In 1913, Stella Courtright Stimson was an activist working for women's suffrage. She was also heavily concerned about her hometown, Terre Haute, and the growing bar, brothel, and gambling industries. Those were controlled, or actually not controlled, by a political machine run by mayor Donn Roberts. Roberts would pay supporters to go from precinct to precinct, voting in each, and also relied on fraudulent registrations with addresses for businesses or vacant lots. Stimson arranged for women to monitor voting precincts, but were overwhelmed by the number of Roberts' associates. Her research uncovered the fraudulent registrations, but as a woman who couldn't vote, she could bring no legal action against Roberts.
Then an unrelated case sparked the appointment of a special prosecutor, Joseph Roach Jr., a reformed jailhouse lawyer who wanted to clean up Terre Haute for the sake of his newborn son. He teamed up with Stimson to gather overwhelming evidence, but when the case was prosecuted, Roberts' real power was on display when the jury acquitted him.
Rather than give up, Roach and Stimson approached the US courts to intervene. Since the federal government couldn't be involved in local elections, they had to wait until the election of 1914 when a seat in Congress was involved. Soon after, 116 men were arrested in Terre Haute. They had to convert a hotel into a jail to accommodate them. Read about the federal trial that resulted in changes to how elections across the US are done at Smithsonian.
