Surely, the method of taking the vote and of safeguarding the honesty
of elections should be the most important and fundamental of all
questions in a republic. Such laws ought to be preliminary to all
other laws. Yet as a matter of fact the laxity and ambiguity of
many state election laws and the utter inadequacy of provisions for
enforcement are almost unbelievable. The contemplation of the actual
facts seriously reflects upon the intelligence and good faith of the
successive lawmakers of our land.
With no one on the election board whose special business it is to see
that honesty is upheld, a suffrage amendment must face further hazards
through the fact that most states do not permit women, or even special
men watchers, to stand guard over the vote and the count upon such
questions.
When it is remembered that immigrants may be naturalized after a
residence of five years; that when naturalized they automatically
become voters by all our state constitutions; that in eight states[A]
immigrant voters are not even required to be citizens; that the right
to vote is limited by an educational qualification in only seventeen
states, and that nine of these are Southern, with special intent to
disfranchise the Negro while allowing the illiterate White to vote;
that evidence exists to prove that there is an unscrupulous body
ready to engage the lowest elements of our population by fraudulent
processes to oppose a suffrage amendment; that there is no authority
on the election board whose business it is to see that an amendment
gets a "square deal"; that the method of preparing the ballot is often
a distinct advantage to a corrupt opposition; and that when fraud is
committed there is practically no redress provided by election laws,
it ought to be clear to all that state constitutional amendments
when unsponsored by the dominant political parties which control the
election machinery, must run the gauntlet of intolerably unjust and
unfair conditions.
Pages:
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50