"...November 2nd, when ballots would be cast not only for the Presidency but for the next Confederate Congress as well. One would have to struggle to think of a time in the history of this Republic, or any other, in which an electoral union went into its last week ahead of a critical election inundated with news that ranged from bad to utterly disastrous, and such news mattering less.
The biggest news of course was that Mexico had called for a cease-fire with the United States, particularly on her own soil, which left Mexican units scattered across the Midlands and Eastern Theaters confused and unsure of what exactly to do next. Some stayed in their trenches, news of their country's imminent exit from the war kept from them by Confederate telegraph agents, whilst others got into brawls with Confederate soldiers who demanded they continue to fight, and the majority simply rotated back off the front and waited in rear echelon support positions.
But more pertinent to the Confederate election and her domestic politics was the collapse of state authority in Tennessee in the days immediately preceding the elections. The six-week battle of Knoxville finally ended with the city and her crucial railroads nearly entirely destroyed, leaving the road to Chattanooga from the north wide open, just as Pershing's main body of forces broke through at Tullahoma. Dickman had been held at Corinth for close to three months, the size of the battlefield in northern Mississippi expanding to the point that General Longstreet at Vicksburg was almost pulled in, but Pershing's triumph at Tullahoma led to him thrusting southwards to Huntsville, directly into the rear supply lines of Lee's army and cutting them off, with tactical use of landships as his army arrived at the Tennessee River and seized the small but important supply route and now threatened the Chattanooga and Atlanta theater with a pincer, all while collapsing the Confederate position at Corinth in the west and forcing its abandonment. The war had, it seemed, now finally come to Alabama..."
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To the Knife: The Confederacy at War 1914-15
"...how exactly to count electoral votes somewhere like Kentucky or Tennessee was obviously more than just an academic question, especially since Underwood did considerably better in winning his home state of Alabama in addition to restive trans-Mississippian Texas and Arkansas as well as the boiling center of Tillmanite anger in South Carolina, where the state legislature awarded its votes to him to spite Coleman Blease and Tom Martin. Both had "retreated" state legislatures in exile, and due to the "enormous difficulty of open polling" in both of their home states, both state legislatures in absentia elected to simply award their states' electors to Vardaman, seeing as how both were strongly in favor of the National Alliance for Victory.
Though Underwood would have been unlikely to carry both these states on his own, the choice essentially tipped the election entirely in Vardaman's favor, as both "occupied" states had on their own enough electors to guarantee Vardaman's triumph. Said legislatures also held votes to select Congressmen in addition to Senators, which dramatically improved the numbers for Martin's ascendant coalition and forced Speaker Heflin to announce that he would continue to operate within the National Alliance, out of fear of his purging and the appointment of one of Martin's creatures.
Elsewhere in the Confederacy was no less openly corrupt. Ballot boxes were stuffed or stolen, and violence erupted across polling places, particularly in Mississippi. The Red Scarves were out in force on November 2nd in a major way and did not relent until it was clear that their man Vardaman had not only won but won fairly decisively, carrying eight states, some by genuinely surprisingly wide margins..."
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Making Sense of the Senseless: The Great American War at 100
"...though Underwood would become a serious opponent of the Vardaman regime in the year to come, beyond that there was only the surprise defeat of Coleman Blease by the state legislature Tillman still controlled for those opposed to the National Alliance to console themselves with. Tom Watson in Georgia was tossed out by the legislature to be replaced by Hoke Smith in tandem with the ferociously demagogic Thomas Hardwick; in Alabama, Underwood's good friend John Bankhead saw his career end at the hands of a legislature determined instead to appoint B.B. Comer, who as a governor had been a firm Tillmanite and reformer but in the Senate toed the newly Bourbon line. The House saw a wave of Red Scarf-backed figures emerge across the country, and Vardaman would have a potent alliance in both chambers of Congress to support him come February.
All this would have been crisis enough in the midst of war - but it was not until a few weeks later, when the radical Texas Legislature gathered to choose a new Senator rather than support the re-nomination of the corrupt, conservative and Martinite Charles Culberson, that the impacts of this newly autocratic regime consolidating in Richmond would really be felt..."
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The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
1915 Confederate elections
293 electoral votes; 147 to win
James K. Vardaman of Mississippi/George Patton of Virginia (National Alliance for Victory) - 190 EVs
Florida - 8
Georgia - 29
Kentucky - 30
Louisiana - 24
Mississippi - 20
North Carolina - 23
Tennessee - 29
Virginia - 27
Oscar Underwood of Alabama/Marion Butler of North Carolina (Democratic Opposition) - 103 EVs
Alabama - 22
Arkansas - 20
South Carolina - 15
Texas - 46
