Lodge Bill

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The Lodge Bill was a bill drafted by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge (R) of Massachusetts. The bill would have allowed the federal government to ensure that elections were fair. It was created primarily to guarantee blacks, predominantly Republican at the time, the right to vote in the south; however, the Fifteenth Amendment had already guaranteed that right. It was stopped in the senate by a filibuster. The bill was discarded in a political trade for southern support for a silver coinage bill.