While the party was being fenced in by legal definition, its machinery, the intricate hierarchy of committees, was subjected to state scrutiny with the avowed object of ridding the party of ring rule.The State Central Committee is the key to the situation.To democratize this committee is a task that has severely tested the ingenuity of the State, for the inventive capacity of the professional politician is prodigious.The devices to circumvent the politician are so numerous and various that only a few types can be selected to illustrate how the State is carrying out its determination.Illinois has provided perhaps the most democratic method.In each congressional district, the voters, at the regular party primaries, choose the member of the state committee for the district, who serves for a term of two years.The law says that "no other person or persons whomsoever"than those so chosen by the voters shall serve on the committee, so that members by courtesy or by proxy, who might represent the boss, are apparently shut off.The law stipulates the time within which the committee must meet and organize.Under this plan, if the ring controls the committee, the fault lies wholly with the majority of the party; it is a self-imposed thraldom.
Iowa likewise stipulates that the Central Committee shall be composed of one member from each congressional district.But the members are chosen in a state convention, organized under strict and minute regulations imposed by law.It permits considerable freedom to the committee, however, stating that it "may organize at pleasure for political work as is usual and customary with such committees."In Wisconsin another plan was adopted in 1907.Here the candidates for the various state offices and for both branches of the legislature and the senators whose terms have not expired meet in the state capital at noon on a day specified by law and elect by ballot a central committee consisting of at least two members from each congressional district.A chairman is chosen in the same manner.
Most States, however, leave some leeway in the choice of the state committee, permitting their election usually by the regular primaries but controlling their action in many details.The lesser committees--county, city, district, judicial, senatorial, congressional, and others--are even more rigorously controlled by law.
So the issuing of the party platform, the principles on which it must stand or fall, has been touched by this process of ossification.Few States retain the state convention in its original vigor.In all States where primaries are held for state nominations, the emasculated and subdued convention is permitted to write the party platform.But not so in some States.Wisconsin permits the candidates and the hold-over members of the Senate, assembled according to law in a state meeting, to issue the platform.In other States, the Central Committee and the various candidates for state office form a party council and frame the platform.Oregon, in 1901, tried a novel method of providing platforms by referendum.But the courts declared the law unconstitutional.So Oregon now permits each candidate to write his own platform in not over one hundred words and file it with his nominating petition, and to present a statement of not over twelve words to be printed on the ballot.
The convention system provided many opportunities for the manipulator and was inherently imperfect for nominating more than one or two candidates for office.It has survived as the method of nominating candidates for President of the United States because it is adapted to the wide geographical range of the nation and because in the national convention only a President and a Vice-President are nominated.In state and county conventions, where often candidates for a dozen or more offices are to be nominated, it was often subject to demoralizing bartering.
The larger the number of nominations to be made, the more complete was the jobbery, and this was the death warrant of the local convention.These evils were recognized as early as June 20, 1860, when the Republican county convention of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, adopted the following resolutions:
"Whereas, in nominating candidates for the several county offices, it clearly is, or ought to be, the object to arrive as nearly as possible at the wishes of the majority, or at least a plurality of the Republican voters; and Whereas the present system of nominating by delegates, who virtually represent territory rather than votes, and who almost necessarily are wholly unacquainted with the wishes and feelings of their constituents in regard to various candidates for office, is undemocratic, because the people have no voice in it, and objectionable, because men are often placed in nomination because of their location who are decidedly unpopular, even in their own districts, and because it affords too great an opportunity for scheming and designing men to accomplish their own purposes;therefore Resolved, that we are in favor of submitting nominations directly to the people--the Republican voters--and that delegate conventions for nominating county officers be abolished, and we hereby request and instruct the county committee to issue their call in 1861, in accordance with the spirit of this resolution."Upon the basis of this indictment of the county convention system, the Republican voters of Crawford County, a rural community, whose largest town is Meadville, the county seat, proceeded to nominate their candidates by direct vote, under rules prepared by the county committee.These rules have been but slightly changed.The informality of a hat or open table drawer has been replaced by an official ballotbox, and an official ballot has taken the place of the tickets furnished by each candidate.
