The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-01
Votes
Votes ------------. ames. Addresses. Offices

1 Names. AuuIeSS3S. olllCeS.
 Mayor.
 Controller. Treasured. Clerk.
 Collector.
 City Sheriff, etc. | (The above is municipal ballot, but is meant for general lllustration)
 Let the ballots contain no party names, emblems or marks, and nothing but the blank spaces and office designa- tions as above. Give to each freeman one vote on a manhood suffrage basis | and other votes on a basis of amount of taxes paid to the city in the year last past, each resident stockholder in resi- dent corporation that pays taxes to the | city, to be given additional votes propor tional to his stock and the corporation's city taxes.
 On election day the voter goes into the secret booth and fills in the blank spaces with the names and addresses of the parties he desires to elect to the offices l in question, folds the ballot from the bottom up to just under the word ''votes," and coming out to the ballot box, calls his name; the checkers look him up and call out the number of l votes he is entitled to, and the ballot | box tender, or some one else, stamps upon the ballot, to the right of the word | votes" the number called out by the | checkers and the ballot is deposited, As it Is done now, the party machine, | it's whips, the slate and the caucus, all get in their work, and it is all summed up and officially recognized by the words democrat" national democrat" republican" independent" etc, print ed on the official ballot. One takes his choice between two, three or four whips, machines, slates and caucuc products. In some states spaces are left for the in- dividualst to exercise his freedom of choice, but where not all are compelled to do 1t, what chance has he? Put a man in secret booth with a ballot on which every party is represented, and also upon which blank spaces for indi- vidual choice are provided; he is in | hurry, his father was a republican, he don't know much about the merits of candidates proposed, and knows perhaps | no one conspicuously fit for the offices in | question, sure that ff1dividualistic ac- tion will throw away his vote more or less lazy any way, all this against an in cipent sense of political duty, and his | pencil will wander up to the circle just under the word republican" in which | he will dash a cross and presently rush | down town to business; and republican bosses, ward healers, spoilsmen and po- litical crooks will all rejoice.
 With the ballot in the form proposed, every man must exercise his choice, alone and In secret, or not vote al all. There would then be not only secret bal lot but secret nomination in sense. The machine, the whip the slate and the caucus would all be relegated to unofti- cial realm; men could hire halls if they choose to, but between their unofficial doings and the so vereign choice of otff- cers for office would be an official insti- tuition of secret nomination and secret ballot. It is difficult to see in what way, then, the caucus and machine could get in it's work, why their wings would not be clipped and why better class of ofti- cials would rot appear. perhaps even the men of the plank.
 Once it is admitted that bad working political institutions may be forthwith changed and there is plenty of ingenui- ty about for changing them, until their products are up to the highest standards the majority in industrial democracy will authorize.
 (To be continued)
 GEO. M. WALLACE.