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vention manipulators would largely

RESPONSIBLE CONVENTION LEADER- disappear, and popular confidence in

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But if we are not to abandon the national convention, its organization and procedure must be regulated by national law, and it must be made to function in such a manner as not to defeat or override party sentiment, but on the contrary, furnish the open, responsible, and official leadership in the selection of candidates and determination of party policy which is so much needed. Genuinely responsible leadership on the part of the convention, however, implies that the last word in the selection of presidential candidates must reside with the rank and file of party voters, and not with the convention, as at present. To insure that this leadership shall be a truly responsible leadership, therefore, a uniform, nation-wide, direct primary is indispensable; but the logical time for holding it is not previous to a national convention but subsequently. Its function should not be to elect delegates and seek to control their action in convention by more or less futile instructions or preferential votes; on the contrary, the sole function of the primary should be a far more important one, namely, to make the final choice of candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency from a list previously selected and submitted by the national convention. In other words, both national convention and presidential primary should be retained, but their relations should be exactly reversed. With the final decision as to nominees in the hands of the mass of party voters, expressed through a nation-wide primary held a month or so after the convention has met to sift the various aspirants and formulate a platform, the present danger of the ultimate control of nominations falling into the hands of con

the presidential primary-now fast waning-would be restored.

Under such an arrangement, the new rôle of the national convention would be restricted to drafting the party platform and to the selection of not more than five or six names to be submitted to the party voters at the ensuing primary for final decision. The aspirant receiving the highest number of votes in the primary would thereby become the candidate for the presidency, and the one receiving the next highest vote (unless he were already President or an ex-President) should be bound to accept the nomination for the vice-presidency. Not the least of the advantages claimed for such a system is that it is almost certain to result in the selection of vice-presidential candidates of uniformly higher grade than has prevailed in most periods of our history.

Space does not permit elaboration of the advantages which may reasonably be claimed for such a nominating method over existing practices; nor even outlining the details that should be provided for by congressional legislation in order to make such a scheme workable, further than to say that undoubtedly the composition of the national convention needs to be changed in order to make it a more wieldy, a more deliberative, and a more representative body; but the precise method of determining its membership becomes of secondary importance. If the final decision respecting nominations is to be placed in the hands of the party electorate, there is much to be said in favor of limiting the national conventions to

Substantially this plan is set forth in somewhat more detail by H. T. Pulsifer, "The Pig and the Primary," Outlook, CXXVI, 19–21 (1920).

national committeemen and state central committeemen from the several states. At any rate, however constituted, voting power in the convention should obviously be based upon party voting strength in the several states; and the present illogical apportionment of votes on approximately a population basis should be abandoned into the discard.

Sine Qua Non OF REFORM However numerous and however diverse may be the plans which are brought forward to improve our presidential nominating procedure, nothing but good can come from the discussions and comparisons which they are certain to provoke; and the writer is optimistic enough to believe that they are likely to result in something far superior to the system with which we have been muddling along for

so many years. The one thing needful for all friends of reform to remember is that they must avoid becoming so closely wedded to their own pet reform projects as to lose sight of the fact that the first important objective is not the enactment of any particular one of these plans; indeed their respective merits are, at present, of quite secondary importance and will remain so for some time to come. The principal thing to stress now is the need for complete unity and harmony and tireless energy, in creating a public sentiment favorable to a federal constitutional amendment, empowering Congress to regulate the method of nominating candidates for President and Vice-President. That amendment is the sine qua non for the success of any plan of reform, however meritorious and however widely supported.

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for the purpose of interpreting some obscure enactment are now and then amost ludicrous, especially in view of certain not unusual procedural practices among law-making bodies. How much more is the private investigator prone to err in attempting to understand the meaning of a law in some distant state with the local conditions of which he is quite unfamiliar. It is related that a competent student of political science once engaged in conversation a fellow railway-passenger from another section of the country and commented on the significance of a recent change in the organization of a large city. "Oh, we did that only to get rid of So-and-so," was the reply. To assure reasonable accuracy, at any rate in details, it is almost necessary for a writer on the law governing parties and party activities to confine his observations to a field in which he possesses personal acquaintance with men and measures, and a knowledge of the history of local politics. Argument in support of this proposition will be superfluous to those who are familiar with the frequent inadequacy of the indexes of the volumes of state statutes, or to those who have tried to puzzle out the import of a long amending clause by comparing it with the original act. In the cause of merely learning the phraseology of the law, it is unfortunate for the investigator and others, not only that the rule of a few states that "amending bills shall be so prepared and printed as to show the

omitted from the statutes," is not the rule of all, but also that the same rule is not everywhere employed in the printing of the statutes. Perhaps a lobby of the aggrieved could be organized.

If one were to judge the importance attached to the party platform by the references to it in the indexes of election laws, or even by the space devoted to it in such laws, he would conclude that it is a matter of little moment. There is reason to believe that such a conclusion would be correct. We seem to be witnessing the passing of the platform.

It is reported that in reply to a recent inquiry from a friend in New York who had wired: "Did the industrial court play any part in the recent election results?", William Allen White epitomized the situation in the following telegram: "Industrial court played important part in election. Was vigorously supported in Republican platform and violently denounced in Democratic platform and issue hotly contested in election. People voted for Democratic governor pledged to repeal the law, and elected Republican legislature pledged to sustain law. Tune in, and when you pick up vox populi vox dei wire me collect."

RECENT EFFORTS TO REGULATE

PLATFORM CONTENT

Yet there are indications that platforms are not passing without protest, and several recent efforts to restore

their vitality may be noted. "Re"Restore" may, of course, convey an unwarranted implication.

The efforts of the Republicans in the national campaign of 1920 may hardly be asserted to denote a concern over the meaninglessness and inadequacy of platforms. They were, rather, a bid for popular support on the basis of apparent willingness to consult the country regarding its needs. Probably everyone will agree that the net effect of those efforts was nil. There is an interesting story of the substitution at the last moment of an off-hand paragraph, hurriedly penciled by a well-known party leader, in lieu of one over which the experts on platform had labored long and assiduously. The most ambitious plan to revive party conflicts on lines of principle was no doubt that of the Richards law in South Dakota, 1918. Local "proposalmen," for issues and candidates, were to select state "proposalmen" who, after deliberation in assembly, could submit issues, "paramount" and otherwise, to the voters at the primary. Proposed candidates must sign the proposed issues. A system of debates between aspirants for the presidential nominations, or their proxies, and between candidates. for gubernatorial nominations and nominees, was intended to bring the issues home to the voters. In 1921, however, these features of the law were in the main repealed.

A bill before the Texas legislature in 1919 forbade any political party to embody in its state platform a demand for specific legislation, unless the subject should have received a majority vote at the primary on its submission at the petition of 10 per cent of the party voters, and authorized the submission of questions to the voters by petition for the purpose of instructing delegates to state and county con

ventions, who were to be governed by these instructions. This was very similar to the provisions of the Terrell law of 1908, which seem to have been held unconstitutional.

In Washington, 1919, a bill appeared providing that candidates for nomination might have propositions which they had advocated for three years submitted on the ballots with their candidacies. An elaborate process of elimination was designed to reduce the number of propositions in case it should exceed twenty-one. Further, groups of one hundred signers each could present ten-word propositions, and those receiving one-third of the votes cast at the primary, and a plurality, were to be placed on the general election ballot, and if similarly approved at the election, it became the paramount duty of the legislature, county commission, or city council to enact them into a proper and consistent form of law. An act of 1921 made provision for advisory state platform committees to hold public hearings during the state conventions, which were admonished to make a clear and concise statement of the party principles and legislative program. A prominent Republican of the state writes that his party has in practice followed а course almost identical with the requirements of this law. He says further, "Platforms have been given careful attention in this state. . . . In this year's Republican convention two very important planks were the subject of extensive debate on the floor of the convention, the committee being sustained on one point and reversed on the other. . . . I am certain no really important bit of legislation, that is, one involving a change in state policy, has been enacted without having been previously proposed in a political platform and subjected to state-wide discussion."

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PLATFORM MACHINERY GOVERNED BY

ELECTION LAWS

The election laws of most of the states will be found to define the formal process by which the party platforms are to be drafted and promulgated. Perhaps a majority of such states allow a state convention to perform this function, and of this majority the greater part provide for the election of the delegates to the state convention by subordinate conventions, nearly always for the county area, and the delegates to these county conventions are ordinarily elected at the primaries which nominate the party candidates. These state conventions are usually numerous bodies, often of approximately a thousand members, although in Maryland there are only 129 and in Arizona 213, the latter body being a party council. The party council in New Hampshire, on the other hand, contains about 800 members.

In Nebraska, at the regular primary election, delegates are selected to the county conventions, and delegates are selected by and from the county conventions to the state conventions which meet in every even year the third Tuesday in August, except in the years of presidential elections, in which they meet the third Tuesday in May. The original primary law of 1907 provided that the county nominees of each party should select the delegates to the state conventions. In 1908 a Republican convention thus constituted refused to endorse the principles upon which the successful aspirant for the gubernatorial nomination had conducted his campaign. Party leaders disapproved the influence which the plan gave to the county nominees. Also, it was argued that the party should formulate its program before the primary for the guidance

of the aspirants for party nominations. So the old caucus and convention system of party government, pre-primary, was reëstablished but forbidden to take any action regarding nominees. An act of 1919 established the present arrangement as described above, while an act of 1921, rejected at a referendum this year, restored the ante-primary caucus and convention. The considerations back of these later changes involved the nomination of minor state officers by convention and the recommendation of aspirants to the primary voters rather than the merits of pre-primary or post-primary platform making. Likewise in Michigan, delegates to the state conventions which formulate the platforms, which strangely the election laws seem not to mention, (and nominate minor state officers) are elected at county conventions. The same rule holds in Iowa, and since 1921, in Minnesota, where the convention exercises the function also of proposing primary aspirants. In Idaho the members of county committees, elected from precincts, choose the delegates to the state convention which here possesses nomination powers. Nominees for county offices may adopt principles if they wish. In Illinois also the county convention consists of the county committeemen and sends delegates to the state convention. In North Dakota the state committee, chosen by county committeemen, makes the platform. Indiana seems to require the election of delegates to the state convention directly by the primary voters. This is true of New York, where the assembly district is the unit of representation, and of Ohio. In a number of these states the names of aspirants for the position of delegate do not appear on the primary ballot but may be written in. Nevada in 1920 placed the state convention before the pri

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