Page:A History of the Australian Ballot System in the United States.djvu/56

Rh, and sentiments of the voter, and a device that tends to divert the attention of the elector from present issues to past traditions. Could there be a more open appeal to party and sectional passion and hatred than the Democratic emblem and motto in Alabama?

The office-group type of the ballot has been adopted in seventeen commonwealths. There are four eastern states, one north central, six southern, and six western. In eight states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Tennessee, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, and Oregon, the names of the candidates are arranged under the titles of the offices alphabetically according to surnames. In Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and New York the candidates of each party occupy the same relative position for each office; that is, if the Republicans are given first place, depending on the size of the vote, all the Republican candidates occupy first place under the title of the various offices regardless of whether the particular candidate’s name begins with A or Z. Mississippi and Florida give full discretion to the officer printing the ballots as to the order in which the names shall appear. Virginia makes no provision as to the order of names. Arkansas and California are the only states which attempt to overcome the advantage of position by a scheme of rotation. Nebraska in 1915 provided for rotation of names in counties of 50,000 or more inhabitants.

As a general rule, the “office-group” states permit the party or other political appellation to be printed after the name of each candidate, but there are certain exceptions. In five southern states, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland (eleven counties), all party designations have been abolished. The object is to get rid of the negro vote. In these five states the Democratic nominees are printed first, and it is easy to instruct even an ignorant white to mark the first name or the first five, as the case may be, but an ignorant voter might and does make many mistakes if he has to count down a certain number before starting to mark. Minnesota has abolished all party nominations