Show vy f ms f it DIRECT ELECTIONS Eye the third of november last it hu awn universally that the republican electoral ticket had a fair majority in ibe union bat another doubt was very preva lent giving rise to many complaints of the injustice of the present mode of presidential elec tums the que tion was whether or hn cock got the popular vote As it has long since bacome evident that the difference at most amount to few thousand vote mid the result has all the lew political signification as garfield is anyhow a minority president the whole matter has only a certain on of the many and heavy beta which were made on the popular vote such beta bare certainly been dinst ly those parties who bet on n nan jonty for a it now appears be yond doubt from the most reliable returns of all the mate that the garfield electors hud 2294 votes more than the electors this latter number differs only slightly from the figures previously published and commented on by us in these we endeavor to emphasize emphasise the relatively equal of the two great national parties benco we would have no reason to refer again to the matter it not for the revival of ahe proposition to have the president and vico president elected by the popular votes of all ahe states there is bat one view and voice among all reasoning observers ot lublic affairs about the insufficiency and inadequacy of the method of presidential election we concur with a leading new york ex change in the proposition to do aay wilh he electors who have never beebi anything but figureheads figure heads and let the people vote directly on presidential and vice jen bial candidates making the majority in each state count for so many votes as that slate hs senator and representative in the IT congress he counting and verifying of these could be done by congress or some other tribunal aa well as the counting of the electoral vot i and a good many difficulties would be avoided or removed by such a operandi it i i true there w uld still remain some difficulties lor the method proposed by us would leave a chance for squabbles over the result of the popular election in individual states bullet ual consider be dangers arising from leaving the decision of an electoral campaign to he popular vole of the whole union especially if the cartiea should be as evenly divided a they were baat year when for instance a few hun thousand votes would e able to dip the scales either way to illustrate thin difficulty di emm we will take the vote aa this showed a very birge ana arity for Uan cock and there was no difficulty to ahn election of the electors neither would it lave been difficult to verify that the eight electoral hotoi of febu ully belonged to llano ock if there bad been a direct dec ion but had it ben the case that lie exact number of popular votes were to decide the the elac lion grave difficulty would have risen we find that the state secretary of reports about one the reports of county officials are incorrect in one particular or the other As the state ef texas number over counties there are incomplete and imperfect returns from over one hundred so that the result of tho election elec tinn ia not yet definitely known at this very late hour we need simply imagine he of the presidential election was depending on that accurate verification of the result ia texas and that there was a in the votes similar to that existing in the late presidential election it ia hard to imagine all th turbulence fraud and violence which would inevitably ensue irom such a precarious condition of things As the mat ter standi the equipoise equip oiso of the nation has been repeatedly imperiled by the of the popular vote and it would be an open bid for incessant contest and protests to adopt the direct presidential election by the popular vote of the whole union on the face of it such a system hag much to commend it to the superficial ob server but if wo bome to reason the matter out we will find that the safest way is to maintain ibe healthy dualism between bute and federal sovereignty by an alecs tion system which regards th su primacy of the union while guarding o a extent the ot the individual suite |