Page:The New England Magazine 1891, 5.1.djvu/118

party would take possession of the polling register and fill it with votes for their candidate. Hot-blooded appeals to muscle would also occasionally follow among the bullies (fiers à bras). After struggles, howls, and uproar, the fracas would end with "the survival of the fittest" and their manipulation of the registers for their particular man. Afterwards, the blood of the "martyrs" often proved the seed of the lawyers and the harvest as well.

Less violence but more ingenuity is resorted to since the use of the ballot boxes. Not long ago a leading politician found himself defeated at the close of the poll. In the evening a crowd of admirers, the majority of the residents of his own village called at his house to sympathize and cheer him with promises of future more successful support. He ordered them out, with hostile looks, calling them a pack of hypocrites, for their village showed a majority for his opponent. They one and all protested they had voted for him, and offered to take their oaths in support of their statement. This led to an investigation, and the discovery that during the absence of the poll clerk at the mid-day meal, emissaries of the opposite party had entered the poll house through a cellar trap-door, opened the ballot-box and extracted some of the bulletins and replaced them with a sufficient number of fictitious ones to insure the election of their own candidates.

Experience has proved that however honest and wise may be the law in favor of legitimate elections, even in the least intelligent or progressive country, due care and vigilance are required for its proper carrying out. Among the tricks employed by rival politicians, I have heard of clerks who are paid by the public and should be fair or impartial to each side, deftly misusing their position to track the course of voters and give hints and reports in aid of some favorite candidate, who can turn this help to the best account before the close of voting. I have heard of this trick, also: one voter is sent with a counterfeit ballot, which he deposits in the box, bringing back the proper paper given him by the chief poll-clerk or returning officer; this one is now regularly crossed and marked and given to another person, with the promise of a reward should he duly deposit it and come back with a fresh ballot, to be used again in the same way. The law has been improved of late years, with the object of rendering gross irregularities difficult, if not impossible ; but vigilance and honesty on the part of its executors continue still indispensable in the public interest. Many of the rustics are liberally furnished with the material of the average politician. ‘They have an easier or more elastic law of conscience in regard to public voting than to various other duties. ‘They look upon the franchise as a species of private property which they have a right to sell to the highest bidder. The absence of exacting issues leaves a pretty large field open to the speculator and corruptionist. No wonder the resources of ingenuity are exhausted by the canvassers to devise means of evading the law, the most ridiculous bribes being resorted to. In certain cases, in addition to money deposited in the palms of the children or of the voter's wife, stock-breeding privileges, presents of groceries, sucking pigs of popular breeds, etc., are cleverly employed. In fact all that can be extracted from either political candidate, or from both, is considered legitimate spoil. Such patriots will visit the different election committees, accept all drinks and money offered them, indifferent as to the promised return. The warnings of the priests and exhortations of moralists will often be laughed at as idle wind. It is not seldom difficult to find out on which side they intend voting; and they are often seen to join in the jubilation of the victors when they should be mourning with the defeated party. If told their course is discreditable, they defend it with the reply that the candidate cares nothing for their interests and seeks their vote only for his own election and future advantage, often adding that he will not show himself until he desires re-election. They no doubt see too much reason to conclude that politics is too often pursued as a game mainly for individual and party advantages; and therefore believe that the candidate should pay for the votes he solicits.