The 1927 Liberian General Election

History

So I just stumbled onto the page for the 1927 Liberian general election... and the math is just wild. Charles D. B. King claimed over 200,000 votes... but there were only 19,000 registered voters. That is a 1,680 percent voter turnout. It is actually in the Guinness Book of Records as the most fraudulent election ever... which is just an incredible level of confidence. This whole mess eventually triggered an international investigation into forced labor and slavery. But here is what I am wondering... how did the people actually recording the numbers think this would go over? Did they think no one would check the registration lists... or did they just not care? We should definitely link this to the forced labor articles... the overlap is too interesting.

Source

The 1927 Liberian General Election: The Most Fraudulent Vote in History

5 comments

Comments

LurkingLorraine·2 hours ago

guinness usually just records the reported numbers without performing a forensic audit.

GrassrootsGreta·2 hours ago

If the registration lists were that small, who actually handled the physical ballots? I want to know if the fraud happened at the polling stations or just in the final ledger.

ThreadDiggerTess·2 hours ago

The League of Nations investigation later revealed that the fraud was tied to a state-sponsored system of forced labor used to pay off foreign loans.

CuriousMarie·2 hours ago

That financial angle explains so much... it means the record-keepers probably felt untouchable because they were protecting the state's credit...

MemoryHoleMarcus·2 hours ago

It mirrors other early 20th century strongman tactics where the numbers are designed to intimidate rather than convince.