Ouch! Suppressing the vote, Anson County, 1773

“In Regulator-controlled Anson County, North Carolina, during the balloting in 1773, ‘sundry evil-disposed persons’ stationed themselves several feet in front of the courthouse and stopped ‘the freeholders on their way to the Table,’ asking ‘who they intended to vote for.’

“Those who opposed the Regulator candidates were ‘obstructed and hindered…some them being violently pushed back, others of them pulled back by the hair of their heads; and others so rudely and violently treated that great numbers… were detered from voting.'”

— From “Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689-1776” by Robert J. Dinkin (1977)