“All quiet in the province,” Juris wrote in late summer 1967. “Too quiet.” Viet Nam was tense because of the elections scheduled for the end of August, when VC harassment was expected everywhere. As a warning, the country was covered with “gory posters of all sorts of atrocities.” The runup to the election had been “quite a surprise. No one apparently expected the civilian candidates to advocate peace negotiations as strongly as they have. It looks like Johnson isn’t the only one losing supporters. The hawks seem to be flying the coop all over. Pretty soon the only fowl left on Capitol Hill will be Lady Bird.”
Given our own fears about election tampering, it’s fascinating to read about the way elections ran in Viet Nam that year. “Thieu and Ky took about 48% of the vote, and did as well in the rest of the country too, I imagine. Little wonder—they were the only ones who could mount any sort of campaign, controlling the government agencies and communications as they do. Somewhat lopsided but at least here a ‘fair,’ untampered election. You never know, though. The Army holds the ballots for safekeeping and could have done anything it liked with them before sending them on to be tallied. And of course government representation did the actual counting so you can’t really be too sure. Still a long cry from the days when they would use candidate symbols on a ballot, except for the government’s choice, and then tell the Montagnards and Viets to choose from them. If you were an illiterate, unsuspecting Montagnard, who would you vote for to run the government—a donkey, an elephant, a flower, or some smiling guy in a uniform?”