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Show How Will Women Vote in the Primaries? ANEW and perplexing element enters Into the selection of the party nominees for the presidency presi-dency of the United States in the forthcoming campaign. For the first time all the women of the country coun-try will have the right to participate in the maneuvers preliminary to the choosing of the standard-bearers In the national conventions. In 20 states preferential presidential primaries will be held in which the women as well as the men will have an opportunity to assert their partisanship parti-sanship and indicate their choice of party leaders. In the other states, Including In-cluding New York, they will have a similar although a more restricted opportunity op-portunity in delegate primaries or in local conventions. The women voters generally have not had this privilege heretofore because be-cause the equal suffrage amendment to the federal Constitution did not become effective until after the national na-tional conventions were held In 1920 and only shortly before' the presidential presiden-tial election. While women in large numbers did vote for president in 1920, the slates were made up for them before they were enfranchised and they had to accept the nominees the men had selected. Not so this time. The right of the women to take an active part Is of no small concern to presidential aspirants, their campaign managers and the political leaders. In both the Republican and Democratic parties there are candidates for the presidency who welcome the advent of the women in the primaries. There are others, avowed or. receptive, who undoubtedly would feel safer if they had to deal only with the old system by which the bosses ruled so successfully. success-fully. In states where the old methods prevail there is little likelihood that the women will exert any greater influence in-fluence upon the political fixers than the average male voter has been able to do since the creation of the present pres-ent party system. In the score of strategical states where the primary laws allow the voters vot-ers to express their will at the polls with the same freedom that they do in general elections, a different situation situ-ation is presented. There even may be enough votes at stake in this latter lat-ter group of states to wield a balance of power in both major party national conventions. Just how potent the women will be in these primary states cannot be determined. There are no available statistics upon which a forecast fore-cast might be based. |