Voting by Confederate soldiers?

[Bruce Vail]

I've been examining some NC newspapers from 1864 and there is a lot of space devoted to the state-wide elections of that year. The marquee election contest was between incumbent Governor Zebulon Vance and challenger William Holden, with Holden running on a vague 'sort-of' peace platform.

Most of us are aware that US soldiers were first allowed to cast absentee ballots from the field in the US presidential elections of that year, but it seems that North Carolina men serving in military units were also permitted to cast absentee ballots in 1864. Newspaper reports on the election results record balloting by NC regiments in the field in Virginia, balloting at army camps and forts both inside and outside NC, and even balloting at some army hospitals in Virginia. (See Fayetteville Observer, Aug. 4, 1864)

Did other Confederate states permit absentee voting from soldiers in the field? I've never heard of it, but I'm curious if there are other examples.

(My family ancestor in the 3rd NC Infantry likely cast his vote for Vance. Post war, he named his first child Mary Vance Ward in 1868, and in 1876 he successfully ran for local office in Duplin County on Vance's winning Democratic Party ticket.)

 

[hoosier]

It is generally known that there were some Union regiments from Confederate states.

I don't know if those guys were allowed to cast absentee ballots for U. S. President. If they were, the votes didn't amount to anything, since no electoral votes were counted from any Confederate state in 1864.

It would have been pretty ironic if the soldiers had been allowed to cast absentee ballots both for U. S. President and for other offices up for election in their home states.