Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/384

 I allude, to what is called, the general ticket system; which has become, with the exception of a single State, the universal mode of appointing electors to choose the President and Vice-President. It was adopted to prevent a division of the vote of the several States, in the choice of their highest officers; and to make the election more popular, by giving it, as was professed to be its object, to the people. The former of these ends it has effected, but it has utterly failed as to the latter. It professes to give the people, individually, a right which it was impossible to exercise, except in the very smallest class of States, and even in these, very imperfectly. To call on a hundred thousand voters, scattered over fifty or sixty thousand square miles, to make out a ticket of a dozen or more electors, is to ask them to do that which, individually, they cannot properly or successfully do. Very few would have the information necessary to make a proper selection; and even if every voter had such information, the diversity of opinion and the want of concentration on the same persons, would be so great, that it would be a matter of mere accident, who would have the majority. To avoid this, a ticket must be formed by each party. But the few of each, who form the ticket, actually make the appointment of the electors; for the people individually, have no choice, but to vote for the one or the other ticket — or otherwise, virtually, to throw away their vote — for there would be no chance of success against the concentrated votes of the two parties. Never was there a scheme better contrived to transfer power from the body of the