Lodge Bill

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The Lodge Bill of 1890, also referred to as the Federal Elections Bill or by critics as the Lodge Force Bill, was a proposed bill to ensure the security of elections for U.S. Representatives.

It was drafted and proposed by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and sponsored in the Senate by George Frisbie Hoar with the endorsement of President Benjamin Harrison and all Republicans. The bill provided for the federal regulation of elections to the United States House of Representatives, which had heretofore been regulated by state governments. In particular, the bill would have permitted federal circuit courts (upon a petition by 500 citizens from any district) to appoint federal supervisors for congressional elections. Supervisors would have the power to attend elections, inspect registration lists, verify doubtful voter information, administer oaths to challenged voters, stop illegal immigrants from voting, and certify the vote count.^[1] Perhaps most controversially, the supervisor would have the power to request Deputy United States Marshals to secure elections by force if deemed necessary.

The bill was created primarily to enforce the ability of blacks, predominantly Republican at the time, to vote in the Southern United States, as provided for in the constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment already formally guaranteed that right, but white southern Democrats had passed laws related to voter registration and electoral requirements, such as requiring payment of poll taxes and literacy tests (often waived if the prospective voter's grandfather had been a registered voter, the "grandfather clause"), that effectively prevented blacks from voting. That year Mississippi passed a new constitution that disfranchised most blacks, and other states would soon follow the "Mississippi plan".

After passing the House by just six votes,^[2] the Lodge bill was successfully filibustered by Democrats in the Senate, with little action by the President of the Senate, Vice President Levi P. Morton, because Silver Republicans in the West traded it away for Southern support of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and Northern Republicans traded it away for Southern support of the McKinley Tariff.^[3][4]