Nomination Reform. ROUND TABLE LUNCHEON DISCUSSION. HORACE E. DEMING, Chairman. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH, I P. M. THE CHAIRMAN: The National Municipal League confines its efforts to the field of city government. What is particularly desired therefore at this conference is a frank interchange of opinions and experience as to methods of making nominations to elective city office. Are direct primaries a good method for this purpose? Do they secure a better class of men as successful candidates than other methods? What is their effect in eliminating national and state political partisanship from influence in the conduct of city government? These are types of the questions to which the speakers are requested to direct their attention. Varieties of Direct Primaries There are several varieties of direct primaries. In Des Moines, Iowa, for instance, the nomination of a candidate for city office is made very simply by the petition of twenty-five of his fellow citizens. The primary is an open one. The ballots used at the primary contain the names of all candidates arranged alphabetically under the title of the office they seek. No political name or mark is allowed on the ballot. Des Moines is a commissiongoverned city. The elective offices are a mayor and four councilmen. The names of the two nominees for mayor and of the eight nominees for councilman who receive the highest vote at the primary are the only ones allowed on the election-day ballot which like the primary ballot, has no political mark or designation. This is the Des Moines method for excluding national and state politics from local elections and having city officers elected by a majority vote. In some cities no primaries at all are allowed. In Grand Junction, Colorado, candidates are nominated very simply by the petition of twentyfive citizens. The names appear alphabetically on the election day ballot on which no political designation of any sort is permitted, and the preferential vote is used in order to make sure that those elected are the choice of a majority of their fellow citizens. Boston is another city which forbids primaries altogether in city elections and uses ballots on election day on which no political designation is permitted. In Boston also, as in Des Moines and Grand Junction, the names of candidates appear alphabetically under the title to the office. In order to become a candidate for elective city office in Boston five thousand of one's fellow citizens must join in a petition nominating him. A plurality vote on election day is sufficient to elect. Boston is a large city. It has towards 600,000 inhabitants. Des Moines has approximately 90,000; Grand Junction has-I do not recall the exact number-but it is less than 25,000. This suggests another matter which has an important bearing upon the topic to be discussed at this conference. The word "city" in this country means anything from a village of fifteen hundred or two thousand inhabitants to a community numbering millions, according to the whim of a state legislature. Therefore, when you make your arguments, if you want those arguments to apply to big cities, I hope you will say so. If you mean to have them apply to the small cities, I hope you will say so. We shall now have the privilege of listening to Mr. Louis M. Greeley of Chicago and Mr. Richard S. Childs of New York, who have prepared the two papers, printed copies of which have been furnished you in advance as a basis for the discussion. Each is entitled to ten minutes to present a summary of the main points in his paper. [For Mr. Greeley's paper on "The Present Status of Direct Nominations," see page 328. For Mr. Childs's on "The Principle of Wieldy Districts," see page 340.] THE CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen, this question is now open for general discussion. Mr. Ansley Wilcox, of Buffalo. The New York MR. ANSLEY WILCOX: Mr. Chairman: New York State has been, during the whole of Gov. Hughes' second administration, the especial battleground on which the subject of direct nominations has been fought out. Gov. Hughes more and more during his term of office took advanced ground in favor of direct nominations applied in a sweeping way, comprehensively, to the entire state machinery and to all local governmental machinery as well. His reasons for opposing the present system, no doubt those of every thinking man, his arguments against the machine system by which our state has been governed in the past, were unanswerable. Large numbers of people followed him to the end and adopted all his conclusions. Some of us, who believed in his purposes, who wanted to work with him earnestly and heartily, could not believe it safe or proper in a state the size of New York, to apply the system of direct nominations to the entire state and local machinery of government at the same time, and I was one of those. I thought it safer and wiser to begin in a moderate way-and many other men were of that opinion to apply it to small communities first. In thinking about it, it has always seemed to me that the places in which it could first and most safely be applied were in small, compact municipalities where people are in touch with one another, where they know the men within their limits, where they read the same newspapers and get the same information, or misinformation, as the case may be, and where public sentiment can concentrate upon individual candidates. By small municipalities, I mean cities with populations of not more than 100,000 people. And as applicable to cities of that class I want to outline here and to hold before this body of thinkers a plan of direct nominations which originated with myself in 1896 and '7, as a result of changes in our organic law which had been created immediately before that time, which I still believe to be altogether the best and most workable plan of direct nominations in cities of that class. In 1896, as a result of our new constitution adopted at that time, this State separated local elections from national and state elections, absolutely, by constitutional amendment, so that our local elections must occur in odd-numbered years when there is no general election. That was a constitutional declaration in favor of eliminating party politics from local elections, and a constitutional safeguard thrown about it. About the same time, by legislative enactment, the state provided for the personal registration of voters in cities. Now, taking those two features of separate local elections and personal registration: I suggested a direct primary held by both parties at the same time, and at the same place. when men go to enroll themselves as voters, and under the authority of the governmental officers then and there seated and doing their work. Everybody has to be registered or he cannot vote, and my idea was to make a man vote at the primary election before he was allowed to register, so as to make it compulsory for him to be at the primary election. Let there be a Republican and a Democratic title to the ballot, if you please, but vote at the same ballot-box. Now, what is simpler and what is better than that? It insures a large primary, in the first place; it insures a secret primary in the second place, saves all question of expense and new machinery in the third place, and it simply sifts the candidates, sifts them out and picks out those whom the largest number of people want to vote for on election day. Now, this plan, simple as it is, seems to have qualifications. It could not possibly succeed in Buffalo to-day, because we have to vote under a party, and there is where I want to put my hand in the hand of Mr. Childs, and say that he is advocating the best movement for municipal reform that is before the people of this country to-day, and that is the short ballot. [Applause.] One way or another we The Short Ballot have got to get the short ballot in our cities or we will never get good government. That we must have. If there are to be ten or a dozen candidates to vote for, any system of primary election you can think of will be a failure, in a large or a small community. Then, in addition to having the short ballot, in the cities, you must absolutely do away with the party column. You must have a ballot arranged alphabetically or in some way, so that every candidate will stand upon the same basis and each one be voted upon individually, and if you have those two things, in addition to the things I have sug gested before, I believe direct nominations in cities will go a long way towards solving the problem of our city government. [Applause.] Preferential LEWIS STOCKTON, of Buffalo: One way of solving the difficulty of getting the candidate elected in a large city without the aid of organized political machines is the actual successful practice in the city of Grand Junction, Colo.; and it seems to me we do not have to go any further to accomplish the purposes at which we are aiming. If you are going to take the city out of politics, you are not going any longer to have two parties, and you must therefore no longer have plurality votes, but majority votes, as a means of ascertaining the will of the people. Under the Grand Junction system every candidate for an elective city office is elected at large; you can vote for one person for first choice, as you do at present, and stop there; or you can vote further and vote for some other candidate as your second choice and stop there; or you can go still further and vote for everybody except for those for whom you do not want to vote at all. In Grand Junction, political machines are removed from city elections and every successful candidate is elected by a majority vote. The Boston scheme was a very excellent scheme, but it failed to get hold of this idea that if they were going to establish non-partisan government of the city they ought not any longer to have plurality elections as expressive of the will of the people. The result was that the good people of Boston with all their intelligence were very much surprised to find they had elected Fitzgerald as mayor. Under the Grand Junction plan Mr. Fitzgerald would not have been elected on the first ballot, the only one that was taken, because that showed that he did not get a majority vote of the people of Boston. What would have been the result I do not know, but certainly the result might have been different, which a great many people in Boston would have been very glad to see. But it seems to me, gentlemen, that we ought to bear in mind that if we want a non-partisan system of election, the plurality vote is out of date, that the majority vote is the true test and is extremely easy to secure, according to the testimony of those who have tried it. F. S. SPENCE, of Toronto: Perhaps a word or two concerning the general experience of Canadian cities might be of interest if not of any other value. Toronto has a population of 400,000. The question that you Canadian are discussing to-day has never given us any serious trouble. I might say that our city is governed by commission. Perhaps it will be almost as accurate to say that it is not, because we have endeavored to separate to some extent the two functions of government, which some of your political economists taught us long ago, the function of admin istration and legislation. We elect what we call a board of control by the city at large, composed of four persons, who, with the mayor make up the administration. On the English system of responsible government, every member of an administration must be also a member of the legislative body, sitting there to have his administration criticised and be responsible to the legislative body. We have then the mayor and four comptrollers, elected by the city at large. Then we have the ward system which elects the common council. That attends to the legislative work and criticises the administrative work of the smaller and more compact expert body. When our election comes, any two citizens may nominate any citizen they choose for mayor; any two citizens may nominate a citizens for comptroller; any two may nominate a citizen for alderman in their ward. A majority vote elects the mayor on one ballot provided by the city with nothing on it but "mayor". Another ballot contains the names of all who are candidates for comptroller, and the four highest are elected. Another contains the names of all who are candidates for aldermen, and the three highest are elected from each ward, because we have three representativs from each of the seven wards in our city. We have a board of control of five more, making up 26. That gives us our common legislative council with our centralized administrative body. That legislative body advises, criticises, corrects, and to a certain extent controls. We have never had any trouble with the question of nominations. Somehow ideas center around individuals, and as a matter of practice a man who gets to be a comptroller graduates from the position of alderman. He is acquainted in his ward, he is selected there and the publicity that his career in council gives him is what gives the public the measure of whether he is fit for mayor or for the board of control, and a term in the board of control gives the people an idea whether or not he is a proper man to be elected as mayor. For mayor rarely more than four names are nominated. Public interest concentrates on two. Our mayor is almost invariably elected by a majority of the votes cast. Members of the board of control are elected by the city at large. Sometimes the board of control ballot has contained as high as nine or ten names. From among those the four with the largest votes are chosen. A citizen is not always required to be a resident of the ward in which he runs, but he nearly always is as a matter of fact. There are three aldermen elected upon the ward ballot. As a rule there would not be more than five or six names put upon the ballot. The three aldermen, the mayor and comptrollers are all elected on New Year's Day, which is a public holiday, and the municipal election is always separate from any other election whatever. The term is only twelve months at present. We have no recall. We |