One person, one vote

“ No man expressed the least inclination to be chosen. Instead of humble advertisements, entreating votes and interest, one saw before every new election requests of former members, acknowledging the honor done them by preceding elections, but setting forth their long service and attendance on the public business in that station, and praying that in consideration thereof some other person might be chosen in their room. After a dissolution, the same representatives might be and usually were re-elected without asking a vote or giving even a glass of cider to an elector. ”

“ In that case, each person would have one vote on the ground of his personality, and other votes in proportion to is income. Whenever any further extension of our representative system becomes necessary, the dangers arising from the extension of the personal suffrage may fairly be counterbalanced by giving a plurality of votes to property. ”

“ I remember standing at the polls one day when the anger of the political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the independent electors, and a good man at my side, looking on the people, remarked, "I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to vote right." ”

“ For a week before election he is apt to have a distressing, soul-haunting consciousness that a City Government is shortly to be chosen and that he must, as a free-born and virtue-loving citizen, vote for somebody. ”

“ It is also true that the great political principles which have been in issue for the last thirty years, have been, in general, those that have been debated for centuries, and which cannot be settled by a single vote, in a legislative body, by the result of a single election, or even by the opinion of a single generation. ”

“ There are many persons, who, though possessing the suffrage, often put the question, “What is the use of a vote?” Giving small heed to political affairs, the issue of elections has as little interest for them as the debates in Parliament; and they imagine that the process of governing the country is mainly a self-acting one, upon which their individual effort could have the least possible effect.
This idea is wrong at the root, and the cause of much mischief in politics. We are governed by majorities, and every vote counts. ”

“ Knowing that a vote for his individual choice will be disregarded, he feels practically compelled to accept the candidate of some group, faction or party; one with whom he has no personal acquaintance whatever; and who if elected will represent not the voter at all, nor his views, but the combination which put him forward, and which has an existence, a history, leaders and motives of its own. ”

“ There is a carelessness growing upon the people, and we perceive it to some extent in our religious affairs and public meetings, but we see it more clearly when it comes to voting, for many who have a right to vote stay away from the polls. ”

“ These restrictions are not arguments for the wide distribution of the ballot—they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the self-interest of the present real rulers. We say easily, for instance, "The ignorant ought not to vote." ”

“ I should like to see you speak to the heart of the man who is going to record his vote."
"It is a slow matter to win votes in units," he reminded her.
"But it is the real way," she insisted. "Voting by party and government by party will soon come to an end. It must. All that it needs is a strong man with a definite programme of his own, to attack the whole principle." ”

“ But I have often asked my Radical friends what is to be done if out of every hundred enlightened voters two-thirds will give their votes one way, but are afraid to fight, and the remaining third will not only vote but will fight too if the poll goes against them? ”

“ The honest, virtuous, intelligent, independent vote is the noblest power of a freeman, but the purchasable vote, the ignorant vote, the vicious and servile vote, is the opportunity of the knave and the scoundrel. The purity of the ballot is the only safety of a Republic, and no greater danger threatens this nation to-day than that which arises from the corruption of the suffrage. ”

“ For their want of intimate knowledge of affairs, I do not think this ought to disqualify them from voting at any town-meeting which I ever attended. I could heartily wish the objection were sound. But if any man will take the trouble to see how our people vote,—how many gentlemen are willing to take on themselves the trouble of thinking and determining for you, and, standing at the door of the polls, give every innocent citizen his ticket as he comes in, informing him that this is the vote of his party ”

“ Votes are unnecessarily multiplied now by so many men voting; a few could do it all, as well as to take the mass of men from their business and their families to vote. My husband votes the republican ticket, and many other men vote just as he does; then why not let my husband’s vote suffice for all who think as he does, and send the rest about their business? What need of so many men voting when all vote just alike? ”

“ Now, ask yourselves, and let me ask you, who has been to you, individually, and told you to vote just as you have voted here to-day? Has any man visited your habitations to tell you that when you came to this house you must all vote precisely alike? ”

“ This changes our entire conception of politics. Voting at the polls is not to be the expression of one man after another. My vote should not be my freak will any more than it should be my adherence to party, but my individual expression of the common will. The particularist vote does not represent the individual will because the evolution of the individual will is bound up in a larger evolution. Therefore, my duty as a citizen is not exhausted by what I bring to the state; my test as a citizen is how fully the whole can be expressed in or through me. ”

“ To turn such a situation to advantage for the public good will be, in a great measure, the task of the “independent voter,” who has of late made himself felt, and grown to the estate of a distinct political force. ”

“ The mere possession of a vote does not confirm or intensify any opinion. If any man here, at present without electoral power, became a voter to-morrow, would the mere possession of a vote affect any change in his political convictions? ”

“ The reality is that the electors renounce by the act of election, all their rights in favor of the representative, and he gains the entire authority which they lose. In his programme and in the speeches with which he wins the vote of the people, the candidate of course pretends to accept this fiction. Before election he talks of nothing but the interests of the public, he is the guardian and promoter of the common good, he forgets himself in his anxiety for the welfare of the community. ”

“ The last election has shown us what resolute men can do on a trifling occasion, if they will. You know the efforts of the three parties—what meetings they held, what money they raised, what talent was employed, what speeches made, what ideas set forth: not a town was left unattempted; scarce a man who had wit to throw a vote, but his vote was solicited. You see the revolution which was wrought by that vigorous style of work. ”

“ A vote would have been useless anyhow—they must not irritate the people. Nobody knew what they wanted, so it was no good to offend them by a vote, in whatever direction. They must wait and control themselves. ”

“ We must remember that if the theory of democracy is correct, the right to vote is not merely a privilege, not simply a method of meeting the needs of a particular group, and least of all a matter of recognized want or desire. ”

“ The habit of voting at the bidding of an employer, or of a landlord, was so firmly established, that hardly anything was capable of shaking it but a strong popular enthusiasm, seldom known to exist but in a good cause. A vote given in opposition to these influences was therefore, in general, an honest, a public-spirited vote: but in any case, and by whatever motive dictated, it was almost sure to be a good vote, for it was a vote against the monster evil—the overruling influence of oligarchy. ”

“ There are, however, two sides to the question, and, unless the writer is very much mistaken, the effect of the ballot, if those who believe in a free election are true to their mission, will be to create, not to destroy, a sense of responsibility. The voter must be impressed by public opinion with the conviction that the exercise of his vote is a matter solely resting between himself, his country, his conscience, and his God, and that consequently he alone is responsible and not another. ”

“ A representative, a senator, a governor may be made, any day, by a vote. Ballots can make a president out of almost any thing; the most ordinary material is not too cheap and vulgar for that. But all the votes of all the conventions, all the parties, are unable to make a people capable of [Pg 197] self-government. They cannot put intelligence and justice into the head of a single man. ”

“ We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more valuable than the democracy it declares. ”

“ This is accomplished by enabling him to vote in secret; for, in that case, the man who could otherwise compel his vote, is ignorant in what direction it has been given. In all cases,therefore, in which the independent interests of the voter, those which, in propriety of language, may be called his own interests, would dictate the good and useful vote; but in which cases, at the same time, he is liable to be acted upon in the way either of good or of evil, by men whose interests would dictate a base and mischievous vote, the ballot is a great and invaluable security ... ”

“ But it is a universal practice in the popular elections in all these States to give no legal consideration whatever to those who do not choose to vote, as against the effect of the votes of those who do choose to vote. ”

“ It’s always wrong—but it is magnificently wrong. It is consistent. To vote at the polls on the advice of the Times is almost to make a virtue of vice. To vote against it is to come near to statesmanship and is the first principle of political honour. ”

“ And now a curious thing developed itself—a sort of emulation, whose object was voting power! Whereas formerly a man was honored only according to the amount of money he possessed, his grandeur was measured now by the number of votes he wielded. A man with only one vote was conspicuously respectful to his neighbor who possessed three. And if he was a man above the common-place, he was as conspicuously energetic in his determination to acquire three for himself. ”

“ Every one is a half vote, but the next elector behind him brings the other or corresponding half in his hand: a reasonable result is had. Now there is no lack, I am sure, of the expediency, or of the interests of trade or of imperative class interests being neglected. There is no lack of votes representing the physical wants; and if in your city the uneducated emigrant vote numbers thousands, representing a brutal ignorance and mere animal wants, it is to be corrected by an educated and religious vote, representing the wants and desires of honest and refined persons. ”

“ The citizen is face to face with the problem, Shall he vote for candidates he knows to be unfit, merely to preserve his regularity, or shall he cast his ballot for the fittest men without respect to the party emblems on his ballot? ”

“ But the few of each, who form the ticket, actually make the appointment of the electors; for the people individually, have no choice, but to vote for the one or the other ticket — or otherwise, virtually, to throw away their vote — for there would be no chance of success against the concentrated votes of the two parties. Never was there a scheme better contrived to transfer power from the body of the community, to those whose occupation is to get or hold offices, and to merge the contests of party into a mere struggle for the spoils. ”

“ Then it is that the non-political electors who do not trouble to vote on ordinary occasions flock to the polls in their hundreds of thousands, that numbers of voters who held their opinions weakly go over to the other side, and that the candidates of the Party in power are made to feel the full weight of their combined wrath. ”

“ Purpose.—The end which the voter should have in mind is the good of the public, and hence it is not right to vote for candidates solely or chiefly because they are personal friends, members of one’s own race, organization or religion, or because one wishes to gain favor or escape enmity. ”

“ There are certain truths and precepts which, whenever you state them, seem so very simple, self-evident, and commanding that nobody dares to contradict them, but which are so easily and so quickly overlooked and forgotten that they cannot be repeated too earnestly and too often. One of them is that the citizen who puts his vote into the ballot box performs an act which affects not only his own interests but the interests of his neighbors, his fellow-beings, sometimes thousands and millions of them, for weal or woe ”

“ If we ask these ladies ourselves what a vote is, we shall get a very vague reply. It is the only question, as a rule, for which they are not prepared. For the truth is that they go mainly by precedent; by the mere fact that men have votes already. ”

“ When they fail to vote, they fail to rule--fail in their duty to the people and to themselves. The duty to vote implies the duty to vote right, to vote for good men and for good measures. Therefore, citizens should study their duty as voters, that they may elect honest, capable, faithful officers, and support the parties and principles that will best promote the good of the country? ”

“ A law compelling men to vote would seem to be equally inexpedient and impracticable. But by refraining from voting in any number, the voters repose the decision of the question in the hands of an unknown minority, who, by exercising their privilege, frequently bring about a state of things by which representation is given, not to the political views of the constituency, but to their very opposite. ”