Back in 2018, Los Angeles-based journalist and author Sasha Issenberg was reading a history of election fraud cases in America and came across a reference to a Midwestern city largely unfamiliar to him.
A two-paragraph passage summarized the story of political corruption in the early 20th century in Terre Haute, Indiana.
The mayor, Donn Roberts, and more than 100 public officials, Roberts’ lieutenants and political cronies got convicted of election fraud in federal court in the spring of 1915. The historical account described the feds’ roundup of the brazen conspirators as “the largest election-crime dragnet in American history.”
The brief tale piqued Issenberg’s journalistic curiosity.
“I’d never heard of it,” he said Thursday in a phone interview.
If the century-old saga of Terre Haute corruption was unbeknownst to Issenberg — a veteran political observer — then most Americans likely were unaware of it, as well, he figured.
So, his research began. Issenberg studied the case for a few years, including through the pandemic’s isolation. He visited Terre Haute to comb through records and talk with locals twice in 2019, and then returned after the pandemic in 2023 and earlier this year.
His deep dive into historic case has resulted in his story in the current September-October edition of Smithsonian Magazine — “Take Down in Terre Haute: How a Crusading Suffragist Helped Expose a Citywide Conspiracy in 1914, and Set a New Precedent for Fair Elections.”
Issenberg may have more in the works. “I would like to find a way to write a book on this,” said Issenberg, whose latest book is “The Lie Detectives: In Search of a Playbook for Winning Elections in the Disinformation Age,” published this year.
He cites compelling reasons why Terre Haute’s story could become a page-turner in book form. The case involves a citizen-led effort to clean up elections, and their work led to secure voting systems and election procedures throughout the country through the remainder of the 20th century and now into the 21st century. And, the case’s central figures are a bit unlikely.
Actually, then-Mayor Donn Roberts isn’t the dominant figure in Issenberg’s Smithsonian story. Yes, Roberts stood as the primary target of the federal investigation into the web of corruption, which the participants did little to hide. That extensive conspiracy involved recruited “repeaters” voting multiple times; public officeholders benefitting from turning a blind eye to the “wide-open” atmosphere of brothels in Terre Haute’s infamous “red-light district” and political influencing by financiers of liquor sales and production; and bribes paid for votes to keep Roberts and like-minded elected officials in office.
Yet, Issenberg’s story highlights instead those who worked to uncover and curtail the corruption.
Two heroes of that effort were Terre Haute suffragette journalist Stella Courtright Stimson and special prosecutor Joseph Roach, who overcame his own legal troubles — including being pardoned for shooting and killing a gambler, Issenberg reported.
“That the two of them set this in motion was astounding to me,” Issenberg said.
Stimson had connected with other women in Terre Haute for various cultural activities, but also toward the causes of gaining the right to vote for women and temperance. She got elected to the local school board in 1909, even though, as a woman, she couldn’t vote or participate in polling work. Her interest in cleaning up Terre Haute’s vice-filled saloon culture led Stimson — “a church-going mother of four” and wife of Judge Samuel Stimson — to serve on the Indiana Federation of Clubs’ legislative committee, which took her to the Statehouse in Indianapolis.
There, she encountered Roberts, then a Democratic Party candidate for Terre Haute mayor. Roberts sought Stimson’s support. She told him Terre Haute women wanted good schools and courts, and streets free of drunkenness and gambling. Instead of agreeing, Roberts endorsed a continuance of Terre Haute’s “wide-open” saloon culture.
In an article Stimson wrote for the National Civic Review, she said Roberts told her, “A majority of Terre Haute citizens do not want law enforcement. They want all-night and Sunday saloon, the segregated district and gambling.” Segregated, at the time, referred to red-light districts.
Stimson was revulsed by Roberts’ view.
She began an effort to enlist local women — all of whom had no constitutional rights to vote or participate in the electoral process — to monitor the municipal election of 1913, in which Roberts won the mayor’s seat, and the broader midterm election of 1914, when Roberts’ cronies won countywide offices.
As Issenberg reports in Smithsonian, the women’s study and note-taking of the voting — while facing intimidation from male officials — provided evidence that Roach used to investigate the process and convince a grand jury to charge the mayor and four others with creating fraudulent registrations ahead of the 1913 city election. And though Roberts managed to use his political network to derail that particular case against him in May 1914, Stimson remained determined and enlisted local women, once again, to quietly observe and monitor the upcoming November 1914 midterm election, in which Roberts’ machine also had a stake.
Stimson and her team witnessed and methodically documented rampant corrupt practices on Election Day 1914.
One of the most outlandish examples involved a one-legged “repeater” — those hired to vote multiple times. The amputee tried to disguise himself at the different polling stations. He used a peg leg, then a cork leg, left his half-leg stump exposed at another site, added a metal extension, then used crutches and donned eyeglasses on a final stop.
On Christmas Eve, a federal marshal and his deputies fanned out through Terre Haute and arrested more than 100 conspirators, including the mayor. Every defendant was found guilty on every count, on April 6, 1915. Roberts was sentenced to six years in federal prison and a $2,000 fine, but was paroled before completing that sentence. He was also impeached.
Appeals related to the case led to a Supreme Court decision that eventually served as the basis for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Issenberg said the public policies enacted in the wake of the Terre Haute corruption case helped build the safeguards that have protected elections since. And recent baseless claims of voter fraud surrounding former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss do a disservice to the courageous work sparked by Stella Courtright Stimson’s tenacity in rooting out genuine corruption a century ago, Issenberg said.
“One of the great accomplishments over the course of the 20th century is that we cleaned up our elections,” Issenberg said. “What happened in Terre Haute is a huge part of that legacy.”
Corruption was so overt in Terre Haute, back in the 1910s, the local citizens would’ve never believed a cleanup was possible. “People would’ve laughed at you,” Issenberg said.
Rather than Terre Haute hiding from that saga, Issenberg believes Hauteans should focus on the courage shown by Stimson and her female colleagues at a heroic moment in the community’s history.
“These women, at physical risk, stood up and took on the most powerful people where they lived,” Issenberg said.
Terre Haute should remember them, with pride.
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