The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1889-10-26
THE AUSTRALIAN SYSTEM

guised hostility to the Australian vOt
ing system. It's recent trial-abOut the
first in this cOuntry-in Montana
Connecticut and Tennessee not
been satisfactory. In all cases appar
emily the greater advantage has been
in favor of the Democrats. In Mon
tana, in spite of the large sums OF
money and squad of stump orators
sent there by Quay, the Democrats not
only fully held their own, but made
gains. In Connecticut, especially in
the manufacturing towns, where the
employers were won't to place tickets
into hands of their Operatives and
drive them to the polls like cattle, the
change to the Australian system pro-
duced some very astonishing results,
"A majority of the lever faithful" oper.
atives having apparently Topped over
TO the Democratic side. And down in
Tennessee, where it had been almost
death to a negro to vote any but the
Republican ticket, the Australian sys-
TEN developed the "disgusting" fact
that many negroes had voted for the
Democratic candidates.
The only allegation, by the Republi-
can DIRECTORS, against the system in
Montana, is, that "a lot of unnatural
lied Italians were allowed to vote. y
Now one of the features of the Aus
tralian system is careful registry of
voters, the list being open for public
examination for a week or more before
the election. If these ''unnaturalized
Italians" therefore, were known to be
why did the vigilant Re
publicans allow them to vote? The
truth is, the alleged illegal voting by
Italians rests on other basis of truth
than afiidavits made to order and
sworn to by that thoroughbred scOnn-
drcl and penitentiary bird, Henry Bar
nard. And yet it is by such devices
that the Republicans are trying to
steal the legislature of Montana and
its two u. S. Senators.
How the system happened to work
so untowardly in Connecticut the
Republicans directors fail to explain,
but i'm Tennessee the device to steal a
part of the negro vote was as ingen-
ous as it was effective. A tin plate was
just the size of the ballot
printed at public expense according to
the Australian system. This plate
was so perforated that when laid on
the ticket it exposed the names OF the
candidates, which the voter
could thus, with the lead pencil pro-
vided by the state for that purpose,
erase, leaving the names of the Demo-
cratic candidates, hidden by the plate,
AS nine-tenths of the ne
groes voting at the election inTennessee
as indeed anywhere in the south, are
wholly unable to read, the device
would seem no less indispensable than
commendable to enable the negro to
vote intelligently, as under the Aus
tralian system he is obliged to erase
the names he desires not to vote for
while alone in a room inaccessible at
the time to all but himself. How,
without the help of some such device
as this tin plate, could he make the
proper erasures? The beauty of it is,
that the disappointed Tennessee Re
publican who sends howl to the Inter
Ocean over this ''rasCally Democratic
device to steal negro votes" admits
that "he Republicans hodo tin made also
to fit the ticket according to their ideas!
The wickedness of the invention,
therefore, did not consist in the fact
that it was not equally available to
both parties, but because it broke up
the republican system hitherto in
variably pursued of voting the ne
groes, under the terrorism of their
leaders, as Solid block.
Every negro vote, according to Re-
publican ideas, by prescription belongs
to the <. o. p, and it is ineXpressibly
wicked for the Democrats of Missis-
sippi and sundry parishes in Louisiana,
habitually ut elections to terrorize the
negroes and drive them from the polls.
Full half the Republican vote is thus
lost in many southern localities at
every election, and even some of our
own Ottawa stumpers last fall were so
overweight by this outrage that they
expressed willingness to go south
and fight for negro rights. But If the
general introduction of the Austria
liam system at the south is to have the
same malign effect, why shall not the
z. o. p. abjurgate that with the same
vehemence with which it now de-
nounces the Mississippi SYSTEM"
The resembling, by Secretary Mobiles,