Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1912-02-15
THURSDAY. FEBRUARY 8. 1912
A PURE ELECTORATE.


ate and honest elections in Virginia.
One of the earnestly svowed reasons
for making a new constitution was to
secure these things. Senator Crockett,
from Wythe county, and Delegate
Chalkley, Of Wise, have introduced bills
in the Senate and House of Delegates.
respectively, with the announced pur-
pose of purifying the electorate by
eliminating the venal voters. These
gentlemen are either young in politics
or blind as to true political conditions in
Virginia. The venal vote cannot be re-
moved from the electorate and honest
elections cannot be procured until we
have honest election laws. The axe
must be laid to the root of the tree if
you want to destroy the corrupt fruit
You can't lott, gentlemen, by trimming
off few of the branches that are of
fensive to honest men, and presumably
injurious to your own party.
We haven't had fair election laws in
Virginia for about thirty years Judge
Skeen says that the vote buying in
Wise and Lee counties, to his certain
knowledge, began about thirty years
ago. Is it not reasonable to conclude
that this vote buying is resultant from
the dishonest series of election laws in
troduced in Virginia by the enactment
of the Anderson Nc Cormick law in 1888?
From that time down to the making of
the new constitution every crime known
to the moral law, beginning with per-
jury and eliminating with murder, was
practiced in our elections, by the stock
of perjurers and bulldozers" developed
at every election. (See confession of
the present editor of the Roanoke
Times.)
Though the new constitution was
made for the proclaimed purpose of
cleansing election methods and purify
ing the electorate, the suffrage and
election clauses in that instrument were
so partisan in their nature that they
have served to make the election meth
DDS even more dishonest. This became
so apparent that a demand was made
for statutory law as preventive The
'Barksdale Pure Election Law" was
enacted, and the Democrats adopted
the primary plan. At one of the first
possibly the first-Democratic primaries
held in the city of Richmond a certain
gentleman, who is now a conspicuous
advocate of machine politics, bought an
entire precinct in that city for twenty
five dollars.
In March, 1908, a prominent Demo-
cratic citizen of Charlotte county wrote
communication to the Richmond
Times Dispatch. He said:
els the Democratic party in favor
of honest elections or not? For the
fourth time an act looking to the
accomplishment of this laudable
and necessary result has been de-
feated by the old-time politicians,
who have turned their attention
from packing and dominating po-
litical conventions to manipulating
our present farcical, loose and illegal
primaries. These patriotic gentle
men who stuffed the ballot box to
keep the American gentleman of
African descent out of the saddle
are still at the old stand doing bust
ness"
And the same election manipulators
that handled the elections in 1908, and
previous thereto, "are still at the old
stand doing business. They have con-
trol of the election machinery in the
Ninth district, and in every other dis
.rict in the State. Whenever it be-
ZONES possible to secure control of the
Ninth district by fraud, they will steal
t again, as they have done before. The
resent election laws, written in the ,
constitution and the statute books, fur
ish ample opportunity, as do the Dem
cratic primary laws, for fraud. If
anator Crockett and Delegate Chalk
" are sincerely anxious for pure
Iectorate and honest elections, let C
lem give careful consideration to ex- a
ting and previous election laws made b
; their party; and they will be sure to d