WASHINGTON—Noted political scholars published a peer-reviewed paper presenting damning evidence that the first postmaster general, Benjamin Franklin, destroyed mail-in ballots during the country’s first presidential election, held from 1788 to 1789, to essentially steal the election for his best friend, George Washington. Those ballots would have resulted in John Adams winning the election in a landslide, perhaps by the greatest margin in history. Instead, Adams was the runner-up and became the nation’s first vice president while Washington became the first president and is whom many consider the Father of the Nation.
The paper’s lead author, Thomas Smith, a history professor at Harvard, said that over the course of almost a decade, he and his fellow researchers reviewed thousands of documents, including restaurant and bar receipts, at the National Archives and the National Postal Museum, among other institutions. The smoking musket, he revealed, was a partially burned ballot hidden in a box of Franklin’s undelivered love letters to Adams’ wife, Abigail. “It became very clear to us,” he said, “that Franklin was absolutely smitten with her. But she was almost 40 years his junior, so just not interested. He was obviously hurt and held a grudge against Adams because Adams got the girl, so to speak.” Smith said that he fully expected the paper’s conclusion about Franklin’s role, in particular, would become a lightning rod in today’s charged political climate but that the theory was definitely grounded.
