Hays was the winner by 71 votes.

Foulkes then challenged the recount, claiming that ballots had been marked by someone “other than the original voters.”

The judge heard conflicting testimony from handwriting experts. He also discovered that the votes had been placed in padlocked bags in the auditor’s office, yet the padlocks “had the keys attached.”

“A padlock without a key is no padlock at all,” the judge noted.

The judge decided that a new election was the “fairest and best way to clear the atmosphere.”

From 1925: Frank Pope, “a Spokane insurance broker and a cousin of former President Harding,” denied in federal court that he had been offered a $1 million bribe “by a syndicate formed in 1921 to purchase the government’s wartime wooden fleet.”

Pope testified that he had been invited to participate in the syndicate, taking a one-fifth interest, “but that he had never been offered a bribe in any form.” A previous witness had testified that Pope had been offered such a bribe.

This testimony took place in the Chicago trial of Charles R. Forbes, a former Spokane man and former director of the federal Veteran’s Bureau. Forbes was charged with conspiracy to defraud the government through hospital contracts.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1941: 6,000 Jews are murdered in a pogrom in Romania.