The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-11-09

by so doing nninoritieS as well as majorities will gain 6 measure of representation.
 The city voted the P. R. way this year for the first time in It's history to elect the new city council provided in the new city charter,
 Labored Over Ballots
 On Nov. 2 approximately 100000 persons in the city's five boroughs la bored over council ballots on which a total of 229 candidates names were printed. According to the new char ter one councilman in each borough will be elected for every 75,000 votes cast.
 P. R. Is an old story in many places. It was invented before the turn of the century in Europe. Cincinnati, O., has used 1t. But this was the first time that the largest American city had tried 1t. The result was, and re- mains, confusion.
 Voters, accustomed to voting ma chimes, found the return to paper ballots difficult. The necessity of using numerals instead of the fam iliar TX" also was upsetting. It has been estimated that from 10 to 25 per cent of the ballots were spoiled, Confusion All Around
 But the confusion in voting was nothing compared to the confusion in counting. The city hired 1880 persons, half of them Democrats and half Republicans, to canvass the vote at $l0 each Q day.
 Proponents of P. R. had predicted completion of the count within 10 days. Two days after the election, with the first count only four per cent finished, they admitted 1t might take a month. They said opponents of P. R. had set out from the begin- ming to sabotage the count and dis credit the new system.
 It didn't take long for charges of corruption and stalling to be forth coming. Tn the Bronx 1t was found that the old "flngernai" trick, com mon in the days before voting ma chimes, he'd been resurrected. Pieces of pencil lead under the flngernail made 1t easy to change the figure 1, changing the voters first choice for councilman, to 4.
 Detectives Sent In
 The mayor sent 125 detectives to the canvassing places. Four canvass CTS were arrested and 4,600 ballots were impounded in the Bronx.
 The $i0-a-day wage turned out to be @ delaying factor. Many canvass. CTS, 1t was said, invoked dilatory tec- tics in order to stretch their jobs out. Counting devices were con- veniently lost, canvassers invented Q game called passing the ballot" and many showed up late for work each morning. Several of them were fired.
 Kenneth Dayton, assistant budget director, said 1t looked as though the count would cost the city more than $800,000.
 George Brokaw Compton, chair man of the Citizens Nonpartisan Committee, charged that the board of elections, several of whose mem. bers opposed P. R., had failed to set up adeQuate machinery for counting the vote and asked Gov. Herbert Fl. Lehman to order an investigation.
 Complainant Appointed
 Matthew M. Levy, chairman of the American Labor party's law commit tee, complained of irregularities in the Bronx and said no "real inves- tigation could be expected from Democratic Attorney General John J. Bennett Jr.'s staff. Bennett promptly appointed Levy special as- sistant attorney general to investi- gate without compensation" any alleged fraud.
 Counting of ballots turned out to be tedious business. First they were sorted as to candidates. Then they were counted for first choices. Then all first choice ballots adding up to T5, 1000 or more were checked and rec checked for second, third and addi- tional choices.
 At first the counters got ahead and had to wait on the sorters. Then the sorters sprinted and swamped the counters. Then 1t was discovered that in some counting places the canvassers were employing black pencils instead of the red which the law said must be used to obviate any