Part 9 (1/2)

1. What are the several grades of courts in your state? In what judicial district or circuit do you live? Who is the judge for that district or circuit?

2. What are the terms of the supreme court justices? The circuit or district judges? The county judges? Do you think these terms are too short? Would a good behavior term be better?

3. What is the pay of judges in your state? Do you think these salaries are large enough to attract the best lawyers of the state? Are the salaries fixed by the const.i.tution or by act of the legislature?

4. How are the judges chosen? Has the existing method given satisfaction? Do you think judges should engage in politics? Where they are chosen by popular election, should they canva.s.s the district or state as other candidates do?

5. Are there separate chancery (equity) courts in your state? separate probate courts? separate juvenile courts? If not, what courts have jurisdiction of such matters as belong to such courts?

6. How are justices of the peace in your state chosen? What is the extent of their jurisdiction in civil cases? in criminal cases? What is the method of compensating justices of the peace?

7. How often is the circuit court held in your district? How often the county court?

8. How are juries selected in your state? How could a better cla.s.s of jurors be selected? Do the good citizens show a disposition to s.h.i.+rk jury duty? What are the merits and demerits of the jury system? Do you think a unanimous verdict ought to be required in criminal cases?

9. Is the grand jury retained in your state for making indictments? If not, how are indictments prepared? What is the difference between an indictment and an information?

10. Why are citizens never justified in resorting to lynch law even when there is a flagrant miscarriage of justice? Has there ever been a case of lynching in your county?

11. What are some of the causes for the ”delays of the law”? How could delays be shortened and the trial of cases made more prompt?

12. What are the qualities of a good judge? Upon whom are the rights of the people most dependent, the executive officers or the judges?

CHAPTER VII

SUFFRAGE AND ELECTIONS

=Nature of the Elective Franchise.=--The right of suffrage, that is, the right to take part in the choice of public officials, is sometimes said to be a natural and inherent right of the citizen, but in practice no state acts upon such a principle. The better opinion, as well as the almost universal practice, is that suffrage is not at all a matter of right, but a privilege bestowed by the state upon those of its citizens who are qualified to exercise it intelligently and for the public good.

No state allows all its citizens to vote; all the states restrict the privilege to those who are at least twenty-one years of age; all confine the privilege to those who are _bona fide_ residents of the community; and some require educational, property, and other qualifications of various kinds. On the other hand, eight states allow aliens who have formally declared their intention of becoming citizens, to vote equally with citizens in all elections.[20] The terms ”voter” and ”citizen,”

therefore, are not identical or synonymous.

[20] These states are Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, and Texas.

=Existing Qualifications for Voting.=--In the early days of our history restrictions on the voting privilege were much more numerous and stringent than now. Most of the early const.i.tutions limited the privilege to property owners, and some prescribed religious tests in addition. It is estimated that at the beginning of the nineteenth century not more than one person in twenty had the right to vote, whereas now probably the proportion is two in five.

_Federal Restriction._--In the United States the power to prescribe the qualifications for voting in both national and state elections belongs to the individual states, subject only to two provisions: in fixing the suffrage they cannot abridge the privilege (1) on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, or (2) on account of s.e.x. The first provision is found in the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution, adopted in 1870, and its purpose was to prevent the states from denying the privilege of suffrage to negroes who by the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, had been made citizens of the United States.

The second provision is in the Nineteenth Amendment adopted in 1920.

These provisions do not, however, prevent the states from limiting the privilege on other grounds, such as illiteracy, criminality, vagrancy, nonpayment of taxes, and the like.

_The Residence Requirement._--In the first place, all the states require residence for a specified period in the state and in the election district in which the voter exercises his privilege of voting. The purpose of this requirement is to confine the franchise to those who have become identified with the interests of the community, and to exclude outsiders or newcomers who are unfamiliar with local conditions and unacquainted with the qualifications of the candidates. The required length of residence in the state ranges from three months in Maine to two years in most of the Southern states, the more usual requirement being one year. The period of residence required in the county or election district is shorter, the most common requirement being three months in the county and one month in the election district.

_Educational Tests._--In addition to this requirement, nearly one third of the states insist upon some kind of educational test. Connecticut in 1855 was the first state to require ability to read and write.

Ma.s.sachusetts followed her example shortly thereafter, and the precedent set by these two states was soon followed, with modifications, by California, Maine, Wyoming, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Delaware, and Was.h.i.+ngton.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which indirectly conferred the right to vote on the negro race, and the unfortunate results which followed the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the large ma.s.s of blacks in the South, led some of the Southern states to adopt educational and other restrictions to diminish the evils of an ignorant suffrage.

Mississippi in 1890 took the initiative, and required ability either to read the const.i.tution of the state or to understand it when read by an election officer. South Carolina followed her example in 1895, but with the modification that an illiterate person who was the owner of at least $300 worth of property should not be disfranchised. Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, and Georgia followed with restrictions based on similar principles. In several of these states, however, the educational qualification does not apply to those who were voters in 1867 (when the negro race was still unenfranchised), or to their descendants, or to those who served in the army or navy during the Civil War. But in 1915 the Supreme Court of the United States decided, in the case of Oklahoma, that these so-called ”grandfather” provisions were unconst.i.tutional.