If you
are put in a position of responsibility, you have sense enough to know
where to find out the facts and then to make the selection, but the
people lack that opportunity. So how is the question to be solved? By
electing a Chief Executive and charging him with the responsibility of
selecting competent men to act as judges. That is what is meant by the
short ballot.
Reformers-for-politics-only include as many vote-getting planks in a
platform as they can get in it without regard to their consistency or
inconsistency. They sometimes combine the short ballot with the
initiative, referendum and recall though they are utterly at variance.
The referendum is the submission of every issue to the people.
The short ballot, on the contrary, means putting up one or two men whose
names shall not encumber the ballot. Have you ever seen these ballots?
They are a yard long and a yard wide. They have a hundred and twenty
names on them and the people are expected to make a selection. They are
to make a selection of ten out of fifty or one hundred names.
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