The Danger Of The Ballot

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Title:     The Danger Of The Ballot
Author: Lemuel K. Washburn [More Titles by Washburn]

Men speak usually as though voters ranged themselves on one side of a political question, or another, according to their convictions or principles. We wish this were so, then we should be nearer having a pure ballot. But we cannot share this lofty view. It does not seem to us that the average voter is a man of either political convictions or principles. Party service does not require intelligent, independent action, and politics to-day stands for party fealty more than for governmental ethics.

The main question that is decided by an election in our country is, which political party shall have the privilege of dispensing the offices of Government? There is a desire on the part of certain persons to obtain office, for either personal or party advantage, and this desire is oftentimes so fierce that it will betray the honor of citizenship. Where this is done, or attempted, lies the danger of the ballot.

If men voted only as their political convictions dictated, we should have a higher party morality and purer officers, but we must face the facts even though the duty is not an agreeable one. Politics has degenerated to a dirty business and political trickery and bribery secure victory where honor, integrity and principle suffer defeat. The plain truth is, we have a large class of voters who make merchandise of their right of suffrage, and a set of demagogues whose business it is to bribe or coerce voters for the advancement of selfish ends.

The honest, virtuous, intelligent, independent vote is the noblest power of a freeman, but the purchasable vote, the ignorant vote, the vicious and servile vote, is the opportunity of the knave and the scoundrel. The purity of the ballot is the only safety of a Republic, and no greater danger threatens this nation to-day than that which arises from the corruption of the suffrage. A ballot should be the honest declaration of our principles, the expression of our own opinions, the badge of our manhood; but when it is held in the hand that has sold it for a price, or will deposit it at the dictation of another, it is the prostitute of greed and the hired assassin of the despot.

Every man should select his own ballot and vote to please himself, and any person that would interfere with his right and duty to do this, should be disfranchised forever. The individual who does not know enough to select his own ballot has no right to vote in this country.

There have been too many voters led to the polls, and used as party troops. There are still slaves on election day who are afraid of the crack of the whip. There ought to be permitted in this nation no political or religious disability on account of the honest exercise of the right of suffrage. A man should be protected from the politician and the priest. When a man votes as he thinks, he has discharged the highest duty of citizenship, but when he votes through bribe or fear, he forfeits the privilege of the ballot. The polls are more sacred to man than the altar. Religion might die and man could still have every blessing of earth, but when liberty is killed, the noblest blessing of earth has departed.

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The petty salvation offered by Christianity is not much sought after to-day, while the world is bending its mighty energies in the direction of knowledge as never before, and the glory of the electric light, the song of the steam-whistle, the music of the telegraph, the chorus of machinery and the grand anthem of countless enterprises tell of a bright and golden future time when man will master the elements of Nature and guide his life through its course of years in perfect safety and security and step down at the end of it,—“Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

[The end]
Lemuel K. Washburn's essay: Danger Of The Ballot

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