The Box 13 scandal occurred in Alice, Texas during the Senate election of 1948. Lyndon B. Johnson was on the verge of losing the election and yet six days after polls had closed, 202 additional ballots were discovered in precinct 13, which swung the election in Johnson's favor. He had been in a tight race with Coke Stevenson and they were in the middle of a run-off. Stevenson was about 854 votes ahead of Johnson during the run-off. Stevenson was even ahead by midday, but after the discovery of the additional ballots, 200 additional votes for Johnson were discovered, leading to his victory by 87 votes out of 1 million voters.
Investigation
Harry Lee Adams became very suspicious of this and he went to check it out. Adams noticed that the last 200 ballots were different from the rest. The color ink of the ink and handwriting used on the tally sheet appeared to be identical and were in alphabetical order. Adams had a judge who he was friends with start an investigation and Johnson had Abe Fortas, a friend of his, to come in and help with the legal plans during this investigation. The biggest question that needed to be answered was, did Johnson go to his friend George Parr, a member of the Democratic party in Texas and ask him to help him out.
Aftermath
The investigation went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black, ruled that the federal government was not allowed to get involved with a state election. This ruling was able to seal the fate of the election. Johnson won the election and the one thing no one could figure out is if Johnson spoke with George Parr, in South Texas that day, which resulted in box 13 having 200 ballots that were missed and gave Johnson the victory. After everything was over, some may have thought consequences would be inevitable. That is not the case in this scenario, possibly since Johnson won the election and there would be no charges and it could not be proven that Johnson actually had the box stuffed. Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert A. Caro covered the Box 13 scandal in astounding detail. About one half of Caro's 500-page book, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, was devoted to the 1948 Texas Senatorial election. The book does not cover Johnson's entire life; it covers his rise in the U. S. Congress. Distrust of Johnson grew during his presidency until, as Richard Rovere was to write inThe New Yorker - "It seems.... to be a fact beyond dispute that no other President has had to live in an atmosphere so heavy with distrust and disbelief as Lyndon Johnson... What may well be a majority of the American people are persuaded that the President is a dishonest and dishonorable man."
