Electoral Reform.

SEVENTY years ago, Jeremy Bentham drafted his famous Radical Reform Bill, intended to correct the evils and abuses of British Parliamentary government. Comprehensive and philosophical in its provisions, and leading as it did to widespread discussion and agitation, the bill may be fairly regarded as a most influential source of modern political reform. John Stuart Mill, the first political thinker of the generation which succeeded Bentham, acknowledged himself to be no other than his critic and expositor. Among the reforms which Bentham strongly urged, and for which his bill provided, was a secret ballot. Such a ballot was necessary, he declared, if external influences were to be excluded from a voter's expression of his will at the polls. Nor was he oblivious to the advantages whereby secret voting makes one vice overset another: he saw that untrustworthiness to do the thing for which a bribe is paid must always be suspected to accompany the willingness to accept bribes. Since Bentham's day the circumstances of American political life have undergone so complete a transformation as to present problems entirely new. Concurrently, so rapid has been political progress elsewhere, that to-day we may examine with profit the safeguards which surround the franchise in other lands.

The American methods of voting which Bentham admired seventy years ago were adapted to conditions widely different from those of to-day. Then our communities were homogeneous and their populations small. Locomotion was so slow and costly that migration was uncommon. Neighborhood meant acquaintance, and local public opinion had a force now hardly

to be imagined. To-day our cities, thronged with immigrants from every nation of continental Europe, have populations in number rivalling those of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, Machinery, more and more effective, applied to field and farm, diminishes rural populations, conducing to the farther congestion of cities. With locomotion every year becoming more rapid and cheap, migration constantly increases. Is it any wonder that institututions inherited from a social and political past so totally different should fail to meet the exigencies which now surround us? Surely the evils of non-adjustment are sufficiently grievous and indeed threatening to demand thorough-going reform. Amid new perils, created by the nation's growth, we cannot pay the founders of the republic higher honor than in making the letter of their laws conform to their spirit-guarding to the uttermost every citizen's franchise, and securing a pure and honest administration of public affairs.

In the early years of this century the law's assumption that a voter would be personally known to the officer in whose presence he dropped his folded ballot was fulfilled in fact. The simple safeguard of challenge prevented personation. populations grew dense, officers could not know all who claimed the right to vote, and fraudulent personation at the polls became more and more common. Reform, however, in the shape of Registration Acts, came slowly. In New York State registration for electors was enacted as recently as 1872, after Tweed's régime had long wielded authority by wholesale and unblushing electoral frauds. And in the battle for this long and grievously needed reform, the forces of opposition representing sinister interests of the old system received no small aid and comfort from apparently honest men, who maintained registration to be undemocratic or unconstitutional, or both. A like opposition, similarly aided and comforted, to-day stretches itself across the pathway of ballot reform.

Originally the view taken by our laws recognized no parties,

assuming every voter free to write the name of his candidate on an independent ballot. Soon, however, voters came to group themselves into parties—as a rule not more than two in number, for outside the lines of these parties few cared to wastefully cast their votes. Political activity then directed itself to securing delegates to conventions, and organizing success at the polls. The developments of this political activity under circumstances of antiquated procedure and defective law can perhaps be studied in New York City with most profit. As the nation's metropolis, the city having a larger foreign population than any other in the Union, it presents the necessities for electoral reform in their acutest phase. The election laws in force in New York City effectively guard against frauds of personation, intimidation, or disorder at the polls. There are four days for registration prior to election. The law provides that every party which in the preceding election has polled 50,000 votes shall be entitled to two inspectors. As in 1888 only two parties came within this limitation, four inspectors were appointed for each election district; the appointing authority being the Board of Police. Further provision is made for the engagement of pollclerks, and for insuring a faithful count of the vote at the close of the poll. Excellent as the law is as far as it goes, it suffers from two omissions so grave that thereon turn the principal evils sought to be remedied by electoral reform. As it stands the law applies only to so much of the apparatus of elections as refers to the registration of voters and to taking and counting the vote. While it prescribes the form in which ballots are to be printed, their number, and says how they are to be folded and endorsed, it is silent on the vital point as to who shall print and distrib. ute them-leaving this important duty to private enterprise. And while the intention of the law plainly is that the ballot shall be absolutely secret, yet the provisions of the law fail to give this intention effect. The law neglects to recognize that existing methods of voting are not secret, in that they permit a

briber to have full view of a bribed voter's tickets from the moment they are handed him until they are dropped in the ballot-boxes. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, but when needful links are lacking, the remainder, however strong by themselves, are useless. Entering in at the two loop-holes of neglect the non-provision for the printing and distribution of tickets by public authority, and for guarding the absolute secrecy of the ballot-have come the chief remediable frauds and abuses of the political machinery of New York City, whether Republican or Democratic.

In New York City the unit of political organization is the Assembly district. There are 24 of these, subdivided (1889) into 856 election districts. Politically three machines control the city-those of Tammany, the County Democracy, and the Republican party. Each machine has a leader for each Assembly District, and governs its affairs from its headquarters with a thoroughly centralized authority. Nominally the supreme power in a machine reposes in a caucus of its twenty-four district leaders; as a matter of fact, it is wielded by a few of them, the ablest and shrewdest of the number, whose rule is absolute. The entrenchment and consolidation of the enormous powers so irresponsibly centred, grow out of the vast patronage which the machines control. Disregarding the offices filled in the schools, the machines have at their disposal somewhat more than ten thousand subordinate places on the civic pay-rolls. Important offices, such as those of heads of city departments and bureaus, number eighty-three; the best of these offices are reserved by the district leaders for themselves, or for their most valued lieuten

In accordance with a tacit understanding, both leaders and lieutenants are expected to yield implicit obedience to the central authority, even in matters local to a district; to devote as much of their time and money as may be needful in keeping their districts thoroughly organized, giving as much of their energy as may remain to the city's service. Now, while all concerned are

thoroughly alive to the desirability of preventing complaint from the still somewhat influential portion of the community who think that public servants should serve the public, there are many difficulties in the way of an office-holding politician serving the public as efficiently as he may wish. Is he a district leader, and does he desire his following to be strong? Then must he hold himself ready to respond to a neighbor's call for aid during any hour of the twenty-four; for thus may that neighbor's friendly interest be stimulated when it is desirable that he attend a primary, take part in a mass-meeting or grand rally, or vote right on election day. For the wide usefulness of a district politician in cases of emergency existing institutions give ample range. Judges of district courts are elected by districts, and Police Judges receive the ermine at the hands of machine power. Therefore, if a voter has been dealing in liquor, omitting to take out a license, or if he or any member of his family or any one to whom his friendly interests extend has committed some other breach of law, what can be more natural than to invoke "influence" for his protection? Perhaps all this leads, as Mayor Hewitt has told us, to thousands of cases being dismissed without a hearing in the district courts every year. And political affiliations may be not altogether unconnected with the discrimination the police exercise with regard to notorious and shameless violators of law, who are known to have important political alliances. But a district leader has not only onerous duties courtward and policeward; it behooves him not to ignore the social elements of his popularity. He must not only attend political meetings and club picnics, but also church fairs; nor must he stay away too long at a time from the bars and other centres of popular resort in his district. The more thoroughly he can suppress and efface any evidence of superiority he may possess over the most ignorant and coarse of his following, the more will he as their "Andy" or "Mike" endear himself to them. But the voters in an Assembly district average eleven thousand