The Box 13 scandal was a political scandal that occurred in Jim Wells County, Texas during the 1948 United States Senate elections, regarding disputed votes in a Democratic primary involving Lyndon B. Johnson and Coke Stevenson.
On the day of the runoff election, Johnson appeared to have lost the Democratic nomination to Stevenson. Six days after polls had closed, 202 additional votes were added to the totals for Precinct 13 of Jim Wells County, 200 for Johnson and two for Stevenson. This resulted in a narrow lead for Johnson.[1]
The subsequent recount, handled by the Democratic State Central Committee, took a week. Johnson was announced the winner by 87 votes out of 988,295, an extremely narrow margin of victory.[2] Suspicions arose that the 202 late votes were fraudulent. The names added to the end of the tally sheet were in alphabetical order and written with the same pen and handwriting. Some of the individuals whose names were listed insisted they had not voted that day, while the last person whose name was recorded before the questionable entries stated that when he voted shortly before the polls closed, there had been no one in line behind him.[3]
Stevenson took the dispute to court, and the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Johnson prevailed on the basis that jurisdiction over naming a nominee rested with the state party, not the federal government.[4] A private, non-official investigation[5] found that Johnson had conspired with George Parr, a Democratic Party leader in Texas, to falsify vote totals.[1] In the general election, Johnson went on to defeat the Republican nominee Jack Porter by a margin of 33.28% and 353,320 votes.[6]
Johnson biographer Robert Caro made the case in his 1990 book that Johnson had stolen the election in Jim Wells County.[7] A stage play based on the scandal, Box Thirteen by Jack Westin, was performed at the College of the Mainland Community Theatre during the 1998–1999 season.[8]
In 2023, Associated Press reporter James Mangan donated to the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum taped interviews confirming the story that he recorded in 1977. Mangan was able to corroborate the story with Luis Salas, who worked as an election judge in South Texas. Salas told Mangan that the powerful South Texas political boss George B. Parr ordered that some 200 votes be added to the totals for Box 13. Salas said he then watched as the names of individuals who had not voted were added to the tally sheet.[9]
To the east in neighboring Jim Wells County – home of the notorious Box 13, which happened to be the only box in the county dominated by Parr's operatives – LBJ managed to acquire, according to the estimates, a four-percentage-point net gain over Stevenson, or about only 387 votes (of which at least two hundred were patently fraudulent).
A Tommy Townsend, left, appears with Bill Low in a scene from the world premiere of "Box Thirteen," which is being performed at the College of the Mainland Arena Theatre through June 27.
