The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-02-15
COMPULSORY VOTING.

A bill has been introduced in the
compulsory. 1t requires every quail
fed voted to cast ballot at each and
every general election. Judges Of cleo
lions are by it required to prepare
correct list after the polls close, of all
voters who have failed to vote, this list
to be transmitted to the clerk of the
courts. The persons so failing to vote
are to show cause before the court why
fine should not be imposed on them.
Sickness or absence from the city in
which the election is held is valid ex-
cuse for not voting. The fine is fixed
at So and costs, and the property of the
person so offending to the amount of
500 is to be exempt from liability for
said fine and judgment. The fines col
lected shall go TO the public school
fund of the county in which they are
imposed.
It is very desirable that all citizens
who hold the elective franchise should
exercise it on election day, but it is
hardly desirable that they should be
compelled TO do so at the point of the
bayonet, so to speak. 1t seems rather
an anomaly that in a free country such
a proposition should be seriously made,
and this Pennsylvania proposition must
be considered serious, to compel voters
to go to the polls Were so absurd a
measure ever to be adopted about the
first result would be to hurl from power
those who had secured its adoption;
it would seal their political doom for
ever. Then it would almost be certain
to be a dead letter, and law that is a
dead letter is the worst kind of a law.
The Jealous people who want a COM
puisory voting law are of the kind that
would force other people to live accord
ing to their particular standard in all
things, including diet and the cut of
their clothes. They are good people
who desire to make an imperfect world
perfect, a hopeless task; they are the
kind of people who have never learned
that it is absolutely impossible to make
clocks tick in unison, though it is an
easy matter to make them strike to-
gether on the hour.
This idea of compulsory voting is
borrowed from the military idea of
compelling people 10 bear arms in de-
tense of their country. 1t is argued
that if the ballot is the safeguard of
free institutions, then all who have the
elective franchise should be compelled
to defend their free institutions by go
ing to the polls and casting their bal
lots. Those who argue thus confound
military necessity with civic virtue.
Speaking on this very question of
compulsory voting, when it came up in
the recent constitutional convention of
New York, the New York Times said:
At every election many are prevented
from voting bv illness or necessary
absence and these would have to be
allowed excuses. When alleged as such,
somebody would have to decide upon
their genuineness and validity, and
there would be more inquisitorial pro-
ceedings. Civic duties cannot be forced
in a free country, except such as are
admitted to be necessary to the admin
istration of affairs, like serving on
juries. Compulsory voting is not con-
sistent with free institutions or with
the spirit of a free people. Why waste
time on such a proposition?
It is hardly probable that the Penn
sylvania legislature will do anything
in the premises. The bill reads as
though it might have originated at
Topeka rather than at Harrisburg.