In Response to Saltman

Extract

Saltman's comment (PS, July 2004, 383) simply ignores the bulk of my previous letter (PS, January 2004, 1–2) which dealt with Alabama. I gather that there he agrees with Russell and myself. Thus, there is no dispute on the question of whether Nixon or Kennedy had more popular votes in 1960. His criticism concerns my feeling, originally suggested by Russell, that with more political honesty on the part of the Chicago and Texas machines, Nixon might have taken the Electoral College, too. He doesn't specifically dispute my statement that the difference in Illinois was “smaller than the usual number of votes produced by the Chicago machine from graveyards and empty lots.”