Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/85

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 7 1

The first positive recognition of parties came with the Aus- tralian or legalized ballot. The principles of this legislation were the following:

1. A rough definition of political parties based upon the party convention and the general and executive committees of the party, but not based on the rank and file of the membership.

2. Party nominations as certified by the aforesaid party authorities. Here for the first time it was legally recognized that the American voter does not vote for candidates, but for parties, and the party is accordingly made a constituent element in the machinery of government.

3. While recognizing parties as belonging to the legal machinery of government, the law deprived these same parties of their most important mechanical incident or function, the management of elections, the printing and distributing of ballots. This function does not pertain to the essential nature of parties in so far as they are based on principles, but is only an accident of their organization based on coercion, through the control of the necessary material of elections, especially the ballot paper, and therefore the state, in assuming to execute the function itself through its own sworn officials, did by no means interfere with the part that parties must play in popular government. It rather liberated the true spirit and persuasive function of parties from the shell of organization. The ballot was originally a piece of paper prepared by the voter himself. Afterward the party organization assumed this strictly mechanical service in the interests of economy and superior organization. The control of the ballot paper, an object in its nature distinguished by scar- city, became thus an instrument of coercion, and those who con- trolled it became the private owners of the party. Finally the state took this service away from the party, because it had become an instrument of autocracy tending to check the free spirit and expression of party principles in the mass of the party member- ship.

We have, therefore, now the official or legalized ballot instead of the private party ballot, and the results are noteworthy. It greatly increases the influence of the individual citizen in the