Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-10-30
THE RUTLAND HERALD.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 90, 1878.
roo Frequent ELECTIONS.

roo FREQUENT ELECTIONS.
AS necessary incident to our Repub-
lican system of government, we have 10
elect all the officers of every department
of our municipal arrangement upon ire
ouent and rapidly recurring intervals.
There is no one who would be willing to
acknowledge that this freedom and duty
of electing representatives to administer
the various branches of our political ma
chinery, is burden; yet we see by the
action of our business men that they re-
gard the attendance upon elections as
waste of time that they cannot afford,
and because it does not pay for them to
spend several days in a'year to attend to
their freeman's duty, they let alone our
primary meetings and large number OF
our elections most severely, leaving the
care of the public interests, so far as the
selection of officers is concerned, to the
professional politicians and the loafers,
who have nothing else to do. We do
not wish to be understood that this is a
universal rule, for some of our most
staunch business men are very punctual
to perform every political duty, but the
majority of them are only called out by
extra occasions.
The unit of our political system is the
town; of our educational system the
school district. Now, if our readers
will for a moment consider the proper
ton of voters that habitually attend the
business meetings of the town and the
school district, they will at once see that
all the business is transacted by min
ority of the whole number who might
legally participate in the business. But
going one step farther, as we ascend the
scale, we find the county and the State,
each calling for large number of off
GERS to act as agents of the people in
doing the work of their organizations.
These can only be elected by some con-
centrated action, for if each man was to
vote for his first choice without con-
sultation with his neighbors, the candi-
dates who would receive votes might be
nearly as numerous as the voters, and it
would be very improbable that officers
would receive majority of votes cast.
This raises the necessity and convenience
of nominating conventions.
Experience seems to have shown that,
in majority of cases, fairer express
ion of opinion can be obtained from diff
ferent localities by giving the towns a
delegate representation in county, dis
trict and state conventions; and this
brings the caucus or primary into exist
ence. Now, with the numerous cleo
tions, national, state and municipal,
with their incidental machinery of con-
ventions, caucuses and primary meet
ings, the busy man who devotes his time
and his energies to an exacting profess
ION or business, cannot afford to attend
them all. The result is that while all
understand the issues and are interested
in the presidential contest, every four
years, they leave the minor and lesser
elections largely to the politicians and
the idle vagabonds who, of all others, it
is most dangerous to trust with the
welding of this great power.
We have often known of primary
meetings held to elect representations of
the towns, to nominate officers and
shape the policy of State, where not
one voter in hundred of the town was
present. We believe we have too many
officers to do the work of the country,
and too frequent elections. We ought
to have a concentration of responsibility
and longer terms of office. We believe
if voters were called upon less frequent
ly to attend meetings and caucuses, and
elected much less number of officers,
they would feel their duty stronger and
could much better spare the time to at
tend TO their duty as citizens. We hear
constant complaints that all political
measures are in the hands of cliques and
rings, and there is ground for the com
planning, and will be until the people so
reduce the machinery of government
and the work of elections, that the whole
people can afford to take part in them.
There is no power in a ring when the
people unite against it, and they have it
in their power to so simplify the system
that they can attend to their duty as
citizens without impairing their business
prospects or imposing upon themselves
an unbearable tax of time and money.