Plural voting

“ Until there shall have been devised, and until opinion is willing to accept, some mode of plural voting which may assign to education as such the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class, for so long the benefits of completely universal suffrage can not be obtained without bringing with them, as it appears to me, more than equivalent evils. ”

“ Hares plan, combined with opening the suffrage to women, than to the plural voting which, in the form proposed by Mr. Buxton, of attaching the plurality of votes directly to property, I have always thoroughly repudiated. But I think what you say of it likely to be very useful by impressing on the working people that it is no degradation to them to consider some people's votes of more value than others. ”

“ While the Reform Bill was under discussion he predicted that it would fail of finality, and avowed his preference for manhood suffrage, provided property were protected by a system of plural voting and the voter secured against canvassing and intimidation. ”

“ Even how the change in the constitution granting universal suffrage is coupled with the right of plural voting by the property-owners, but it is quite certain that this obnoxious feature will be soon abandoned by the chambers and universal suffrage will prevail, as in the adjoining nations of France and Germany. ”

“ The Liberals also got what they wanted—a vote for every man with a college education. The Socialists got half of their demands, [130] which was all that they could reasonably have expected at a time when votes for women were not being widely advertised.
But of the three parties, only the first has shown any measure of satisfaction with the arrangement, for plural voting plays into the hands of the Church. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, if there were no prior convention, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority? How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. ”

“ I do not propose the plurality as a thing in itself undesirable, which, like the exclusion of part of the community from the suffrage, may be temporarily tolerated while necessary to prevent greater evils. I do not look upon equal voting as among the things which are good in themselves, provided they can be guarded against inconveniences. ”

“ Gray, though not determinative here, since involving the weighting of votes in statewide elections, established the basic principle of equality among voters within a State, and held that voters cannot be classified, constitutionally, on the basis of where they live, at least with respect to voting in statewide elections. ”

“ Methods of voting can be manipulated in various ways, and nearly every method has its own liability to falsification. We may take for illustration the commonest, simplest case—the case that is the perplexity of every clear-thinking voter under British or American conditions—the case of a constituency in which every elector has one vote, and which returns one representative to Parliament. The naive theory on which people go is that all the possible candidates are put up, that each voter votes for the one he likes best, and that the best man wins. ”

“ Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all agree with me, that it is not only one of them, but the one without which all the others are nothing. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person, in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. ”

“ My personal observation in the United States and Canada had impressed me with the dangers inseparable from the election of Federal Legislatures by local majorities—sometimes by minorities—where money and influence could be employed, particularly where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. ”

“ This custom of declaring successful the candidate receiving a plurality constitutes a defect in our representative system, since a plurality candidate may represent only a small minority of those actually voting.
Several attempts have been made to remedy this defect. In some southern states it is the practice to require an absolute majority for election. If no aspirant receives a majority, a second ballot is taken on the two candidates standing highest on the list. In a number of northern cities, the evil of plurality voting has been attacked through the preferential voting device. ”

“ Whether the statute itself has its warrant in the Constitution is a question not necessary now to be considered. For my part, I cannot see the authority for taking out of the ballot-boxes the ballots of lawful voters and throwing them away because other voters did not vote, whatever may have been the cause of their not voting, whether they were frightened, foolish, or perverse. ”

“ Before I come to the terms of the trust deed, it may be convenient to say a few words about the society. The objects of the society are to secure the adoption of the principle of proportional representation by the method of the single transferable vote in national, local and other elections. That may be a very laudable object, but it is clear that it is not a charitable object for the simple reason that, as the society is seeking to alter the method of voting at present in force, legislation would be required, and, therefore, their principal object is to alter the law of this country. ”

“ Intrigue and combination are more commonly found connected with secret sessions, than with public debates, with the workings of the ballot box, than with the manliness of viva voce votes. At least, it may be questioned, if the vote by ballot has, in the opinion of a majority of the American people, obtained any decisive preference over viva voce voting, even at elections. The practice in New England is one way, and at the South another way. ”

“ The cherished right of people in a country like ours to vote cannot be obliterated by the use of laws like this, which leave the voting fate of a citizen to the passing whim or impulse of an individual registrar. ”

“ And I am prepared to maintain that the permission of cumulative votes, that is, of giving either one, two, or three votes to a single candidate, is in itself, even independently of its effect in giving a representation to minorities, the mode of voting which gives the most faithful expression of the wishes of the elector. On the existing plan, an elector who votes for three, can give his vote for the three candidates whom he prefers to their competitors ”

“ But "one person, one vote" has been the premise and the necessary condition of a vote dilution claim, since it establishes the baseline for computing the voting strength that the minority bloc ought to have. ”

“ Those principles apply here. For to repeat, wealth or fee paying has, in our view, no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned. ”

“ But once a State has decided to use the process of popular election and 'once the class of voters is chosen and their qualifications specified, we see no constitutional way by which equality of voting power may be evaded.' Gray v. ”

“ Yet despite all these and the other advances, a distinctly new uneasiness about the whole process of voting has recently been making itself manifest. Many thoughtful citizens have been troubled by doubts not whether elections are honest, but whether they can be made fully representative of the popular will; not whether the citizen can freely cast a pure ballot, but whether he cares enough about it to cast any ballot at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With us, on the contrary, there is no such consequence to be apprehended; and, accordingly, our voting for representatives is always by ballot. On our system, this is not only unobjectionable but highly important; for, as the successful candidate is elected by the majority of votes, while it is possible that his opponent might be supported by a much greater number of voters, it would be very inexpedient to let this be publicly displayed and recorded; as it might tend to array the wealthier and poorer classes against each other. ”

“ It need hardly be said, in this company, that an election among us is a far more exciting occasion than among our less-favored American neighbors, who ignore the superior advantages of voting viva voce, and adopt the less manly and unobtrusive medium of the ballot. ”

“ And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot—all peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law. ”

“ This would so far give reality to the electoral rights of the otherwise virtually disfranchised minority. But it is important that not those alone who refuse to vote for any of the local candidates, but those also who vote for one of them and are defeated, should be enabled to find elsewhere the representation which they have not succeeded in obtaining in their own district. It is therefore provided that an elector may deliver a voting paper containing other names in addition to the one which stands foremost in his preference. His vote would only be counted for one candidate ”

“ The liberty of voting includes all other liberties. The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.
I do not desire this secret ballot law for myself. I like to lay my ballot in the box, face upwards, looking heavenward ”

“ The words 'qualified voters,' as used in the constitution, must be taken to mean not those qualified and entitled to vote, but those qualified and actually voting. In that connection a voter is one who votes, not one who, although qualified to vote, does not vote. ”

“ 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? ”

“ How then can one person be given twice or 10 times the voting power of another person in a statewide election merely because he lives in a rural area or because he lives in the smallest rural county? Once the geographical unit for which a representative is to be chosen is designated, all who participate in the election are to have an equal vote-whatever their race, whatever their sex, whatever their occupation, whatever their income, and wherever their home may be in that geographical unit. ”

“ What, therefore, the law of 1893 does is, broadly, to confer upon every male citizen one vote and to specify three principal conditions under which this basal voting power may be augmented. As the head of a family, the citizen's suffrage may be doubled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suppose, for instance, ten individuals in a state of nature, about to enter into government, nine of whom were equally wise, equally strong, equally wealthy, the tenth is ten times as wise, ten times as strong, or ten times as rich; if, for this reason, he is to have ten votes for each vote of the others, the nine might as well have no vote at all, and though the whole nine might assent to the measure, yet the vote of the tenth would countervail, and set aside all their votes. ”

“ But the necessary simplicity of any mass decision is a very important fact in view of the inevitable complexity of the world in which those decisions operate. The most complicated form of voting that anyone proposes is, I suppose, the preferential ballot. Among a number of candidates presented the voter under that system, instead of saying yes to one candidate and no to all the others, states the order of his choice. ”

“ Make your election laws so as to exclude the vast rabble. Let it be understood that no man shall vote who has not lived here at least one year.
Let your registration laws prohibit any man from voting unless he has been registered at least six months. We do not want to be governed by people who have no abode here—who are political Bedouins of the desert. ”