Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

polls in a particular city and he's still in Congress. He's feeble now and the Tribune said
the other day that he oughtn't to be running., but he's running for his twentieth term.
Q: Well. (chuckles)
A: So he must know what he's doing.
Q: Well did you pick up on that? Did you then go to the poll places?
A: Well in my campaign as an alderman, I went to all the precincts. I always would bring
them in a lunch. Hell, I'd even done that out here when I was a precinct committeeman
in Godfrey.
Q: Oh is that right?
A: You'd bring them up a lunch. You know, not all the time, but sometimes you'd go get
them goodies. Most of the time you'd do it. But talking about what I done election day,
election night, why, I went down to the Telegraph and just watched the returns come
in. They'd let you. They go to the city hall now, at that time they went to the
Telegraph. You wouldn't be the only guy there, the place would he full and . . .
Q: Of both Republicans and Democrats?
A: Oh yes, everybody, yes. A lot of people would go to the courthouse. I never was in the
habit of going to the courthouse. I just went down to the Telegraph and when I left I walked
home that night. Young Paul Cox - he's not young anymore, he's my age. He still lives
in Upper Alton where he did, up on College Avenue and Seminary - he wanted to walk
with me home. And it was going to be close, you could tell that, Vaughn and I were neck
and neck, about three hundred votes apart, legislative votes apart. I walked home.
And I had some vacation time coming so you know I was off. I had taken a week off.
Then Burton comes in now. He called me up or I called him up the next day or went to
Edwardsville, and they were canvassing the votes and 1 went up to see him. He says, "I'll
tell you what I'm going to do." Or Eulalia Hotz said it. They ran a total, they'd canvass
the votes you know.
Q: Yes.
A: And of course counting in the General Assembly races with paper ballots, they would
miss some bullets as you'd called them. Somebody might give you - or Mr. Vaughn, might
give him three and it wasn't counted, or they gave Lee Kennedy three and it wasn't counted
as three, it was just counted as a vote and a half.
Q: Yes.
A: Why, it so happened that I had more votes than Mr. Vaughn had because of that particular
difficulty, but when Bond County came in, he went ahead of me. Which is understandable.
So they ran a canvass again, an official canvass. And I came out about five hundred
votes ahead.
Then again I refer to Reed Cutler. He evidently had had some difficulties with Vaughn
before in the house because, hell, there was only sixty Democrats where there was 153
members. There was sixty Democrats, or maybe sixty-fiva, and there was a majority of
Republicans by eighteen or twenty and they sent the election contests to the Election
Committee but they hadn't ever counted the votes again, they just took the canvass. And