Albert Martin Kales

“ Extra-legal government, like the South, represents a vast property interest which, while at first seeking protection, soon became aggressive in its desire to extend its power and its institutions. As the North sought to live with the institution of slavery in the South, to compromise with it and to check it here and there, so we have been trying to live with extra-legal government, to compromise with it and to check it when we saw it in an especially obnoxious form. ”

“ We have given power to an executive council which will enable it to do something. We have constituted a government which will be inactive, not because its hands are tied, but because it chooses not to do anything. The leader of the successful party cannot say that he has failed to keep the party pledges because he had no power to act. No one, however, need fear that the concentration of power in the hands of a few will prove in any way dangerous to the liberties of the people. The council of state can exercise power only so long as it retains the confidence of a majority in the legislature. ”

“ The voter’s duty will be simple and he can perform it with the maximum amount of intelligence. The function of the electorate in voting is vital because it confers the whole power of the local government upon a body which is directly responsible to the electorate. What place, then, is there for the professional adviser and director to the politically ignorant voter? None! There is no such political ignorance as calls for a director and adviser. The voter needs only enlightenment as to which of two honest and fairly efficient men has a program which the voter on the whole favors. ”

“ Being in existence and efficient, it will often be a determining factor in nominating and electing a candidate for an office so important, and, viewed by itself, so conspicuous, that in a special election to fill that one office the intelligence of the electorate would be displayed at its maximum. For instance, if we look at the federal government alone, we find that the voter casts his ballot only for president, vice-president, and usually only one congressman. ”

“ Coming to the voting booth constantly handicapped by the densest political ignorance, without organization and without leaders, it falls again and again before the trained and permanent feudal army of vote-directors. There will be no serious danger to our extra-legal government from the electorate as a whole while the officers of the legal government are shorn of power or the opportunity by combination to secure power and compelled to face constantly an electorate ignorant of their personalities and their qualifications for office. ”

“ Today our legal rulers are selected for us by the few through the subterfuge of the masses casting their ballots according to the directions of the few. In other forms of unpopular government the central figure has been the monarch, the autocrat, the oligarch, or the aristocrat. In ours it is the politocrat. We have avoided monarchy, autocracy, oligarchy, and aristocracy, only to find ourselves tightly in the grasp of a politocracy. ”

“ If it takes a supreme effort for a number of years successively to oust a present extra-legal government, and when the result of so doing is merely to substitute another extra-legal government of the same sort, what is the use of the extraordinary effort made? Why not advise the voter to concentrate his efforts from time to time in getting good men in the more important offices and letting the rest go? This attitude of mind becomes more and more common, especially among intelligent men who see the actual situation. ”

“ Not only, however, does the political ignorance of the voter present an obvious opportunity to someone to direct him how to vote and thus cast his ballot for him, but an overwhelming self-interest on the part of individuals invokes at once the strongest motive to use the opportunity. The man that can control the power of the electorate will secure the power to appoint to office. ”

“ I believe in the disfranchisement of the voter by keeping him too ignorant politically to vote intelligently. I believe that all voters, no matter how intelligent in general, can be made [Pg 68] politically ignorant in voting by placing upon them a burden of investigating candidates and attending elections which they can conceivably, but will not in fact, perform. I believe that such a burden upon the voter can be produced most readily by the decentralization of governmental power in every possible way, and the constant application of the elective principle. ”

“ Suppose, for instance, at any time in the last ten years the direct issue could have been presented to the electorate whether they preferred government by an extra-legal oligarchy of politocrats, subject only indirectly and very slightly at any single election to the electorate, or a legal government, subject directly to the will of the electorate. Can there be any doubt that the great majority would vote the extra-legal government out of power and abolish politocracy as they would abolish absolute monarchy or a self-perpetuating oligarchy? ”

“ The courts have already gone beyond the mere academic function of declaring acts of the legislature void only when they are utterly irrational and arbitrary in their discriminatory operation. The courts now boldly perform the function of protecting property from hasty, ill-advised, and unjust legislation. Heretofore, at least, public opinion has sustained the courts in the exercise of this function. The placing of this power in the hands of judges has insured its exercise by men who at least are not prejudiced against property and are inclined to give it a fair hearing. ”

“ Even when monarchy was absolute and a popular uprising overthrew it by means of a successful revolution, the ultimate result was merely to substitute a new absolute monarchy for the old one. So with us today, when one extra-legal government by politocrats is overthrown by the extraordinary and prolonged efforts of the electorate, nothing happens ultimately but the substitution of a new extra-legal government for the old. ”

“ Under such circumstances a vote-directing machine, instead of slipping over, in the darkness and obscurity which comes from a multiplicity of elections and offices to be filled, those whom it can control, for ends of which the electorate does not really approve, must begin to appeal to the voter’s intelligence with candidates of character, arguments, platforms, and pledges of legislation which those elected have the power to keep. ”

“ The great sources of governmental power are the Congress of the United States, the legislatures of the state and local governments. When the tide of political ignorance on the part of the intelligent voter rises so high that it embraces the candidates for the local, state, and federal legislative bodies, the situation is serious. When it includes the local judiciary and all but the president of the United States, the highest executive officer of the state and of the principal local government, the situation has become desperate. ”

“ To insist then upon self-taught political education which the voter has not in the past and will not in the future and perhaps actually cannot secure is to all practical intents and purposes to ignore utterly the cause which makes the existence of extra-legal unpopular government by politocrats permanent. ”

“ Property interests will naturally regard it as unfair that they should take the risk of a new experiment in government. Nor will property be satisfied with protection by the courts as now constituted. The fact that judges are for the most part elected by popular vote, that the recall of judges and of judicial decisions is being violently advocated, will hardly tend to reassure property in the protection from the electorate by the courts to which it believes itself fairly entitled. ”

“ A system of electing commissioners at large from an unwieldy district in a greater or less degree produces a condition which tends to keep alive the extra-legal government. On the other hand, with elections in wieldy districts the number of candidates who come forward is the largest possible. The choice of the voter [Pg 151] is, therefore, the widest. Each candidate may become most easily personally known to the electorate. The sharp contest between individuals in a small district is always peculiarly enlightening to the electorate and stimulating to his interest in political matters. ”

“ The man who has a real hold upon a majority of so numerous an electorate will inevitably be led to a candidacy for governor of the state or senator of the United States, if not indeed for president of the United States. Another obstacle to the actual choice of judges by so numerous an electorate is that the determination of those fit to hold judicial office is unusually difficult. It would be a problem for a single individual who had an extensive personal knowledge of the candidates and had observed them closely for a considerable period in the practice of their profession. ”

“ It is futile then to insist upon the performance of duties which the electorate will not perform or the attainment of a political education which the electorate will not secure by its own efforts and which cannot be had in any other way. The proper course is to readjust the political duties of the voter so that what he is called upon to do he will accomplish with the minimum amount of ignorance in view of the effort which he himself is likely to develop to inform himself and make an intelligent choice. ”

“ Whatever union there may be is largely on the side of giving the executive a position in the deliberations of the legislative body. The council has no function in the actual exercise of the executive power. The entire executive power is really concentrated in a single individual elected at large and holding office for two and often four years. This feature is in sharp contrast to the vesting of the executive power in the representatives of wieldy districts or “quotas,” who control and direct the exercise of that power by a single executive who holds at their pleasure. ”

“ Even then not much can be done unless the election is for a single important office and the election district is wieldy [6] in size. Whenever the candidates about whom the voter is to be informed are only four or five out of two or three hundred running for fifty different offices, the information and criticism lose much of their force. If the altruistic effort were directed toward informing the electorate about candidates for unimportant and inconspicuous offices, not only would funds fail to be forthcoming, but its voice would be unheeded and unheard. ”