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The police power has often been misused for such purposes; the gerrymander is another clever method of manipulating the results of elections.
We have quoted this description of the methods of the gerrymander not so much because the evil has attained any magnitude in Australia as because it offers a warning of the probable result of adopting the single-membered district system for our Federal legislature.
"Nor yet out of the fees you make your clerks divide with you. And that isn't all. Have you forgotten the gerrymander business? How would you like to see the true inwardness of that in the newspapers?" The judge shrank as if the huge gesturing hand had struck him. "You wouldn't dare," he began. "You were in that, too, deeper than " Again the governor interrupted him. "Cut it out," he commanded.
It was entirely a party fight; for, by grace of the last gerrymander, the nomination carried with it the certainty of election. A week before the convention there came a provincial earthquake; the news passed from man to man in awe-struck whispers McCune had withdrawn his name, making the hollowest of excuses to his cohorts.
The evil gerrymander will be abolished, and representative bodies will be divided along party lines in the very proportions in which the people are divided. Moreover, since on this plan every vote counts, the greatest source of political apathy will be removed-that sense of hopelessness which paralyzes the efforts of the members of a minority party.
In election returns and official utterances generally the Demijohn District bore a number like every district in the land, but the singular shape lent it by the last gerrymander had settled its popular title till another political overturn should distort its outline afresh.
The Committee on Gerrymander worked late, drawing intricate lines on a map of the State, and being weary sought repose in a game of poker. At the close of the game the six Republican members were bankrupt and the single Democrat had all the money. On the next day, when the Committee was called to order for business, one of the luckless six mounted his legs, and said: "Mr.
Is it not possible now to adjourn that interminable and inconclusive debate while we take by consent one step in the direction of reform by eliminating the gerrymander, which has been denounced by all parties as an influence in the selection of electors of President and members of Congress?
Respect for public officers and obedience to law will not cease to be the characteristics of our people until our elections cease to declare the will of majorities fairly ascertained without fraud, suppression, or gerrymander.
If this is accomplished, we shall then have the three great departments of the Government in the grasp of the "gerrymander," the legislative and executive directly and the judiciary indirectly through the power of appointment. An election implies a body of electors having prescribed qualifications, each one of whom has an equal value and influence in determining the result.
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