Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1908-05-21
Need for the Tinker.
Norfolk virginian-Pilot.)

=. NA 81 W TIE JuuSeS OF
Election of the names of persons de-
hnquent for preceding years, does not
admit unqualified voters to the ballot
box. In most of the cities and coun-
ties IN the State, the law regulating the
prepayment of capitation taxes as
prerequisite to suffrage is a master
piece of omissions and complications
and 1t would be little short of a miracle
were any large proportion of the Off
Gals concerned equal to the task of
supplying its defects and solving it's in
tricacies. The single question of de-
termlning what constitutes a personal
payment has proved a worse than Chin
csc puzzle to the Treasures. but the
provisions relating to the qualification
of delinquents are still more difficult to
unravel. The Treasurer at the expira-
ton of a given period is required to
turn over the delinquent list of the pre-
ceding twelve months to the clerk of
the court, and is forbidden thereafter
to receive the taxes so reported in ar
rears. Only the clerk can thereafter
lawfully collect and receipt for these.
Yet no person is entitled to vote who
has not paid up for the next three years
preceding and the Treasurer in making
up his annual list must swear that the
persons named therein are not delin-
quent for those years. The clerk is not
required TO report to the Treasurer ad
Interim by whom the essential pay
ments have been paid; how is the latter
to know? Only, it would seem, by a
research in each case, into accounts al
ready charged off his books to the clerk
"a task to which the force of no treas
urer in the Commonwealth would be
equal In the weeks just prior to the ex-
piration of the time limit, though the
work should proceed every minute in
the twenty-four hours.
Besides this there are the hundreds of
instances where a citizen is assessed
for the first time in county to which
he has removed from another where his
head tax was in arrears. The law does
not specify that this person shall pre-
sent clean bill of health to the treas
urer at his new place of residence. He
settles within the time allowed the only
assessment entered against him and be-
comes a voter.
The entire system is faulty and in
volved to an extent which presupposes
the highest order of intelligence and
exceptional knowledge of law as a
science In all the officers charged with
Its administration. But men who had
such endowments and requirements
would not be content with positions
entailing such arduous duties and so
tritiing renumerations. The treasurers
would all be running for the Auditor
ship OF the Commonwealth and the
clerks for seats on the supreme bench.
They are as rule entirely competent
to the ordinary routine Of the Offices
they hold, but they have been con-
founded with problems beyond the
boundaries of their training or exper-
fence, with endless pages of loosely
drawn statutes to mystify their judg-
ment and set them to guessing.
As to the election officers, what can
be expected of them? The Constitution
itself makes the Treasurer's lists con-
elusive on them as to the right of the
persons named therein to claim that
their taxes have been paid in conform
lty with the law. Nor are the Judges of
election capable of deciding rightly the
questions which would be at issue,
even were they authorized to go behind
the Treasurer's list. And small blame
to them, when the Supreme Court and
the Attorney General and learned law.
gers in every community are at odds
IN the connundrums involved. Still
back of this is the unreliability of the
books; for we have re.
liable reports that in some counties all
persons who served in the Spanish war
II are the sons of Confederate veterans
ave been admitted to the permanent
oil as exempts from the capitation tax.
20 manifold are the provisions con-
erning the electorate and so elaborate
he machinery for applying them as to
insure the defeat of the purpose for
which they were designed.
Legislation is badly needed to straigh-
EN- out these tangles, most of which
ould be rectified by stripping the ex-
sting statuate of redundant verbiage
nd by few simple additions to the
lause defining the duties of the treas
rers, clerks of courts, and election
fficials. In the meantime thousands q
votes will be cast both in the pri-
lary and regular elections which are i
illegal, while in other To- t
alities numbers of persons will be
<cluded from the polls who really
ave the entitlements to suffrage. Some
the irregularities are born of i'll in =,
ntion, but many more of lapses and
ysteries in the Law. "