Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
10-2015
Abstract
Rhode Island was the first English colony in America to issue printed election ballots, with the first issued in the mid-1740s. This survey of Rhode Island election tickets, while not exhaustive, is representative of the use of tickets in elections spanning a period of over 150 years and documents state and local politics, political factions and election results from the Ward-Hopkins controversy of the colonial period to political factions during the War of 1812, the Anti-Masonic period of the 1830s, the Law and Order coalition of the 1840s following events of the Dorr Rebellion, the temperance movement of the 1850s, the pro-Union tickets of the Civil War, and Greenback party and Prohibitory factions of the 1870s and 1880s. Statewide elections for general officers, United States congressional representatives, presidential electors, special purpose elections as well as local elections for city, town and district offices are also examined. The scope of this study includes a survey of tickets found in the collections of the University of Rhode Island Library Special Collections, Rhode Island State Archives, Warwick Historical Society as well as private collections of Henry A.L. Brown, Russell DeSimone, and Daniel Schofield.
This document was last revised in 2015. The previous version (2007) can be found below as a supplemental file.
Citation/Publisher Attribution
DeSimone, Russell J., and Daniel C. Schofield. "Rhode Island Election Tickets: A Survey." , (2015). https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/lib_ts_pubs/17
Rhode Island Election Tickets: A Survey (2007 version)