I voted. Let’s drink. Wait, what?
A brief history of not drinking on election day
I grew up in the New Jersey suburbs when Lyndon Johnson was president, and I distinctly remember that my parents couldn’t buy liquor on election day. Why, I asked them? Because the liquor stores were closed on election day, they told me, as were all the bars. Why, I asked again? Because you’re not allowed to drink and vote, they said. It was like drinking and driving. Democracy depended on sober, rational people entering the polling place.
That answer satisfied me. I’d seen my parents’ friends deep in their cups, and it made sense that they shouldn’t be allowed near a polling station. I didn’t think to ask why one couldn’t buy a bottle of vodka on Monday, get potted on Tuesday, then go vote. The ban just seemed another one of those immutable facts that shouldn’t be questioned because, on the surface, it made perfect sense.
And New Jersey was not alone. Election day blue laws were common across much of the country until the end of the last century. These laws came into effect after Prohibition was repealed as part of a package of laws restricting drinking, largely because prohibitionists didn’t want the rampant drinking of the 19th century to resume. This new world of drinking included the three-tier system, Sunday blue laws, and these election day bans.
Of course, the polls-and-liquor-don’t-mix approach wasn’t just for ensuring lucid voters. Drinking and voting was as American as apple pie-flavored whiskey. And it turns out the history of bans on liquor sales and the closure of bars wasn’t as straightforward as keeping the citizenry sober. It’s a vestige of efforts to curb the corrupt early practices known as “treating” and “cooping.”
Treating was pretty straightforward: A candidate would treat a constituent to a drink (or three or four), whereupon they might feel obligated to vote for them. “Treating voters with strong drink was a common if not universal practice” in colonial America, writes historian Rhys Isaac. Another scholar of southern American history noted that election time was an occasion “for eating, drinking, and being merry at the expense of the candidates, who acted the role of genial hosts of county or parish freeholders.”
Treating was a practice as revered as George Washington. In 1758, when he was running for the Virginia House of Burgesses, he recorded the purchase of 144 gallons of drink at local taverns, as he had discovered that a pint of drink was more persuasive than a pound of policy papers.
The links between liquor and voting evolved into something more nefarious a century later. In the mid-19th century, the practice of “cooping“ became common, especially in city neighborhoods where immigrants gathered. Men designated as “coopers” would round up men a day or two before an election, and essentially keep them “cooped up,” often in a bar or a bar’s basement, plying them with liquor and food and instructions on who to vote for, before marching them out on election day to cast their ballots, often at more than one polling station.
Even under less villainous circumstances, bars and taverns played a central role in many cities before and after election time. Bars served as de facto community centers, especially for recent immigrants. They were places to inquire about jobs and housing, receive mail and messages, and ask about how to vote and who to vote for. And so bars became targets for those who wanted to discourage the immigrant vote; preventing drunk voting was a pretense. Election day dry laws were the result.
These laws fell one by one starting in the 1960s — including in New Jersey, which repealed its ban in 1970. Prior to that, California, Texas, and Wisconsin had rescinded them, and over the past two decades, most other states have done likewise: Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Utah, West Virginia, and South Carolina4.
The bans on polling-day alcohol persist today only in a few parts of Massachusetts and Alaska. Liquor sales during voting hours are actually still banned statewide in both states, but provisions were added to allow local municipalities to rescind these, and most have. (Massachusetts’ current law still contains language dating from Prohibition: “No registered pharmacist... shall sell alcoholic beverages or alcohol without a physician’s prescription during polling hours.”)
Abroad, election day dry laws still persist. You can’t find a nip before the polls in the Virgin Islands, for instance. And since 1951, India has banned the sale of liquor 48 hours prior to an election “to prevent consumption, distribution of alcohol, and bribing of voters.”
The fact that you can buy a drink after voting in all but the few remaining dry counties in America comes as a tremendous relief, especially this year. I know I will need a drink or two as the maps on television screens start to fill up with blues and reds. I suspect others will as well.