New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-03-09
MULTIPLICATION IN NEW-YoRK.

| Congress, ut its last Session, listening to the
urgent representation of many of our best
citizens, passed an act intended to prevent a
repetition of the concerted, gigantic frauds in
naturalizing in voting, and in counting votes,
whereby the thirty-three Electoral Votes of
our State were stolen from Grant and COlfax
and given to Seymour and Blair.
That act was first operative in our last State
| Election, and was assailed, denounced, re-
sisted, so far as our Democratic rulers dared
to carry resistance. For weeks before Election,
their journals and speakers stigmatized it as
devised and operated expressly to carry our
State at the point of the bayOnet by deprying
Democrats of their Right of Suffrage. Knaves
constantly asserted this fools may possibly
have believed it. Yet no man has ventWod
since to say, "The Federal Election act
deprived me of my vote" No man
has pretended that he was deferred
or hndered from voting by that act
or anything done in pursuance thereof.
! Before Election we were stunned with accounts
| of negro troops that Were TO be used to drive
White Democrats from the polls; but no one
now says that he ever SAP Federal soldier,
White or Black, while at tho polls or on his
way tlither. In short, all the hobgoblins and
scarecrows employed to swell the Democratic
vote by denuncatiOns and misrepresentation
of this act have been shown by experience to
be creatures of fraud and falsehoOd.
Yet the act was not imperative. Though
the Democratic magnates spent enormous
sums of public money, with some that had
ceased to be such, to swell their vote in this
City, having fully Twenty Thousand men on
the City's payroll on the day of election, and
II i. -. I'D E,1., Il
| bayonetsn "negro troops" &C., doubtless
helped them with the ignorant and unthinking
they fell far short of their expectations, be-
cause this act impeded their cheating, Though
they boosted, for weeks before Election, that
| their majority in the State would range from
Sixty to One Hundred Thousand, they ac-
tually made it but little over Thirty Thousand,
in spite of Republican distractions and apathy,
which reduced our poll at least Fifty
thousand
The Federal act prevented the casting of
no legal vote. No one dare specify legal
voter as having been DISTINGUISHED by it. Yet
the With Ward, which gave Hoffman 5,O32 in
'69, and Allen Dem.) 5,739 in 49,, gave Hof-
man but 3,545 in 10, though every Democratic
voter who lived there was called out. The
With Ward, which gave Hoffman 6,S05 in 'G8,
cave him but 5201 in 10. The XXIst Ward
gave him G546 in i68 and but 4,492 in 20,
though this Ward is rapidly increasing in pop
ulation. In spite of bOundless creation of
new election districts by Oakley Hall, and
the most desperate efforts and lavish appli-
ances to swell Hoffman's vote, he received but
&c. 68 in the City, against 1852 in '68-a fall
ing off of 1884, while his legal vote in 20
;,,i He 1oar ia pausa1
by our shutting out the votes of "repeaters"
and other frauds by the Federal act and its
enforcement.
OF course, those whose swindling this act
obstructs bate it. Why should they mott DO
you expect counterfeiters to like sharp and
honest detectiveY There are men in this City
who have grown powerful and rich simply
because of their audacity and efficiency IN
stuffing ballot boxes and counting votes never
deposited therein. Can you need to be told
that every scoundrel of them is shocked at
the idea Of Federal interference in State cleo
tons and certain that Grant means to retain
the Presidency at the point of the bayonet 7
| Congress having revised the act Of last Ses-
sion and stopped all the holes that experience
has developed, Mr.. Tweed proposes that his
Legislature shall change the day of our State
Election, so that it shall be different from that
on which Representatives in Congress and
| Electors of President are to be chosen. These
will be elected ON the same day as at present,
while all State Officers will henceforth be
chosen on the second Tuesday in October
three OF four weeks earlier than now.
This change will give the Democratic party
a great advantage. The bulk of its voters live
in cities and villages, where the polls are very
near their doors; while the Republicans are in
good part farmers, who have to travel two to
ten miles to vote. Then the Republicans are
generally quiet citizens, absorbed in business
which takes thousands of them out of the State
for months together; and they will rarely re-
! turn twice in one Autumn to vote We calcu-
late that the passage of this bill will be worth
Twenty to Thirty Thousand votes to the Dem
ocrats at an average election.
The loss of time and duplication of expense
which this bill involves will cost our State
Millions DER annum. And there is not rea-
son for it that is not purely partisan and fac
tions The Democrats mean to cheat; Con-
oress tries to stop them: so the Legislature
senarates the State Election from that for Fed
eral officers expressly to dodge the Federal
act This is what lawyers call confession
and avoidance" Separate the Federal from
the State Election, and the latter Is exposed
TO all manner of villainy
Mr.. Tweed will probably want two or three
Republican votes to carry his bill smoothly
aud surely through both Houses. Lie knows