Compulsory Voting.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18904, 20 January 1927, Page 8

Compulsory Voting.

Tli§ right sot to vote, 'which H only threatened so far in New Zealand, but has already been lost in Australia, is about to be assaulted with some violate in the United States, It is reported in a recent issue of the New York Times that Senator Arthur Capper, of Kansas, a State with a generous view of the limits of legislation, gave notice six weeks ago of his intention to introduce a measure during the current session of Congress providing that " citizens of the United States who « arq legally qualified to vote shall pay «an additional ta* of one per cent, of " their gross yearly incomes after 1927 "unless it can be shown that they'have "voted in the last preceding election "of President, Congressmen, or United "States Senators, or were prevented " from doing so by unavoidable absence " from their homes, by sickness, or by "other serious disability." The first payment under this gentle measure, if it becomes law, will be due in 1929, and if human nature remains what it was, will b e enormous. For there were at least twenty*eight million qualified people who failed to vote in tho Fresl. dentin! election of 1920-about a million mora than 50 per cent.—and in the Senatorial elections two years later the percentage of voters in nearly every State was even smaller. In some of the States, Senator Capper told the

Times in justification of his measure, fully two-thirds of the eligibles •. " stayed at home, went fishing, or I *' passed the day in other ways undis"turbed by thoughts of the election," with the result that many of the successful candidates received " as few as " seven, nine, or ten per cent, of the ,; total eligible vote." It seems, too, that there are precedents for compulsory voting in America, though apparently not in Kansas. In the year 1705 the Colony of Virginia ordered every citizen failing to vote to forfeit 200 pounds of tobacco to the person reporting his negligence—a far more wholesome state of affairs, Senator Capper thinks, than we have 221 years later, when "in the year of our Lord 192G " the political bosses of the more or Jess "sovereign State of Pennsylvania " have decreed that virtually any " citizen who is reluctant to vote " may be enrolled as a ' watcher "' at the polls' at a stipend "of six dollars," If voting were a religious or moral duty it would certainly be pleasanter to think of Virginia in 1705 than of Pennsylvania in 1926; and if compelling people to vote compelled them to vote wisely and for the general gopd—if, especially, it guaranteed them pompone good and wise to vote for—we could all wish Senator Capper luck in bis round-up of the missing millions. But as Australia has discovered, and Kansas can hardly nepd to be told, a voter may satisfy the law under compulsion and yet do strange things with his votingpaper. He may also have a very strange voting-paper to operate on—a choice between candidates both (or all) of whom he honestly thinks it his duty to reject with some vehemence. And if the weaknpss is not in the candidates but in himself, if he is a person who will vote only under fear or for reward—and the two are very close; companions in politics—it would be in the public interest to take away his vote, and do whatever else is necessary to prevent him from influencing the lives of better men.