What’s Wrong with Bribing Voters?
A political cartoon from 1873 depicts Prime Minister John A. Macdonald unashamedly bribing voters. Macdonald’s government later resigned after it was revealed that he had accepted campaign donations from an industrialist with whom he was negotiating government railway contracts.

Firing MPs
In the early days of Confederation, many MPs were forced to resign due to a variety of undemocratic practices. “Elections cannot be carried without money”, candidly admitted one MP. Voters were bought off with food, drink or money. Deceased electors somehow showed up to vote. Electoral lists and ballots were falsified. Priests, employers and thugs respectively promised hell, unemployment or bodily harm to those who voted the wrong way. After the 1874 election, when courts first had the authority to rule on contested elections, nearly one third of the members of the House of Commons had to resign because of election irregularities. The 1920 electoral reform contributed greatly to solving these problems.