Definition
A faggot vote is a fraudulent or artificial vote manufactured by giving a person a nominal property qualification to vote without any genuine economic stake in the property. The classic mechanism: a political patron transfers bare legal title to a parcel of property to a dependent voter, while simultaneously mortgaging the property to its full value so that the voter holds no real interest. The property is a fiction; its sole purpose is to manufacture the franchise. The term refers both to a single such vote and, in the plural, to the practice of multiplying these artificial votes—typically by a landlord or political organizer seeking to pack an electorate.
The concept is inseparable from the property-based franchise system of pre-Reform Act England, where the right to vote in parliamentary elections depended on meeting a property ownership threshold. Faggot votes exploited that threshold by satisfying its form while gutting its substance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of faggot vote. No meaningful modern common definition exists for the phrase.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Faggot" in ordinary usage referred to a bundle of sticks or twigs bound together, with secondary meanings including a bundle of iron rods or a contemptuous term for a person. The voting sense does not appear in general dictionaries of the period.
The connection between the common and legal meaning is oblique but intentional: just as a faggot is a bundle of sticks with no independent substance beyond the binding, a faggot vote is a bundle of legal formalities with no independent substance beyond the manipulation. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources should not import the pejorative colloquial senses of "faggot"; the electoral meaning is a distinct technical usage rooted in the bundling metaphor.
Common Confusion
Faggot votes are sometimes loosely grouped with other forms of electoral manipulation—bribery, treating, undue influence—but they are technically distinct. Bribery involves paying a qualified voter to vote a particular way. Faggot votes involve manufacturing voter qualifications wholesale, before any vote is cast. The distinction matters for historical legal sources: statutes and cases addressing faggot votes focus on qualification fraud and property transfers, not on the transaction at the polling booth.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term of almost exclusively historical significance. Its natural habitat is English electoral law from roughly the late seventeenth century through the Reform Act era (1832) and beyond into the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act period. Researchers working in that span will encounter it frequently in parliamentary debates, election petitions, and treatises on the franchise.
The key statutory anchor cited in both Black's editions is 7 & 8 Wm. III. c. 25, § 7 (1696), which addressed property qualification requirements for parliamentary voters. That statute is the doctrinal foundation for the legal definition. Researchers should verify the specific provision in original sources, as Black's citation is accurate but the statute's broader context rewards examination.
Several research traps are worth flagging. First, the term appears almost exclusively in British and Irish sources; it has no recognized counterpart in American election law, where the property franchise had a different trajectory and was eventually abolished without generating equivalent vocabulary. Second, historical sources occasionally use "faggot voter" (singular, referring to the person) and "faggot vote" or "faggot votes" (referring to the practice or the votes themselves) somewhat interchangeably—context will clarify. Third, the practice was widely condemned but the legal remedies were inconsistent and evolved significantly across the nineteenth century; do not assume that identification of faggot votes in historical sources meant they were legally voided.
American researchers studying vote dilution, manufactured qualifications, or the mechanics of franchise manipulation may find faggot votes instructive as a historical parallel, but the legal doctrine does not translate directly into American constitutional or statutory frameworks.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's editions carry nearly identical entries, both tracing through Wharton's Law Lexicon, which is the intermediate source. The definition is stable across editions, suggesting the term had settled meaning by the time it entered American legal dictionaries—though it was already a historical curiosity rather than a live doctrinal issue. The core formulation in both editions—formal possession of voting right without the substance it should represent, illustrated by the buy-and-immediately-mortgage scenario—is consistent with parliamentary and electoral commentary from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the extent of the practice (which was substantial in certain English boroughs), the political economy that sustained it, or the reform legislation that progressively curtailed it. Black's treatment is definitional rather than analytical. Researchers wanting depth should move from Black's to Wharton's primary text and from there to specialized histories of English electoral law.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to English (and, by extension, British and Irish) parliamentary electoral law. It has no recognized doctrinal life in American, Canadian, or Australian legal systems, though analogous practices—manufacturing nominal property ownership to manufacture voting rights—have appeared in various forms in other jurisdictions under different names.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia: Shareholders — Shareholder Voting Rights and Mechanisms (business_59). The mechanics of nominal share ownership used to manufacture corporate voting power is the closest structural analogue to faggot votes in modern law.
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Racial Discrimination in Voting — The Fifteenth Amendment and Voting Rights Act (constitutional_73); Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — Vote Dilution and Results Test (constitutional_146). These entries provide context for how manufactured or diluted voting rights are analyzed in modern American constitutional doctrine—useful for researchers drawing historical comparisons, though the legal frameworks are distinct.