Page:A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States.djvu/35

 Fifthly, it would raise the tone of political life by teaching that a vote was a privilege and not an article of merchandise, and would give to the voter a sense of responsibility.

The arguments used in the United States against this "penal-colony reform" or "kangaroo voting," as the Australian ballot was dubbed, were:

First, that the exclusively official ballot destroys the "vest-pocket" vote which thousands of citizens have always thoughtfully and carefully prepared in advance of the election, and the prohibition of these will result in hurried and incomplete preparation within the booths. The friends of the law responded that the Australian ballot preserved and enlarged the point of value in the "vest-pocket" vote. "The 'vest-pocket' vote which has grown out of this mailing of ballots and pasters will be impossible under the new law, or, rather, the spirit of that vote will be the life-principle, the vital spark, of the entire election system under the new act. The 'vest pocket' has now been enlarged and transformed into the election booth."

Secondly, the Australian ballot destroys individuality in presenting candidates and limits the choice to nominees of parties; and discriminates against those whose names are not thus advertised or printed upon the ballot. Governor Hill in his veto of the Saxton bill said:

I am unalterably opposed to any system of elections which will prevent the people from putting candidates in nomination at any time and voting for them by a printed ballot up to the very last moment before the closing of the polls on election day. This is an inherent right under our free institutions, which the people will never knowingly surrender. . . ..

The right of suffrage and the existence of elections are both made absolutely dependent [by the Saxton bill] upon previous nominations. If no such nominations should be made, all the people of the state would be disfranchised. It is not enough to say that such event is not likely to happen. A bill which makes the right to vote depend upon irresponsible voluntary bodies, thereby making the disfranchisement of all the people possible, is equally unconstitutional whether such event be probable or not. This result proceeds not from special defects in this particular bill, but is inherent in the very theory of an exclusive official ballot upon which the bill is framed.

This argument was met with the statement that the bill, instead of hindering the voter in canvassing the merits of candidates or presenting