clerk, sheriff, county treasurer, register of deeds, county surveyor, superintendent of public instruction and three county

commissioners.2

The constitutional officers to be elected in Connecticut are the members of the legislature, governor, lieutenant-governor, treasurer, secretary, comptroller, attorney-general, sheriffs, judges of probate and justices of the peace.3

In Indiana the constitution requires the people to elect, besides the legislature, governor and lieutenant-governor, a secretary of state, a state auditor and a state treasurer, supreme court judges, by district, the clerk of the supreme court, and, locally, circuit judges, clerks of circuit courts, prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, coroners, surveyors, auditors, recorders, treasurers and justices of the peace.*

5

The voters of the entire state in Virginia must elect members of the lower house of the legislature, for two years and for four years senators, the governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary of the commonwealth, state treasurer, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction and commissioner of agricul ture. The county electorates must vote for a sheriff, attorney for the commonwealth, county court clerk and commissioners of revenue. In each district there must be elected one supervisor. City electorates must vote for clerks of court and an attorney for the commonwealth, where there exist certain kinds of municipal courts, and, in every city, councilmen, mayor, city treasurer and city sergeant."

Popular participation in the selection of any and every sort of official, indeed, continues to be, as it has long remained, a cherished principle in American political science. Its advocates defend it with great tenacity of purpose against the arguments of the proponents of the short ballot. Thus, in the Kentucky convention of 1890, Mr. Hanks, a delegate, declared,

I believe the voters of this Commonwealth are competent to elect their treasurer. I know full well that they are able to elect a Governor, and,

2XVII, 2. County offices may, however, be created and abolished by the legislature. See also Schedule 18.

3III, 3, 4; IV, 1, 3, 17, 18; Amendments, V, VII, IX, X, XXX.

4IV, 2; V, 3; VI, 1, 2; VII, 3, 7, 8, 11, 14.

See 41, 42, 70, 77, 80, 81, 107, 131, 145.

Sec. 110, 111.

Sec. 118, 119, 120, 121.

See XV, 1.

by the way, as was said yesterday, we have universally elected a good one without one exception. If the people of Kentucky are capable of electing a good Governor, I think they are capable of electing a good Treasurer.

Mr. Hanks was ably seconded by Mr. Cox,

When the right of the great masses of the people is endangered, let us seek a remedy, and that remedy is found in the exercise of the elective franchise in conformity with statutory or organic law. I say here, taking the history of Kentucky as the evidence upon which we should base our judgment, sitting as a jury to decide this great case under the evidence given in the history of our State, we must unquestionably say that the appointing power has proved a failure, and that we must maintain our rights by securing to the people that sovereignty, that right, that power to which they are justly entitled. . . . I love our form of government. I love it for its glory, its beauty and its grandeur. I love it for what it has accomplished; but while I love it, I loathe in the deepest recess of my heart any effort whatever that will go in the direction of taking from the people of Kentucky the right to choose their officers. I hold the taking of such a right from them is an innovation of the right which every man in this broad land should cherish. Let us, gentlemen of this Convention, maintain our rights. Let us stand up boldly and not let no man rob us of a single right.

Like echoes of the words of Mr. Hanks and Mr. Cox sound passages from the debates of the New York convention of 1915. "We come," said Judge Ostrander,"

.

to the question, is representative government a failure? Don't the people know enough to govern themselves and elect their officrs? Are our people ready to confess that they cannot elect people to carry on their business? If so. let us have the emperor come along. They say the people are too busy, they cannot find the man on the ballot. You let them put somebody on the town meeting ballot, which is two feet long, and hide him anywhere you please in there; if they want to "get" him, they will get him, either way.

"Efficiency!" cried Mr. Brackett,' in reply to one of the arguments advanced for the short ballot,

Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates: Kentucky Constitutional Convention, 1890, I, 1418, seq. (1424 and 1426). For argument favorable to the short ballot, see p. 1419.

Record of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York, 1915, pp. 3243-4 (Vol. III).

14b., 3317.

116.

Short Ballot.

Do you want an efficient government at the expense of self-government and at the expense of freedom? Why, Mr. Chairman, if you want an efficient government, go to the root of it and have an absolute government.

Judge Ostrander2 went so far as to insinuate that ulterior motives guided his opponents,—

Now, this demand for a short ballot, if I may use a very homely expres sion, is somewhat like a pile of poker chips. It grew from the top down. It did not grow from the bottom up. People did not go out of their own accord, and start a campaign several years ago to bring about this short ballot who did not have any interest in it. Articles have not been printed for years at considerable expense in the papers of different political complexion; have not been unanimously agreed to by the leaders of the antagonistic parties unless something was behind it and some reason was for it.

Mr. Quigg3 told eloquently of an experience of his while boating in the Canadian Rockies. Skimming over the surface of a lake at sunrise he beheld before him an immense cobweb, sparkling with dew drops like a million diamonds. So also sparkled the arguments for the short ballot. But as his canoe pierced the cobweb he saw beyond it crouching on the bank a big mountain lion. Likewise vicious would be the effects of the short ballot. Eloquence was not, however, confined to one side of the debate. Mr. Dykman replied,*

I wonder if the delegate with his eyes on the cobweb has not missed the Arguments in greatest wonder of this scene, the sun of democracy, the rising sun of Favor of the democracy, the sun that will rise if we get the short ballot and the people actually in control, with invisible government banished, with the real leader-and if you want to call him a boss, the real boss out in the open, elected by the people, and responsible to the people, and to be with all his hopes and ambitions dependent on the people, and the invisible, skulking boss disappears. I wonder if Mr. Quigg has not missed the rising sun of a real democracy, of the democracy that has for its watchwords, "simplicity, economy, efficiency," a government of the people by the people and for the people.

"On the whole," says Professor Beard," writing in 1909, it must be admitted that the American people retains

its original confidence in the power of the ballot to do any kind and any amount of political work.""

"Our elections," he adds, "continue to be the same farces in which the sovereign voters ratify the blanket tickets prepared for them by political experts," and he goes on to detail reasons for shortening the ballot. While the electorate is capable of passing intelligent judgment upon candidates for almost any particular office, it is certainly incapable of selecting incumbents for all of them, or any considerable number of them at the same time; there is no question of policy or principle involved in the selection of minor officials and the public is indifferent. "The real failure however, is due to the fact that it is absolutely impossible for any considerable number of voters to exercise any discrimination among candidates for a large number of offices." Only the head of the ticket-the governor or mayor -receives adequate attention. Even candidates for the legis lature, among the multitude of persons running for office, “are generally left in the same fog which envelops the candidates for the position of coroner or clerk of the municipal district court.” The inevitable result is selection of officials by the irresponsible political boss.

"If we could get the office-filling machine out of the way," Professor Beard says, in conclusion,

we might possibly get an alignment of parties on real issues; and in that event there might be a chance to carry to completion some real, constructive, vital social reforms.

That the average citizen should know nothing or nearly noth ing of the individuals for whom he votes can hardly be wondered at when one sees the ballot that citizens have to vote. To take a very common example, a ballot used in one of the assembly districts of New York City for the primary election of the Democratic Party is thus described,

The Ohio voters rejected short ballot amendments in 1913. The rejected N. Y. constitution of 1915 contained short ballot provisions.

"Mr. Richard S. Childs, writing for the Outlook (92: 635, July 17. 1909) has given the interesting result of an investigation made in one of the most independent districts of Brooklyn, after the 1908 election. He found that 87 per cent. of those questioned did not know the name of the state treasurer just elected; 70 per cent. did not know the name of the assemblymen for the districts, and 85 per cent. did not know the name of the alderman. Only 2 per cent. knew how their alderman had voted on the question of increasing the police force of the year before.

It is eight and one-half inches by two feet four inches. It contains the names of 835 candidates: 417 for members of the county general committee, 104 for delegates to the county convention, 40 for delegates to the first district municipal court convention, 65 for delegates to the second district municipal court convention, 104 for delegates to the thirty-second assembly district convention, and 105 for delegates to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth aldermanic district conven

ions.

In final elections ballots containing from two to three hundred names, or even more, are not uncommon.

President Wilson, like others of the nation's leaders in thought, has taken occasion to confess publically his inability to make an intelligent choice:❞—

In the little borough of Princeton where I live, I vote a ticket of some thirty names. Now I am a slightly busy person, and I have never known anything about half the men I was voting for on the ticket that I voted. I attend diligently, so far as I have light, to my political duties in the borough of Princeton-and yet I have no personal knowledge of one-half the persons I am voting for. I couldn't tell you even what business they are engaged in-and to say in such circumstances that I am taking part in the government of the borough of Princeton is an absurdity. . . . I don't count for any more in the government... than the veriest loafer and drunkard in the borough, and I do not know very much more about the men I am voting for than he does. He is busy about one thing and I am busy about others. We are occupied, and cannot attend to the government of the town.

Later on in the same address, he said,

What is the moral? ... The remedy is contained in one word: simplification. Simplify your processes, and you will begin to control; complicate them, and you will get farther and farther away from their control.

Simplification is, indeed, the remedy always proposed: "Let us," the people are thought of as saying, "let us choose only our chief officials, the governor, the mayor, and let us make it a part of their official duty to select all the other administrative officers. The governor and mayor are paid to take time to do this

Beard, C. A., American Government and Politics, 1st Ed., 473.

Civic Problems. An address, Mar. 9, 1909, at Annual Meeting of Civic League of St. Louis. Quoted by Beard, ib. (rev. ed.), 478-9. Ex-President Eliot of Harvard has made similar statements.