The Fitzgerald leader. (Fitzgerald, Irwin County, Ga.) 19??-1912, 1912-04-05

The preservation of the county unit
system means more the people OF
Georgia than Woodrow Wilson or
Champ Clark or Oscar Underwood or
Roosevelt or Taft.
These may pass and come again,
but this principle is constitutional,
fundamental and essential to the
rights of the people.
No greater usurpation of popular
rights has been made in this genera
ton than the act of the state execu-
tive committee by which the real in
tegrity of the Georgia counties is de-
stroyed and the aristocratic rule of a
plurality is substituted for the Demo
cratic rule of the majority.
The protest against the usurpation
has not died away" and it will NOT
die away until the last voice of pub
lie opinion has been Numbered into
the ballot box. The more you think
of it. the worse it grows.
This is still a Democracy, and No
oligarchy has yet arisen upon its
ruins. r
In dozen states of the Union suc9
a rule as our state committee has OF
dered would have been promptly half
ed by an Injunction under the laws
We have no law governing the pri-
maries in Georgia, and we must there
fore suffer until we can establish laws
for the primaries or alter the minds
or the personal composition of the
committee
Under the long established and
safely working county unit system,
the majority of each county is emit
tied to cast the vote of that county
in the general convention of the par
ty. Under this new hybrid expedi-
ent of the committee, a small plural
ity of the general voters may cast the
vote of every county in the state.
Under the unit system, Echols coun-
ty, for instance, had it's individual
right and it's individual voice in ev-
cry convention.
Under the committee usurpation,
factory district in Fulton may anso-
iutely shut the mouths of the ma
jority of the people Of EchoIs or Mon
roe or Walton or Clarke in the con-
vention.
Under the wholesome rule Of the
unit system the minority always had
it's constitutional rights.
Under the daring and revolutionary
rule of the committee, the plurality
strangles and buries and Oblterates
the minority, in spite of it's constitu-
tional rights.
We are too old and too great and
too free in Georgia to permit this
challenge to liberty to go unanswered.
This state executive committee, in
the absence of laws for the preslden-
tial primaries, has provided ticket
(which is to contain the names OF all
those whom the committee chooses to
regard as candidates for the Demo
cratic nomination at Baltimore.
Whichever name on this ticket re-
ceives the votes-not necessarily OF
the majority, but of the plurality or
those voting-is ruled by the COM
mittee to be the choice of the state
The friends of this candidate Will then
rise up in the arrogant mind OF this
mere plurality and dictate to every
county in Georgia not only HOW they
shall cast that county's vote, but
WHO shall cast that county's vote in
the general convention!
If every man in Bibb county saving
three should vote against candidate,
one-fourth of the people voting In
Georgia may, under the committee
rule, trample upon Bibb's enormous
majority sentiment and these three
men may meet and elect themselves
delegates to cast vote in denance OF
all the other votes in the county
And so with any county in the state.
Will the free and Independent vot-
ers of Georgia spend few moments
in silent contemplation OF this su-
preme civic audacity
OF course the state committee IS
said to be Wilson committee. That
is not of consequence. OF. course,
this Wilson committee hopes by this
ballot to divide up the vote OF the
state by tempting the citizen to vote
for many names and so divide the
vote cast that Wilson will have
plurality. Of course this committees
idea is that if there are 100000 votes,
and Wilson can get $4,000 votes, or
about one-fourth, and the other "a
900 votes can be scattered among
Clark and Underwood and Harmon
and Bryan, their plurality man, even
if he has only one-fourth OF the
votes, will win the state!
That is merely a trick of politics.
We could forgive the trick if 1t af-
fected only the campaign. The per-
sonal result does not matter in the
long run. The partisan advantage
can be ignored.
But the great fundamental prlnci-
| nile of the RIGHTS OF THE COUN-
TIES. the RIGHTS OF THE MINOR
ITY and the RIGHTS OF THE MA
JORITY are absolutely RUN OVER
roughshod and reckless-and that, by
Andrew Jackson's memory, DOES
| MATTER, and it WILL MATTER so
70 ,-0ion of nr0t6St and