Page:A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States.djvu/50

Rh The separate-party or “shoestring” type of ballot is merely the blanket party-column ballot cut into strips, and closely resembles the old unofficial ballots. This is decidedly inferior to the blanket ballot, and has not been widely adopted. It was used in New York from 1890 to the adoption of the Australian act of 1895; in Texas from 1903 to 1905; in Connecticut until 1909; and in New Jersey until 1911. At the present time this form is used in only two states, Missouri and New Mexico.

At first the office-group arrangement was the most popular, and by 1891 it had been adopted in nineteen states against thirteen for the party-column type. In that year Washington and Wisconsin abandoned the office-group form in favor of the party-column type, and for the next ten years the trend was very marked in favor of the party-column arrangement. Since 1900 there have been signs of a swinging back to the Massachusetts model. Five states, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, California, and Kansas, changed from the party-column to the office-group type, and one state, New Jersey, adopted this in place of separate-party ballots. Two states, Rhode Island and Alabama, abandoned the office-group form in favor of the party-column type, and three new states, Texas, Connecticut, and North Carolina (New Hanover County), also provided for the party-column ballot.

The relative merits of the Massachusetts and Indiana forms of the ballot have been debated many times. The chief criticisms of the Massachusetts act are: First, it takes too long to mark the ballot, and this causes delay in large precincts. Secondly, this system causes the less educated to become discouraged and stay away from the polls, or if