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Unpopular government in the United States

Chapter 13: FOOTNOTES:
By Albert Martin Kales
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History - AmericanPolitics

About This Book

The author defines unpopular government as rule by a minority against popular will and traces how fragmentation of offices, frequent elections, complex electoral districts, and limited voter knowledge transfer effective control to organized politocrats who direct the electorate and maintain power extra-legally. He analyzes the mechanisms that enable and secure this control, then evaluates reforms—political education, the Australian ballot and civil-service laws, elimination of party-column ballots, primaries, initiative, referendum, recall, independent movements, and the commission form of municipal and state government—and discusses proposals for uniting executive and legislative functions, reforming second chambers, judicial selection, and federal adjustments to restore responsiveness.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See frontispiece.

[3] The ballot which the voter in Chicago faced at the same election was even larger. It was 19 × 31 inches and presented elections to 53 offices, exclusive of the presidential electors, and 267 names, exclusive of the presidential electors, to be voted upon. At the fall election in Cook County in 1910 the ballot was 17 × 20 inches. It presented 52 offices to be filled and 190 candidates for the voter to investigate.

[4] In Illinois, for instance, the following state and local offices are provided for in the state constitution, protected by the state constitution, and required by the constitution to be filled by election: governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary of state, auditor of public accounts, state treasurer, superintendent of public instruction, attorney-general, judge of the Supreme Court, clerk of the Supreme Court; in counties outside of Cook County: the county judge, state’s attorney, sheriff, county clerk, treasurer, recorder, coroner, clerk of the Circuit Court, county superintendent of schools, judge of the Probate Court, judge of the Circuit Court; in Cook County: 15 county commissioners, judge of the County Court, 14 judges of the Circuit Court, 18 judges of the Superior Court, state’s attorney, recorder, coroner, sheriff, county treasurer, county clerk, clerk of the Circuit Court, clerk of the Superior Court, and county superintendent of schools. This includes all the state and local offices named in the long ballot printed opposite p. 29, except 3 trustees for the state university, 3 representatives in Congress, 1 member of the State Board of Equalization, 2 members of the Board of Assessors, 1 member of the Board of Review, the county surveyor, and 3 trustees of the Sanitary District.

[5] Post, chap. xv.