Richard LeBert and the Contested Election

Richard LeBert is connected to the Paradice family as the father-in-law of one of Frank Paradice's daughters. Richard kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings on which this account is based. 

Richard LeBert

In November 1893, running on the Republican ticket, Richard LeBert was elected Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder.  In 1895, he ran for re-election. The result was controversial. The root of the controversy that in his position as County Clerk and Recorder he was custodian of the ballots for all county offices, including his own.

On November 6, 1985, the day after the election, the Times listed Richard’s re-election as “doubtful,” while a headline in read, “Kindel Is Elected. Le Bert, the Crestfallen, Concedes Victory of His Adversary.” The concession had been informal. Some time before noon Richard reportedly told two attorneys that George J. Kindel of the People’s Taxpayers party led by 103 votes. Not all the precincts had reported, however, and ballot boxes were still arriving at the courthouse.

At noon Richard left the courthouse for a lunch break, locking the room in which the ballot boxes had been placed. He instructed the person whom he had left in charge not to give out any information. He returned briefly at 2 o’clock but disappeared again. No further returns were made public in his absence. Around 8 o’clock that evening Richard appeared at the Brown Palace Hotel and announced that he had been elected. Suspicion immediately spread among Kindel’s supporters that someone had tampered with the ballots. When an incensed Kindel appeared at the courthouse wielding a shotgun, the incident made headlines from San Francisco, California to Buffalo, New York.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 1895:

CHARGES OF CROOKEDNESS

A CANDIDATE AND HIS TRUSTY SHOTGUN

…Crowds soon gathered in the vicinity of the Courthouse, and George J. Kindel, the candidate whose election was the chief object of attack, came running to the Courthouse with a shotgun hung over his shoulder. He is a strong admirer of the Rev. Myron W. Reed, and was anxious to put into practice the doctrines of that gentleman as delivered from the pulpit last Sunday. Reed: advocated shotgun law, if any crooked work was attempted, and Kindel announced himself as the man who would carry the law into effect. He ran all the way from his store in the lower part of the city and stopped only long enough to hear the approving remarks of several merchants who were eager to offer financial assistance.

From the Buffalo, New York Express, November 1895

TROUBLE IN DENVER

…At once Kindel… concluded that the ballots had been tampered with and that he was being defrauded. Thereupon he seized his shotgun and marched off to the County Clerk's office to put in execution the Reed maxim of shooting somebody on the spot. Instead of shooting, he threatened. Then he went off and made a speech to a meeting of women, whereupon 150 women accompanied him back to the County Clerk's office and informed the offending [LeBert] that if the returns were altered he would be lynched. It will be remembered that women are allowed the suffrage in Colorado. Evidently they are taking hold of politics with an energy which must put men to shame. [LeBert] seems to have been really frightened for he disappeared, as did most of his clerks. A force of deputy sheriffs was sent to take possession of the County Clerk's office. They, too, were armed with shot guns, so it was shot against shot. Happily, however, no powder was used. The excitement seems to be a little less than that which prevailed at the time of the labor riots.

All of this excitement preceded the official vote count, which took place several days later. When completed, the count showed that Richard had prevailed by 108 votes.

Kindel, of course, challenged the result. He claimed to have presented evidence of fraud to the District Attorney, but the District Attorney ignored his evidence. He requested the appointment of a special prosecutor. The District Attorney countered that he had considered the evidence, but some of the witnesses could not be found, and Kindel himself had admitted that one of the witnesses had sworn a fraudulent affidavit.

No special prosecutor was appointed, but a judge granted Kindel the right to review the poll books, provided that a deputy be present to ensure that Kindel and his helper did not abuse the trust. Kindel was ordered to pay the cost of the deputy, which was $4 per day. Apparently incensed at this charge, Kindel arrived to conduct the review wearing a large sign that read, “Don’t bother us. Our time is worth one cent a minute according to the rule of the county court.” Richard’s friends suggested that the sign amounted to contempt of court and that Richard’s reporting it to the judge would cause the case to be closed. There was no need for a formal report, as the Denver newspapers soundly ridiculed Kindel and his sign. The judge apparently did not take the incident as contempt of court.

Kindel continued to pursue his challenge of the election result through the courts, alleging that fraudulent votes had been cast and that Richard was aware of the fraud. The case came before the county court in February 1896 but was quickly moved to district court. There it languished with the plaintiff filing petitions to amend the suit with new evidence and to have the supreme court intervene because the case had not been assigned properly to an impartial judge. These petitions were repeatedly denied.

At the same time, a Grand Jury convened to investigate the accusations of fraudulent voter registrations and other election frauds. The jury spent two weeks examining the registration books of Arapahoe County. It concluded that “Le Bert, as far as it knew, did not mutilate the election returns,” as he had called in judges of the opposite party and opened the ballots in their presence. They also determined that under the circumstances of the last election wholesale registration fraud was impossible.

Meanwhile, an outside judge took over the court case of Kindel versus LeBert. In March, he ruled, “The court cannot go into the ballot boxes for the purpose of ascertaining that illegal votes have been cast until there is evidence to show to the court that some party or parties who voted were not legally entitled to vote.” Upon being refused a continuance, Kindel’s attorney stated that their complaint was “in an incomplete condition” and he did not want to go into the ballot boxes under the circumstances. Shortly thereafter, he rested his case. In the absence of any evidence of voting irregularities, the judge ruled that Richard LeBert had been duly elected.

Undeterred, Kindel took his case to the supreme court in September 1896, arguing that the case had been improperly assigned to a district court judge who was not next in the rotation. He added an argument that Richard was ineligible to succeed himself as county clerk. The suit did not immediately go onto the docket and was expected to take several months to decide.

On October 8, 1896, the News reported, “George Kindel’s Suit Against County Clerk Le Bert Comes to an Abrupt Termination.” The reason was that the contested ballots had been destroyed by the election judges in order that they might use the ballot boxes in the upcoming election. According to the article, Richard followed legal advice and followed the law in sending out the boxes. Kindel, however, said that the case would proceed without the ballot boxes and that he had “abundant proofs of crookedness in the election.”

The case did proceed, but in January 1897 the supreme court upheld the lower court’s ruling in Richard’s favor. They found that there was no law governing how cases were assigned to judges and that Richard had destroyed the contested ballots in compliance with the law. Kindel requested a rehearing of the case, but the rehearing was denied.

Although the court case had been settled, the controversy was resurrected briefly with an article in the Denver Post on September 4, 1897:

BALLOT BOX

Just to show the rottenness of Denver politics, a ballot box is on exhibition in the window of the business office of the Post.

The ballot box was found in the basement of a vacant store room in the down town district, where it had evidently been placed after it was robbed of its ballots.

A strange feature of this box is that according to the records it is now on file in the county clerk’s office and is safely locked in a room set apart especially for that purpose, yet at the same time it is in the window at The Post. The box is of a kind that is used only at county elections and is labeled “District F, Precinct 1…”

This article did not mention the contested election.

Two days later the Post published a formal letter from Richard to the effect that if the Post actually was in possession of a ballot box, they should return it to the Deputy County Clerk. The letter gave the Post a second opportunity for accusations. After noting that the box had been returned as requested, the September 6, 1897 article stated:

The forces in the clerk’s office assert that this box is one of the “extras” which were sent to District F during the county election of 1895 and that it was never used… The officials seem to believe that the box being estray was merely a clerical error.

It will be remembered, however, that it was the 1895 election about which so much trouble arose. It was in this contest that the Populists voted for George Kindel for clerk... The election was supposed to have been fraudulently conducted and Kindel attempted to secure an order from the court for a recount of the ballots but was overturned at every point.

There was no apparent fallout from the mysteriously surfacing ballot box and nothing to support the accusation of stolen ballots. Richard’s scrapbooks contained no further news of the box or the contested election.

Afterword: When cleaning out the home of Richard's granddaughter after her death - the same home where Richard LeBert spent his final years - his descendants found  - a ballot box.