Twain and Tourgée on Gilded Age Voting Rights and Election Laws.

This essay examines Gilded Age voter fraud and voter suppression through the lenses of Mark Twain and Albion W. Tourgée. Twain is the most famous commentator on the Gilded Age. Less well known, Tourgée wrote best-selling Reconstruction fiction and became Homer Plessy's lawyer. Both were personally committed to the welfare of people of color. But Twain supported the Fifteenth Amendment as a color-blind standard to reduce voting fraud while Tourgée criticized the amendment for inadequately protecting freedmen from disfranchisement. The essay starts with Reconstruction's failure to reform the undemocratic system of presidential elections linked to the Electoral College. It ends with Twain's and Tourgée's reactions to laws enacted in the 1890s designed to block both fraud and African American suffrage. In between there is a section comparing fictional scenes dramatizing Twain's and Tourgée's views on literacy and voting; one highlighting how Twain's celebration of political independence and Tourgée's defense of political partisanship affected their understanding of the franchise; and one on the 1887 Law of the Electoral Count. Despite Twain's canonical status, Tourgée more poignantly exposes why the US continues to allow voter suppression and a minority to elect presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]