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Show MARKING BALLOTS. A grat deal hao beta said recently re-cently about the practice ol marking mark-ing tuc ballots at elections . in this Territory. By the fuss made by uilcrest.d parties about this matter, mat-ter, one id led to imagine that the legislators of Utah, in establishing this practieo.hud inaugurated uu unheard of custom, amounting in the eyes ol' civilization civ-ilization to a heinous crime. ' Such, however, is not the ea.-c. The custom .,f placing a uuuikr on the ballot deposited de-posited by the voU;r, corrc ponding to the number oppo-ite bis name on the poll-books, i- by no means confined to 'hi.-; Territory, a ."miliar piajiicchawn.-' been established by law in several of the old State.--. The great hue and cry made about ''walked ballot-," "coercion "co-ercion at election?," ' intimidation of oter-"," A.c, made by the "liinti.-.ta'' in our mid it, h:n doubtl' . ,s induced Mr. Sarenl, "in bis bill now bdoie "CatrgressTTor arrTEarjling aof for Utah, to prohibit the--placing of any mark or other insignia ou any " ballot .by' which the " persom casting he same may be. identified. Now, fdr. Jur. part w "Tfe. :. think'-. this whole matter is simply buncombe. Is it not better to'mark the "ballots with numbers corresponding to those on the poll books," and' ttius preserve the pur ityvf the ballot bre-,- than by-'the -absence of ;. : such marks, -give; i opportunity op-portunity to .-have: -.the ballot; box stuffed ' with ballots " ncveri legal.y eastj as has boon done in.M jinany instances in-stances ca-t and west.' Is it presumed j that any person is curious enough to search through twenty or thirty thou and ballots to see how Tom, Bick, or Harry voted? We think not. And suppose the ballots were canvassed ' for this purpose, what freeman would cave who knew how ho voted. Crawling, subservient sycophants might fear such a disclosure, but no one with a spark of true iuanhood in his composition compo-sition wouM. ' It is not liberty, or freedom free-dom of the -ballot box that these carpers car-pers want. It is license to stuff and otherwise corrupt it. |