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Show Balance of Power Held by Women Who Have Vote in Twelve Suffrage States By FLORENCE M. BREWER of Piiubuigh There are, excluding aliens, minors and everyone to whom the antis -onld find an objection, 4,03-1,59-1 women qualified to vote in the coming elections. The 12 suffrage states control one-fifth of the electoral college and oBO-lhird of the votes necessary to elect a president. In the last 20 years it would have required a change of only one-ninth of the total vote cast to throw the election in any of the suffrage states to the other party. In the last five presidential elections no one of the suffrage states . - '"''tbs gone steadily for any one party. As for congressional elections, much .".le same situation exists. 'Women vote for members of both houses in 11 stales; in Illinois the women vote only at a municipal election. Since 1896 not one of the districts in these states has been carried cteadily by the Democratic party, and only five have been held in the Kcpublican column. In two-thirds of the elections of this period less than 10 per ceui of the total vote cast would have served to change the elections. Women cannot always agree, cannot always stand as a united politi-, politi-, al force. The important thing is that they should keep their direct, clear vision of what politics is; should be able always to forget the local and the personal as they are now forgetting them, to see the nation as a whole, to keep what one of their leaders calls "the great throb of faith that ' has been renewed in their blood by this movement among free women to help the unfree." |