Election days across America were once jubilant holidays, with businesses closing and politicians handing out “fire water” and whale cake — a loaf of sweet bread with raisins, figs and spices — to buy votes. Newspapers dating back to the 18th century paint an amorphous picture — like ghosts or memories of past elections — filled with lively voting parades to local courthouses, drinking and brawling, processional drums and dancing.

In colonial America, voters—primarily only landowning Protestant white men—

voted “viva voce” or by voice vote

for all to hear, according to History.com.

Even George Washington,

America’s first president, pleaded with potential voters

at his Mount Vernon estate with 47 gallons of beer, 35 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of cider, nearly 4 gallons of brandy, and 70 gallons of rum punch in 1758. He ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses, the nation’s first democratically-elected legislature in the British American colonies , according to History.com.

He won the election with 310 votes.

Contributed / US Library of Congress

In 1857, Democrats rallied voters with promises of payment to the polls like “cattle to the market,” reported St. Paul Weekly Minnesotan. Before 1880, accusations of voter fraud and voter buying filled almost every political campaign published in newspapers.

Illegal voting in Minneapolis was organized by zealous politicians fighting petitions to hire additional law enforcement. “It is, in fact, the only way in which illegal voting can be effectually suppressed. To make these arrests a large number of special deputies are required on election day,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in 1880.

Court cases that same year reported that votes were bought for $20, the equivalent of $618 today. A total of 304 voter fraud charges from around the Twin Cities, including the cases of Louis N. Gaynor, Peter Engberg, John Smith, Peter Quady, and many more, were brought before Congress in 1880. Many testified that they had sold their votes for $20 to $35, according to St. Paul Globe.

And many refused to name their benefactors.

Contributed / US Library of Congress

That same year in North Dakota, the Bismarck Tribune reminded readers that any threats or bribes used to influence elections could be subject to a $1,000 fine.

Companies, such as the old Minnesota Iron Company in the mid-1800s, required their employees to present their ballots, already filled out, with a small red card admitting that they “do not read and write English” and that they wished to vote for it straight Republican ticket, according to the 1924 Duluth Rip-Saw.

On Election Day 1886, North Dakota newspapers reported that stump speeches were made by speakers in English, German, and Scandinavian languages ​​in Cooperstown, North Dakota.

“Apples were eaten, cigars smoked and some ‘fire water’ down under the hill in exchange for votes,” the Cooperstown Courier reported on November 5, 1886.

The hilarity and chaos of Election Day ended in Minnesota a year later. Soon after, North Dakota followed suit.

In 1887, Minnesota passed laws where towns with populations over 12,000 could not pass out or sell liquor near polling places. Electoral judges and officials were also no longer allowed to drink. A conviction carried a $100 fine or up to 60 days in jail, according to St. Paul Globe and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Contributed / US Library of Congress

Good manners and privacy behind a voting curtain came with the Australian ballot, more commonly known as the secret ballot. Soon after the 1884 presidential election, and ending with Kentucky in 1891, the government began rolling out the secret ballot, which quickly became the preferred method, according to newspaper reports.

“The Australian ballot is a secret ballot, and we have adopted it in this country to protect American citizens in the right to vote according to conscience, without impunity or persecution,” reported St. Paul Globe 1896.

“Without a secret ballot, the voter would be exposed to coercive influence from the landlord, creditor and employer. Prior to the adoption of the Australian system, such coercive influences were not uncommon,” reported the Duluth Rip-Saw in 1924.

For many politicians in the late 1800s, the secret ballot—no longer awarded by political parties but by the government—carried a hidden agenda. The Civil War emancipated black slaves and gave them the right to vote of all free men, but in 1870, 11 percent of white men and 80 percent of black men could not read or write, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Contributed / US Library of Congress

“State legislatures’ motives for adopting the new system varied, but in the South the secret ballot was rife with disenfranchisement and temptation. Literacy tests were an obvious attempt to eliminate black and poor voters, but it was also a written, printed Australian secret ballot that had to be read.

Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities

reported.

In 1892, the Arkansas Democratic Party’s campaign song was called “The Australian Ballot,” and it was sung to the tune of “Bonnie Blue Flag,” a Confederate marching song.

One stanza’s text was disturbing:

“The Australian ballot is a charm,

It makes them think and scratch,

And when a nigger gets a ballot,

He has really got his match…”

Public school education began to improve literacy, and by 1900 only 6 percent of white males and 45 percent of black males were illiterate, according to a 2021 University of Michigan research paper.

After a 70-year struggle,

women’s suffrage became law

in 1920. And while the Fargo-Moorhead area had a combined population of 27,681, the “sud-busting, salt-of-the-earth women of the Northern Plains and western United States were among the first to fight for the right to vote,” according to The Forum.

In Fargo, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union met at the old depot, where the Fargo Park District offices used to be.

Contributed / Cass County Human Services Coordinating Council

Although women gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920, Native American women did not gain the same right until four years later. Chinese female immigrants had to wait until 1943, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 increased opportunities for African-American women to vote, according to The Forum.

While the secret ballot quickly became the preferred voting method, polling stations began to report a decline in turnout, which was different from the older more turbulent times when almost everyone went to the polls.

“Many of the voters who were no longer paid to vote responded by abstaining,” according to economist Jac. C. Heckelman, who also reported it

about 75% of states saw a decrease of 8.2%

in turnout immediately after secret ballots became law.

Not all politicians liked the closed vote. In 1919, petitions for signatures were circulated throughout North Dakota to destroy the secret ballot with Bill 60 to “throw the election wide open to unscrupulous politicians and buffoons,” according to the Weekly Times-Record.

Contributed / US Library of Congress

“The moment you remove the element of secrecy from the vote, you make it possible to put a market price on votes,” the Weekly Times-Record reported.

Winter weather in North Dakota has also been a temporary problem with voter turnout. In 1996, a “miserable” and “howling” blizzard prevented many North Dakotans from casting their ballots on Election Day, even “with the convenience of an easily accessible mail-in ballot,” according to the Bismarck Tribune.

Today, the secret ballot is considered a “cornerstone of modern democracy” and ended the Gilded Age while opening the doors to the Progressive Era, which reduced electoral violence, intimidation and bribery, according to the Congressional Research Institute.