William Mills Ivins Sr. (1851–1915) was a lawyer and Republican candidate for Mayor of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1905. Ivins was one of

's famous reformers working on the improvement of the election law and fighting the widespread election fraud in New York City. He was the president of the Executive Committee of the Electoral Laws Improvement Association. Together with reformers like Albert S. Bard or William E. Curtis he tried to complete the introduction of the secret ballot (

Australian Ballot The secret ballot, also known as the Australian ballot, is a voting method in which a voter's identity in an election or a referendum is anonymous. This forestalls attempts to influence the voter by intimidation, blackmailing, and potential v ...

) to fight corruption. Ivins was also member of the Honest Ballot Association, the City Reform Club, and Ballot Reform Committee of

Citizens Union Citizens Union is a New York City-based good government group founded in 1897 to combat the influences of the Tammany Hall political machine. J. Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Altman, Elihu Root, and Carl Schurz numbered among its 165 founders. In 1987 ...

. Ivins is the author of ''Machine Politics and Money in Elections in New York City. New York 1887''. Ivins was the father of William Ivins Jr., curator of the department of prints at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ivins, William 1851 births 1915 deaths Politicians from New York City New York (state) Republicans Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery American political writers American male non-fiction writers