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Show w PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES We are passing through the period per-iod of Presidential primaries. In many states the voters of both parties par-ties are supposed to be making known their preference for the candidates can-didates of their respective parties. Are they revealing their real preferences? prefer-ences? No. The conditions under which), he vote is taken in most if not in all the states where the system sys-tem has been adopted to so limit the range of choice that the results are frequently misleading and still more often worthless. That a primary election intended to reveal the wishes of one party should not allow members of any other party to have a '-oice in it is so obvious that it would he absurd to argue It. The value of the result is wholly destroyed where such Interference Inter-ference is permitted as in many of the states it is. It occurred in several sev-eral states In tho great Taft-Roose-velt preliminary campaign of 1912. In both the Dakotas there were many thousand more votes for the Repub lican candidates than both Taft and Rosevell received in the keenly contested con-tested election in the November following; fol-lowing; and it is a matter of common knowledge that many of the voles came from Democrats. The same thing may hapnen other states this year, in which case the wishes of the majority of the party would be frustrated because men of another party had assisted the minority. Even where the free-for-all caucus system does not exist voters seldom have an unfettered choice. In most states they are restricted to a choice among those whose names are on an official ballot. It not only may lint does happen that voters cannot vole for a candidate who is everywhere first or second among the candidates unless they take the (rouble to write his name yn their ballots. For example ex-ample Mr. Hoover has undeniable elements of popularity, bin almost nowhere will the voters find his name on their ballots. A grotesque result of the prevailing system ant, eared in Wisconsin in 1912. when Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt received only C2S votes in the primaries because his name did not appear on the ballot, but had nearly near-ly 6 9.000 at the November election. The principle of Presidential primaries pri-maries has -been accepted as desirable desir-able and expedient, hut. it H evident that, the forms of it that have grown out of state legislation are crude clumsy and incapable of producing the result, that we want: that is. a full and unfettered expression of the wishes of the members of a partv, and of those only: n. should not be rejected ,, ln marhinerv for putting put-ting it into effect should be imp,v. ' I -Youth's Companion. |
