I have heard stories of how in early US and colonial elections, the practice of the day was for politicians to go through the town, and throw a giant party, with plenty of free booze, before directing the eligible voters to the polls.
I don't think this would fly today, at least sponsored by politicians and their respective parties. However if someone wanted to experience this idea, for .... reasons. What and how did they drink?
My first thought was that it might be similar to british navy grog, but I could see that importing rum or molasses would have been a non starter for colonials because of the benefit to the British government. So to me, it makes sense that they would have used apple jack or grain whiskey as the base spirit. Maybe they would have served it up like grog, since punch makes sense for serving a crowd.
TLDR: What do we know about what early US/colonial voters drank on election day, in days long past, and how did it change over time? (Wanting to pretend George W. is in town tonight).
Yes, the practice you are referring to is that of "treating," and it was a prominent part of election days, both in early America and in Britain as well.
These events could get pretty drunken. Since you mention George Washington, here is a list of the quantities of alcohol he provided at an election-day entertainment in 1758: 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons and 1 hogshead of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of "strong beer," and 2 gallons of cider. In total, it cost him about 40 GBP, which was a prodigious sum at that time, but he won the election, so he would probably say that it was money well spent.
As you can see from the list above, colonists tended to drink rum, beer, and wine. Rum was actually a huge industry in colonial North America: molasses was shipped from the sugar plantations of the West Indies to northeastern colonies like Massachusetts Bay, where it was distilled into rum. British attempts to pass protectionist legislation like the Molasses Act of 1733 made importing molasses from the French West Indian colonies like Saint-Domingue more expensive. But smuggling was pretty rampant, and colonists still had other legal channels for importing molasses and rum as well: for instance, from Jamaica and Barbados.
If you would like to see a visual image of an election-day treat, check out William Hogarth's An Election Entertainment, 1755: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humours_of_an_Election#/media/File:William_Hogarth_028.jpg. It depicts a British election in Oxford, but similar traditions took place in the American colonies as well. As you can see, things got pretty raucous.
Sources:
Peter Thompson, Rum Punch and Revolution: Taverngoing and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia (1999)
Richard Beeman, The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (2006)
For Washington specifically, there's actually a very good record. Washington would run for Frederick County's seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses twice. He counted on his personal qualities and failed the first time, but in the second, in 1758, he also spent a considerable amount of money on booze and food for the electors and ( despite not being present himself) won. The bill given to him by the friend who drove the wagon with the party supplies, Charles Smith, survives in the Washington papers. As the archive notes
Including the account of expenditures submitted by John Hite and enclosed in Smith to GW, 5 Aug., where it is printed, Smith paid out a total of £39.6 to five vendors for 46¾ gallons of beer, 40 gallons, 1 hogshead, 1 barrel, and 10 bowls of rum punch, nearly 35 gallons of wine, 2 gallons of cider, and 3½ pints of brandy, as well as dinner for his “friends.”
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-05-02-0273-0001
It works out to be around 160 gallons of various things to drink. There were 800 electors, and out of the four candidates Washington won with the most, 309. For comparison, £30 would be a decent year's wage for a journeyman carpenter. The party was not cheap!
