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It was neither a quick nor an easy process. Voting in Saigon's baroque city hall, Thieu timed himself and found it took three minutes. Candidate Huong nearly invalidated his own vote, and was caught just in time by a peeking poll watcher as he started to insert his ballot in the box without its envelope.
The stylized symbol atop each ticket was the first and last eye-stop for many voters. In the hamlet of Dieu Ga, ten miles outside Saigon, a mother with babe on hip voted for the rice-stalk symbol of Ha Thuc Ky because, she said, she "liked rice very much." An old woman chose Dzu's white-dove ticket thinking it was a chicken. Dzu used the dove symbol to dramatize his peace platform, but in fact only highly educated Vietnamese were likely to have made the connection: the dove as an emblem of peace is a notion largely unfamiliar to the Vietnamese. Dzu took it from a Christmas card mailed to him from the U.S. by a fellow Rotarian.
All Too Honest. Everywhere, skeptics were alert for signs of a fix, but hard evidence of dishonesty was hard to come by. In the village of Thai Hiep Thanh in Tay Ninh province on the Cambodian border, a reporter watched suspiciously as Warrant Officer Le Van Thanh marched his platoon of armored troops into the school-house voting station. Had he told his men how to vote? he was asked. No, he replied, why should he? He himself had voted for Civilian Huong. On the outskirts of the Delta city of Can Tho, Farmer Ly Van Tarn found the procedures all too honest for his liking. "My wife is ill and cannot come," he explained, "so I brought her voting card, her identity papers and a family picture to prove I am her husband. But still they would not let me vote for her." It cost Thieu an extra vote, he added, because "Thieu and Ky have shown they can work, not just talk."
Brown-robed Buddhist Monk Thich Hanh Dao said that the monks in his Delta pagoda had discussed the candidates before voting, "and we all agreed to vote for the same person." That person was Huong, the monk hinted, but he admitted that he would not have been surprised if some of his colleagues had changed their minds. "When you walk into that little black room," he said, "you suddenly become aware that you really are free to pick whomever you want. It makes you stop and think."
A Vote for Ky. A surprising number of Vietnamese seemed to do just that —think for themselves. And those who did vote to order were not necessarily backers of the government ticket. In the ancient imperial capital of Hué, for example, Thich Tri Quang, the militant Buddhist monk, sent out word to vote for Suu. As a result, Suu not only carried Hué but nearby Danang and Thua Thien province as well. Huong, as expected, carried his old mayoralty of Saigon. Peace Candidate Dzu won five provinces, all longtime, hard-core bases for Viet Cong activity; he was runner-up to Thieu in 26 provinces honeycombed with Viet Cong cadres. Inevitably, the suspicion arose that the Viet Cong had quietly passed the word to voters to support Dzu. The accusation drew from Dzu an angry but logical rejoinder: Thieu, after all, beat him in 26 V.C.-infested provinces—"Why not say Thieu got the V.C. votes there?"