Popular election

“ When the highest dignity in the state is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years, the whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvass. President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all electioneerers: the whole community is kept intent on the mere personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election. ”

“ Again, representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election thus practiced, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its machinery. ”

“ After such an example, it can not be said that indirect popular election is never advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the very best system that can be adopted. But those conditions are hardly to be obtained in practice except in a federal government like that of the United States, where the election can be intrusted to local bodies whose other functions extend to the most important concerns of the nation. ”

“ The favorite theory, however, is that the choice of bosses will be made by popular election, and such a course would be eminently [Pg 69] socialistic in that it cynically and entirely ignores the claims of individual efficiency.
We know how inadequate a system of election may be, especially when popularity becomes the important factor in the choice of a candidate. It is not easy to imagine the complications that will ensue when every question of management of social affairs must be determined by the vote of the people. ”

“ The plan for depriving the minority of the power to control the selection of public officials, which is now rapidly gaining adherents among the advocates of political reform, is the direct primary. That some such change in our method of nominating candidates is necessary to make the so-called popular election of public officials anything more than an empty form is apparent to any intelligent student of American politics. ”

“ R. MacBride, The American Electoral College 16-17 (1953) .↑ The large number of leaders, of varying ideological convictions, who favored popular election included Hamilton, Madison, James Wilson, John Dickinson, Rufus King, Daniel Carroll, and Abraham Baldwin. The opponents of popular selection included Gerry, Ellsworth, Luther Martin, and Roger Sherman. ”

“ A State “goes” Republican or Democratic. The struggle is concentrated in a few doubtful States. To [Pg 68] win or lose them may mean to win or lose the election. It has happened that one candidate has actually received a larger popular vote than his opponent, and yet has not been elected, because the number of votes in the electoral college from the States that gave him a majority was smaller than the number of electoral votes from the other States. There is a movement toward the abolition of the electoral college and direct nomination and direct election of the President by the voters. ”

“ But the district mode of election, is far more inconsistent with the principles of our Union, than that by state legislatures; because, in that mode, state will, though one of the parties to the union, loses its whole influence; wherein an election by state legislatures, popular will retains an influence upon the election of a president, equivalent to its influence over these legislatures. ”

“ Law has no other sanction than that with us; and happy are we, and happy are those communities where the election methods are so honestly and faithfully prescribed and observed that no doubt is thrown upon the popular expression and no question of the integrity of the ballot is ever raised. ”

“ The minority member is nailed to his seat, and can neither take office nor retire, except at a general election. All complicated arrangements are apt to harbor wire-pulling, for the wire-puller, even if he is baffled at first, soon learns the trick. The only measure of this kind which appears to promise real improvement is the adoption of the second ballot when no candidate has polled an absolute majority at the first. ”

“ The primary electors, instead of losing by the change, would gain a real power of indirect election, whereas the apparent power of direct election which at present they possess is an illusion, the reality having been filched from them by the caucus, which is always in the hands of a ring. A wise arrangement of local institutions on the elective principle would of course be the basis of the system, as it is the indispensable training school of the people in self-government. ”

“ The effect, then, will be that the representative will be chosen on principles that are already familiar to the minds of the electors, and not on principles that peculiarly and specially affect the institution in question. Existing controversies will influence the minds of the electors, and the constituency will be divided according to the lines of existing party divisions. Both school boards and municipal government yield an example that popular elections must be fought out on simple and familiar questions. The existing political grooves are cut too deeply to allow of any escape from them. ”

“ To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of the people is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election; ”

“ Not only all vanishes, but his praise goes to the other side, and redounds to the credit of popular elections; for almost every distinguished man in the Senate or in any other department of the government, now or heretofore—from the Congress of Independence down to the present day—has owed his first elevation and distinction, to popular elections—to the direct vote of the people, given, without the intervention of any intermediate body, to the visible object of their choice ”

“ The long ballot is the enemy of democracy, since it allows politicians, rather than the masses, to control actual government.
447. SHORTENING THE BALLOT.—The chief remedy for these evils is the short ballot. The essential features of the short ballot plan are as follows: Popular elections should be resorted to only for the purpose of choosing those officials who have to do with public policies. For example, state voters ought to select only the governor, lieutenant governor, and members of the legislature; city voters ought to choose only the mayor and council ”

“ Mr Madison considered the popular election of one branch of the national Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government. He observed that in some of the States one branch of the Legislature was composed of men already removed from the people by an intervening body of electors. That if the first branch of the general legislature should be elected by the State Legislatures, the second branch elected by the first—the Executive by the second together with the first; ”

“ The new mode of trying elections, if it be found effectual, will diffuse its consequences further than seems yet to be foreseen. It is, I believe, generally considered as advantageous only to those who claim seats in parliament; but, if to choose representatives be one of the most valuable rights of Englishmen, every voter must consider that law as adding to his happiness, which makes his suffrage efficacious; since it was vain to choose, while the election could be controlled by any other power. ”

“ It is matter of common knowledge that the great mass of the American electorate is grouped into political parties, to one or the other of which voters adhere with tenacity, due to their divergent views on questions of public policy, their interest, their environment, and various other influences, sentimental and historical. So strong with the great majority of voters are party associations, so potent the party slogan, so effective the party organization, that the likelihood of a candidate succeeding in an election without a party nomination is practically negligible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our wards and precincts should be made smaller, so that people can vote without violence, without wasting an entire day, so that the honest business man that wishes to cast his ballot for the Government of his choice can walk to the polls like a gentleman and deposit his vote and go about his affairs. Allow me to say that unless some such plan is adopted in the United States, there never will be another fair election in this country. ”

“ It is calculated that the effect of forty per cent of the second ballotings is to prevent the election of the candidate obtaining originally the largest number of votes. The arrangement operates to the advantage principally of the National Liberals, the Radicals, and other essentially moderate parties, and to the disadvantage especially of the Social Democrats. ”

“ Why, pray, should the people complain, when they had everything done for them? The benevolent parties, both Democratic and Republican, even undertook the expense of printing the ballots! And generous ballots they were (twenty inches long and five wide!) , distributed before election, in order that the voters might have the opportunity of studying and preparing them: in order that Democrats of delicate feelings might take the pains to scratch out all the Democratic candidates, and write in the names of the Republican candidates. ”

“ Experience has shown that the load of responsibility placed upon the voters by these new measures was sometimes more than they were willing to bear. The scanty primary votes, and the inattention to some of the referendum and initiative questions put on the ballots, were seized upon as showing that the voter was interested only in men. On the other hand, the ballots of most cities, towns and states were loaded down with long lists of officers to be chosen at each election, so that the “vote for men” was in many cases a vote in the dark. ”

“ Everybody knows that Election day anywhere creates an unusual excitement; but it is in the large cities where partisan feeling runs the highest, where strongest and strangest influences are brought into requisition to influence the election of favorite candidates; where the people are made to act as blind confederates in a skilful scheme of party trickery and political legerdemain, which places one man into office, and defeats the expectations of another, whom they fully expected to see invested with the imaginary robes of municipal power. ”

“ It is very gratifying to observe the general interest now being manifested in the reform of our election laws. Those who have been for years calling attention to the pressing necessity of throwing about the ballot box and about the elector further safeguards, in order that our elections might not only be free and pure, but might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the accession of any who did not so soon discover the need of reform. ”

“ I tried to serve my country in the capacity of a public official, but my services and talents were repeatedly rejected—the majority of voters always so necessary to an honest election was forever on the side of my lucky opponent. ”

“ The campaigns increase in intensity week after week and expire, or explode, in a blaze of glory the night before election, at which time the committees of the leading parties set forth the reasons that make each side certain of success. On election day a hush spreads over the land and the voters wend their way to the polling places, where each voter is permitted to register a sovereign's will. ”

“ Victory at the polls depends not so much upon the services which a statesman, however eminent, may have rendered to his country, as upon the ability of the party to maintain its majority in the particular constituency for which he stands. Indeed, in this matter a leader of opinion is placed at a disadvantage as compared with an ordinary member of the party; his very pre-eminence, his very activities bring him into conflict with certain sections of the electorate which, insignificant in themselves, may yet be sufficiently numerous to influence the result of an election. ”

“ It is, however, sufficient for the purpose of the political organizer to know that a number of the electors will succumb to such influences. The votes of this small section of the electorate can turn the scale at an election, and so long as we adhere to a system under which the whole of the representation allotted to any given constituency is awarded to the party which can secure a bare majority of votes, we must expect to see a progressive degradation of electoral contests. ”

“ There was no hurrah, no noise, no violence, but a tremendous outpouring of men, filling every voting precinct in the land, creating a larger percentage of voters who exercise their right of franchise than on any former election ever held in America. ”

“ We ask for them the considerate judgment of the American people. Confident alike in the history of our great party and in the justice of our cause, we present our platform and our candidates in the full assurance that the election will bring victory to the Republican party and prosperity to the people of the United States. ”