Municipal suffrage

“ It would be a work of supererogation to warn you against the puerile proposition to disfranchise all the people of the District, by placing their municipal affairs under the direct control of Congress, for such retrogressive legislation is beneath the consideration of your honorable committee, and would never be [Pg 365] tolerated by the American people. The tide of public opinion is setting to-day in the opposite direction; in all governments we see a steadily increasing tendency toward individual responsibilities—to the election of rulers by a direct voice of the people. ”

“ In making the changes you propose, it is evident you are doing to-day an elementary work in which all the people should have a voice; hence, your primal duty is to extend to the women of the District the right of suffrage, that they may vote on the schools, colleges, hospitals, prisons, and whether their government shall be republican with a Representative in Congress, municipal officers, or territorial with a Governor appointed by the President. ”

“ But where institutions are yet to be formed, I may say that I have not discovered any evil to arise from universal suffrage in the choice of representatives to our legislative bodies; but that for municipal{655} officers, who have no power over persons, but only that of applying the proceeds of taxes, those who contribute to such payment ought alone to have the privilege of being electors. ”

“ They respectfully submit that the exercise of the municipal franchise involves the personal attendance of women at the polls, and that since your words were uttered changes have been effected which render the process of voting absolutely identical for municipal and parliamentary elections, and the whole proceeding perfectly decorous and orderly. Experience has proved that women can vote at municipal elections without prejudice to the fundamental particulars of their condition as women, whatever these may be ”

“ So well satisfied are the representatives in the legislature of that State with these results that the assembly, by a large majority, recently passed to a third reading an act giving the full right of suffrage to women, the passage of which has been arrested in the Senate by an opinion of the attorney-general that a constitutional amendment is necessary to accomplish the object. In England women are allowed to vote at all municipal elections, and hold the office of guardian of the poor. ”

“ The statutes define strictly the duties of officials; their terms are made short, and through the multitude of offices, important and petty, it is clear that one purpose runs to make each directly answerable to the voters. In every quadrennial cycle the voters of New York City engage in the election of over five hundred incumbents of offices, state and municipal. ”

“ The members of the council, with the exception of the mayor, retain their seats for life, or during the pleasure of a majority, and vacancies are supplied by the remaining members. The town sends two representatives to parliament, and affords the nearest practical example of universal suffrage in the kingdom—every male inhabitant, whether housekeeper or lodger, who has resided six months in the town, and who has not, during the last twelve months, been chargeable to any township as a pauper, having a right to vote for two candidates at elections. ”

“ Let the members of the assembly be elected annually, and all votes taken by ballot. The suffrage to be universal. Let it have the privilege of making out the list of persons to be named as justices and sheriffs, and let the governor be bound to select one half of those thus recommended. Now we must consider numerous provisional laws relating to liberty of conscience, provision for the poor, choice of civil officers, and so on, which can be in force until accepted by the council. ”

“ The powers of the initiative and referendum are reserved to the people of every municipal corporation. No municipal corporation may ever grant, extend or renew a franchise without the approval of a majority of the qualified electors residing within its limits, and no franchise may be granted, extended or renewed for more than twenty-five years. Women are qualified to vote at school-district elections only. ”

“ In April, 1908, there was enacted an important piece of legislation whereby the franchise in municipal elections was conferred upon all resident taxpayers of the age of twenty-five, men and women alike; and, beginning with the elections of 1909, women have both voted and held office regularly within the municipalities. ”

“ All members of the city council will be elected at large, and there will be no ward members of the body. By the abolition of party designations no primary elections or caucuses for municipal offices will be held. "All candidates for mayor, city council and school board must be nominated by papers of not less than 5000 registered voters. No voter may sign more than one paper for mayor, not more than nine for council for the first election and for three candidates thereafter, and not more than two papers for the school board when there are two members to be elected. ”

“ The Reform of Municipal Governments.—Having reviewed the principal causes for the evils of municipal government, let us now consider some of the conditions that are necessary for bringing about reforms.
(1) National politics should be entirely separated from city affairs. It may be impossible to prevent the nomination of candidates by the regular political parties; but within each party local issues, not national, should determine the selection of candidates. At the polls the voter should cast his ballot independently of party considerations. ”

“ Civil service reform principles cover the entire municipal administration. The city’s work is done under an eight-hour law.
An analysis of city election returns for the decade 1890-1899 showed that the interest of the citizens was greatest in the choice of a president; then, successively, in the choice of a mayor, a governor, the determination of liquor-license questions by referendum, and the settlement of other referenda. ”

“ Formerly we were told that while national and State elections were held at the same time with those for municipal offices, party spirit ran away with many citizens who otherwise would have been inclined to give their efforts to good municipal government for its own sake, and that thereby the chances of non-partisan movements were grievously impaired. ”

“ In that time of buoyant hope, when every difficulty and abuse seemed about to be charmed away by the magic of universal suffrage, local self-government of a most advanced type had been intrusted to an inexperienced populace. There were elections for the commune or parish, elections for the canton, elections for the district, elections for the Department, and elections for the National Assembly, until the rustic brain, after reeling with excitement, speedily fell back into muddled apathy and left affairs generally to the wire-pullers of the nearest Jacobin club. ”

“ The local democracy, local republicanism everywhere, is a part of the national Democratic or Republican organisation. The party as a whole is composed of these municipal units. Each municipal campaign is conducted with an eye to the general fortunes of the party in the State or the nation; and the same power that appoints a janitor in a city hall may dictate the selection of a presidential candidate. ”

“ By this means you will secure the discussion of the question by the men who compose the different political parties in each township—an educational work that can not be done through any distinctively woman suffrage meeting, because so few of the rank and file of voters ever attend these. Then, when the time comes for the county convention to elect delegates to the State nominating convention, let every town meeting see to it that they are instructed to vote for a resolution favoring the submission and indorsement of a proposition to strike the word "male" from your constitution. ”

“ We are now on the eve of the first municipal election under the amended Constitution. The importance of the crisis is magnified by the fact that the municipal officers to be elected at the coming election will have the care of the business interests of the great municipality created by the new charter, their administration extending over a greatly enlarged territory, and their constituents being a population numbering upward of three millions of souls. The importance of the selection of proper officers for the management of the affairs of this imperial city cannot be exaggerated. ”

“ This is the most extraordinary campaign I ever witnessed; a struggle for good municipal government, in which we have to choose between two candidates for the Mayoralty who, both honorable men, profess to aim at the same ideals of municipal administration. ”

“ Will you by your suffrages stand by the right of citizens to have their municipal business managed by agents of their own selection in their interest, for the good of the whole city, or will you by your suffrages give support to the arrogant claim of the machine bosses that no man shall be elected Mayor of the City of New York unless he is first pledged to the support of an organization, and that his office shall be administered in the interest of the organization first and the public last? ”

“ And in case of a disputed election, he shall send the lists to the National Assembly, to which alone belongs the right of judgins of its members and of elections.
The electors of the represented cities are those who pay taxes; but after the first election, the cities may grant the right of citizenship to whomsoever they may see fit, provided he shall have attained the age of twenty-five years, shall be married, and of good character. Persons thus admitted by the cities are the only citizens, who have the right to vote for representatives of cities and municipal officers. ”

“ In addition, population shifts had caused a dated apportionment of seats in the lower house to yield substantial numerical inequality of political influence, even among qualified voters. The towns felt themselves underrepresented, and agitation began for electoral reform. When the charter government failed to respond, popular meetings of those who favored the broader suffrage were held and delegates elected to a convention which met and drafted a state constitution. ”

“ And every free white male citizen of lawful age, who shall have resided in the City of Washington for the space of one year next preceding the day of election, and shall be a resident of the ward in which he shall offer to vote, and who shall have been assessed on the books of the Corporation, not less than two months prior to the day of election, shall be qualified to vote for members to serve in the said Board of Aldermen and Board of Common Council, and no other person whatever shall exercise the right of suffrage at such election. ”

“ The time when public office was held by the grace of God and the majority of votes has become almost a thing of the past. The official’s worth now is not measured by his good-fellowship and vote-getting capacity, but rather by his ability to produce results—not at the polls on Election Day, but in the City Hall every day. ”

“ The conduct of a campaign, before an election, for the purpose of exerting an influence upon the voters, is not the exercise of an authorized municipal function and hence is not a corporate purpose of the municipality. ”

“ Farewell, then, to the right of suffrage in this city. The paid firemen and the paid policemen, openly or tacitly sustained by the press, would utterly block up and control the passages leading to the ballot-boxes, permitting (as many of the police do now) only those to vote who could give the countersign. This fearful consolidation of power in the first American city might lead to the most deplorable results to the whole country. We have not existed eighty years as a Republic, which is a very brief period in the silent and trackless footsteps of centuries. ”

“ Each petty political unit having a municipal government of its own comprises a voting precinct. If at the first ballot no candidate in the district receives a majority of all the votes cast, a second ballot is taken, when a simple plurality is decisive. A noteworthy feature of the system is the fact that voters who on account of illness, military service, or other valid reason, are unable to appear at the polls are permitted to transmit their votes in writing to the proper election officials. ”

“ These constitutions also allow a prescribed number of voters to demand that a law passed by the state legislature, or an ordinance passed by the municipal authority, be submitted to all the voters for their approval. If rejected by them, it falls to the ground. This is the Referendum. Some cities also provide in their charters that an official, including the mayor or a member of the council, may be displaced from office if, at a special election held on the demand of a prescribed number of the city voters, he does not receive the largest number of votes cast. ”

“ In the municipal vote women possess an aid whose power they have not yet realized. It is a power which, if organized into a moral municipal league, would prove more permanently efficient than even the Parliamentary franchise, for the election of councilmen is the first link in the great chain of free government. ”

“ I should give each municipal voter such number of votes as would represent his stake in the municipality, say one vote for every four hundred dollars of assessable property, and an additional vote for every additional four hundred dollars, up to a maximum of perhaps ten votes, and no more, which would sufficiently protect the richer ratepayers without neutralizing the wishes of the poorer voters. ”