Mazo's articles appeared in a four-part series in the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, and elsewhere. He incorporated them into a 1968 version of his Nixon biography, and other historians cited them in later accounts of the alleged fraud. Nixon himself held them out as evidence that he'd been cheated. Mazo's articles are problematic. He rarely cited his sources or provided any way of gauging anecdotes' authenticity. Some of them were disputed at the time by (Democratic) election officials. Others, in Illinois, were scrutinized by a special prosecutor the next year and didn't hold up.

Nonetheless, given their sheer number, it's quite possible that some, even many, were true. If so, they add up to a disturbing (if not election-altering) amount of cheating. Here are some of his anecdotes.

In Texas, Mazo alleged that:

• Democratic leaders bought hundreds of poll-tax certificates and gave them to poor Mexican-Americans who might not otherwise vote.
• Voting machines were fixed. In one San Antonio precinct, a machine didn't record votes for Nixon.
• People voted illegally. One young girl said her father was sick and voted for him.
• In Republican districts, officials strictly enforced rules about how ballots must be marked, voiding many of them. In nearby Democratic districts, officials were more lax.
• Tabulators were guilty of what we might call "fuzzy math." In Fannin County, for example, 6,138 votes were cast when only 4,895 people were on the rolls.

In Cook County Ill., Mazo alleged that:

• "Ghosting" occurred. A man who had died, and his son who had moved away, both voted in Ward 4, Precinct 31.
• A doctor claimed that he was told his parents had voted, even though one was deceased and the other hadn't voted in 10 years.
• More fuzzy math. In Ward 27, Precinct 27, 397 votes were recorded from 376 voters.
• Interpreters who accompanied Spanish-speaking voters instructed them, "Vote straight Democratic, that's all."
• A precinct captain in Ward 4, Precinct 47 voted twice.
• After someone left a voting booth without voting, an election judge entered the booth and pulled the lever for the Democratic ticket.
• In Ward 5, Precinct 22, a voter stuffed six ballots in the ballot box.
• In later years, journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Anthony Summers would also claim that mobster Sam Giancana and his syndicate played a role. Those charges have always remained murky and unsubstantiated.