President Trump has chartered a Commission on Election Integrity to investigate his claim that millions of voters, including undocumented immigrants, voted illegally in 2016. Although no evidence has been offered to support this allegation, it does evoke some popular histories of election fraud in the United States.
One of the most famous examples — cited by proponents of Trump’s commission — is the 1960 presidential election, when Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley allegedly “stole” Illinois for the Democratic presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.
But the story of the stolen 1960 election rests on several myths. When myths are replaced with evidence, it’s not clear that the election was stolen at all.