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 522 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

stances compelled to depend either upon some party for advice and suggestion, or upon some volunteer organization like a municipal voters' league, or civic association,

A short ballot organization has been formed during the year, not with the idea of advocating specific applications of the idea but to assist in establishing the groundwork of educating the American people to an understanding of the principle through various channels of publicity, including pamphlets, magazine articles, press clippings, and advertising. The purpose of this organization, according to its declaration of principles, is :

To explain to the people of the United States the principle that democ- racy can reach more efficient working through a drastic reduction in the number of officials elected, thus securing a ballot which is very short and which includes only offices that are of sufficient public interest to attract from the voters a scrutiny and comparison of candidates adequate to make their respective individual merits a matter of common knowledge.

Some idea of the burden imposed upon the electors of this country may be gathered by examining a recent California ballot. At a recent election the people were called upon to elect ten executive or administrative officers, from governor down to clerk of the supreme court; three railroad commissioners, and four members of the board of equalization. They were called upon to elect some of the judges of the supreme court and some of the superior court, besides state senators and assemblymen, and a dozen or fifteen county and township officers. In addition to this long list, the residents in cities were called upon to elect local officials. The full list made a very long ballot and, as the Cali- fornia Weekly pointed out, not one voter in twenty could obtain a clear conception of the personality of more than a few candi- dates. It is not too much to say that in a combined state and county and municipal election there is not a single voter in Cali- fornia who is posted on the merits of all of the candidates of all the parties. In the days of the nominating convention when the politicians kindly took care of making the nominations, this multiplicity of offices to be filled by election was an evil, but it promises to be still more of an evil now that we have the direct