Weekly journal-miner., 1909-02-03
NEIL BAILEY HOT AFTER BALLOT
 REFORM
Has Numerous Measures To Shake Up Old
 Vote System

PHOENIX, Jan. 29.-Assemblyman
 Neil Bailey of Cochise, will during the
 coming week, when his direct primary
 law bill comes up for debate, intro
 duee an amendment to incorporate in
 the bill a clause embodying the Oregon
 idea of direct election of United States
 senators by the people.
 In Oregon this law is known as
 statement No. l and statement No. ?, and its effect is to pledge the nominees
 of the legislature to abide by the will of a majority of the people expressed
 at direct primary for United tSates
 senator, irrespective of party. It was
 this law which lately forced the Re
 publican legislature of Oregon to
 elect ex-Governor Chamberlain, a Democrat, to the senate. It will be readily seen that the Oregon law sim ply brings the government directly into the hands of the people, in large measure placing placing qualification and fitness above party and giving the people the opportunity to express their opinion of both. In Oregon, ae eOrding to press dispatches, a tremen- dOus effort was made to defeat the peoples will but the moral force of the new order was too great to be set aside, and it is now conceded that the new condition is established for all time in the Webfoot State.
 "The amendment is merely intend ed to perfect what I had in mind when the original bill was drafted, " said MT. Bailey today. "The trend of the times is to give the government right back into the hands of the peo pie. My sympathies are thoroughly in sympathy with that trend. The seat of all human life, an eminent phy sician declares, is the stomach, and in my judgment the fountain of all po- litical corruption is in the ballot. The way to purify the ballot is to make it absolute in the hands of the people.
 ''Before the session closes,' Bahey continued, ''I shall probably introduce a new ballot reform bill, or offer an amendment to what l have been in formed is an excellent bill prepared and soon to be introduced by Mir. De Sousa. The amendment will provide for doing away with vignettes at the head of each party column on the bal lot and to print all candidates names in single column. This will do away with straight ticket voting, in a large
 measure. The amendment will pro- vide for shifting the names in differ ent sets of ballots. For instance, if SIX men were nominated for delegate to congress, the Republican would ap- pear at the head in one set, the Dem ocrat in another, and so on. This would make impossible such transae tions as were praetieed in the last gen eral election in Tucson, and also at the city election, I am ereditably in formed. At these elections the ignor- ant Mexican voters were given sample ballots with crosses out opposite the names of the men for whom they were to vote. Before entering the booth they were fully instructed as to just how to lay the sample ballot over the real ballot, and mark their tickets just where the crosses were exactly cut out.
 My plan would do away with pos sibility of any such fraud. It would make it practically impossible for the ignorant to vote, and I firmly believe in intelligence ruling this country"