Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment | Page 9

of corruption. The
election officers have even been known to wink at irregularities plainly
committed since it was no affair of theirs. Or, they may even go further
and join in the entertaining game of running in as many votes against

such an amendment as possible. This has not infrequently been the
unhappy experience of suffrage amendments in corrupt quarters.
Honest election officers, respecting "the will of the majority" as the
sovereign of our nation, would protect honesty in elections, regardless
of their own or their party's views, but unhappily that high standard is
not universal.
Surely, the method of taking the vote and of safeguarding the honesty
of elections should be the most important and fundamental of all
questions in a republic. Such laws ought to be preliminary to all other
laws. Yet as a matter of fact the laxity and ambiguity of many state
election laws and the utter inadequacy of provisions for enforcement
are almost unbelievable. The contemplation of the actual facts seriously
reflects upon the intelligence and good faith of the successive
lawmakers of our land.
With no one on the election board whose special business it is to see
that honesty is upheld, a suffrage amendment must face further hazards
through the fact that most states do not permit women, or even special
men watchers, to stand guard over the vote and the count upon such
questions.
When it is remembered that immigrants may be naturalized after a
residence of five years; that when naturalized they automatically
become voters by all our state constitutions; that in eight states[A]
immigrant voters are not even required to be citizens; that the right to
vote is limited by an educational qualification in only seventeen states,
and that nine of these are Southern, with special intent to disfranchise
the Negro while allowing the illiterate White to vote; that evidence
exists to prove that there is an unscrupulous body ready to engage the
lowest elements of our population by fraudulent processes to oppose a
suffrage amendment; that there is no authority on the election board
whose business it is to see that an amendment gets a "square deal"; that
the method of preparing the ballot is often a distinct advantage to a
corrupt opposition; and that when fraud is committed there is
practically no redress provided by election laws, it ought to be clear to
all that state constitutional amendments when unsponsored by the

dominant political parties which control the election machinery, must
run the gauntlet of intolerably unjust and unfair conditions. When
suffragists have been fortunate enough to overcome the obstacles
imposed by the constitution of their states and a referendum to the male
voters has been secured, they must immediately enter upon the task of
surmounting the infinitely greater obstructions of the election law.
They make their appeal to the public upon the supposition that a
majority of independent voters is to decide their question. Instead, they
may discover that in a determining number of precincts the taking of
the actual vote is a game in which the cards are stacked against them.
One woman, who had watched at a precinct all day in a suffrage
amendment election, said "Something went out of me that day which
never came back--and that was pride in my country. At first I thought it
was disappointment produced by the defeat of the woman suffrage
amendment, but when I had recovered and could think calmly, I knew
it was not that. I was still patient and still willing to go on working,
struggling, sacrificing, for my right to vote; but I could not forget that I
lived in a land which tolerated the things I saw that day." The women
who know cannot rise to "The Star-Spangled Banner" without a "lump
in their throats," for they recognize the terrible fact that hidden under
the beautiful pretense of democracy is a hideous menace to our national
liberties, which no political party, no legislature, no congress, has dared
to drag out into the daylight of public knowledge.
[Footnote A: The number of states which permitted men to vote on
"first papers" was formerly fifteen. The following eight states still
perpetuate this provision: Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Kansas,
Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas.]
Bear these items in mind and remember that Congress enfranchised the
Indians, assuming its authority upon the ground that they are wards of
the nation; that the Negroes were enfranchised by Federal amendment;
that the constitutions of all states not in the list of the original thirteen,
automatically extended the vote to men; that in the original colonial
territory, the chief struggle occurred over the elimination of the
land-owning qualifications and that a total vote necessary to give the
franchise to non-landowners did not exceed fifty to seventy-five

thousand in any state.
Let it also not