Election Night - 11/7/1916

El Paso, Tex., 

Nov. 7, 1916

My Dear Dad: - 
Well, tonight tells the tale. Who will it be, Wilson, or Hughes? I think it will be Hughes. We took a straw vote this moon, Hughes got 35; Wilson 13; Benson, 1.  So you see Wilson had a good reason for having the Soldiers of Rep. States on the Border for Election, for nearly every state here and at other points along the Border are Rep. states and cannot vote.

There is no news of any importance here, I am feeling good as usual and learning something new every day.

This morning when I was out on a drill, we were going through a pass between some hills and just as I struck the top the tongue of my ambulance broke off completely and maybe you don't think I had some time going down the hill with my four mules, but I managed to make the bottom without tipping over, & then I returned to camp & had a new one fitted.

Here is plan of our camp, I thought you would like to have an idea of how are are encamped.

Well will close for this time. 

Love to all

Howard

Well, I sure wish I would have gotten my act together to post this last week! Maybe my little pea brain could only handle one election at a time. So, here's the gist of the 1916 election as Howard would have seen it (I think - as summarized from Brittanica and Wikipedia).

Democrat, and sitting president, Woodrow Wilson was neutral on the war in Europe and was running on the phrase, "He kept us out of war." This generally coincided with the more popular anti-war public sentiment at the time. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes was critical of much of Wilson's military policies - neutrality on the conflict in Europe and military interventions in Mexico - and advocated for greater mobilization and preparedness. Perhaps that's why these young men were ready for a President Hughes - he was aiming his campaign promises straight at getting them more and better stuff! In case you're wondering, Allan Benson was the Socialist candidate - Feel the Bern-son?

From what I can find, most absentee voting laws may not yet have been reenacted to allow those in military service to vote in 1916. Such laws were put into place during the Civil War, but many were repealed following the war. I found an article in The American Political Science Review from 1918 that made it seem like the reenactment of those laws was a pretty recent thing at the time. Because the laws are done at the state level, I wasn't going to take the time to do the research...sorry, dudes. So, it would make sense based on Howard's letter - if those guarding the border were mostly Republicans, they couldn't be home to vote for Wilson's opponent.

And you thought we were all done talking about the election....