“I have always had faith in the good judgment and patriotism of the American people,” Cox said, predicting victory for himself.
“Voting began with a rush in Dayton as soon as the polls opened at 5:30 o’clock Tuesday morning,” reported the Dayton Daily News, “indicating that Dayton is taking the election seriously this year.”
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Women, voting for the first time in a national election, were rushing to the polls. Cox’s wife, Margaretta, stuffed ballot No. 235 in the box just ahead of her husband.
Cox rolled into Dayton on his “special train” before heading to his voting site where he was met by friends and neighbors and “a battery of camera men.”
Once there, “the governor, upon entering the booth, found himself without a pencil,” the newspaper reported.
“Many were offered him and the one he borrowed was returned to the owner, who remarked, ‘I’ll keep this as a keepsake from the next president.’”
Cox reportedly planned to rest at Trailsend, his Kettering home, during the afternoon before receiving the election results at his office at the Dayton Daily News.
Election Day excitement had been building in Dayton.
The Metropolitan Company store at Fourth and Ludlow Streets had set up a window display using four life-like wax figures to create a polling place. One of the figures, a young woman, was depicted in the window receiving her first ballot.
“The display is striking in all details and particularly so in regard to the clothing upon the figures which represents the very best in America’s ready-to-wear apparel,” reported the Dayton Daily News.
Daytonians were invited to watch the election returns at Memorial Hall, “first come, first seated.”
There the “returns will be thrown on the screen in the big auditorium as quickly as they are received over the special wires of the NEWS and the information will be dispensed as long as the crowd sticks,” announced the newspaper.
Parking was prohibited along Fourth Street between Ludlow and Wilkinson so there would be “no traffic to interfere with the throng in the street” waiting for election results at the newspaper building.
The following day the results were announced with the headline “HARDING AND G.O.P. CONGRESS WIN---GOVERNOR IN DOUBT.”
Published on the front page was the text of the conciliatory telegram Cox sent to Harding.
“In the spirit of America, I accept the decision of the majority, tender as the defeated candidate my congratulations, and pledge as a citizen my support to the executive authority in whatever emergency might arise. JAMES M. COX"
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