1905 Cuban general election

General elections were held in Cuba on 1 December 1905.[1] Tomás Estrada Palma won the presidential election, whilst his Moderate Party won all twelve seats in the Senate and 31 of the 32 seats in the House of Representatives, winning 27 of the 63 seats. Voter turnout was 74.0%.[2]

1905 Cuban general election

1 December 1905
 
Nominee Tomás Estrada Palma
Party Moderate Party
Popular vote 306,874

President before election

Tomás Estrada Palma
Independent

Elected President

Tomás Estrada Palma
Moderate Party

Results

President

CandidatePartyVotes%
Tomás Estrada PalmaModerate Party306,874
Total
Total votes317,972
Registered voters/turnout429,73073.99
Source: Nohlen

Senate

PartySeats
Moderate Party12
Total12
Source: Nohlen

House of Representatives

PartySeats
Moderate Party31
Independents1
Total32
Source: Nohlen

Aftermath

The election results were highly contested and accusations of fraud were made. Registration of voters by local electoral boards resulted in an electoral roll of 423,313, a figure American Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Assistant Secretary of State Robert Bacon declared to be 150,000 names too high. According to American professor Russell H. Fitzgibbon, La Discussion, a leading moderate newspaper, protested about electoral fraud. According to a Taft Bacon report of 1906, Freyre de Andrade, a Cuban minister, told American commissioners that it was "impossible to hold an election in Cuba without fraud" and that thousands of extra names had perhaps been added "out of spirit of mischief."[3]

In 1906 American President Theodore Roosevelt created a Peace Commission following the Cuban rebellions of the summer of 1906. The commission was sent to Cuba to investigate the situation and "attempt to restore peace and re-establish law and Order." The Peace Commission found that the congressional elections of 1905 had been "so tainted by fraud as to render them illegal". Taft subsequently suspended the Congress.[4]

References

  1. Dieter Nohlen (2005) Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I, p203 ISBN 978-0-19-928357-6
  2. Nohlen, p204
  3. Russell H. Fitzgibbon (1935) Cuba and the United States: 1900-1935, p115
  4. Annual Report of Charles E. Magoon, Provisional Governor of Cuba, to the Secretary of War, Government Printing Office, 1908, p18
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