Unpopular government in the United States

by Albert Martin Kales

It is no part of the writer’s plan to discuss at length the comparative merits of the system of election from wieldy geographical districts and wieldy “quotas.” Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The wieldy geographical district has the advantage of presenting an issue of extreme simplicity to the voter and inducing interest in it by the dramatic element of personal contest. The field in which the candidates contest being limited, there is more concentrated work upon the education of the electorate and the electorate focuses its attention. It is not so clearly the fact that in a municipal election a large minority may be wholly unrepresented as it might be in elections to a national legislative body. The Hare plan insures minority representation, or rather representation of different groups throughout the district. It, however, departs from a desirable simplicity in voting and vote-counting. It tends to eliminate the sharpness of personal contest between candidates. Under the Hare plan candidates will go on a still hunt all over the district for a “quota” and bid to various classes and cliques in the municipality for first and second choices. This develops what is called “minority thinking” and “particularist politics.” The candidates do not run against each other so much as they dodge in and out about each other. This also tends to puzzle the voter, confuse the issues, and achieve results which are unexpected. The test of the Hare plan in cities of over 150,000 inhabitants in the United States is, it is believed, still to be made.

If the principles of the commission form of government be applied faithfully and completely, there is no doubt that extra-legal government in its present violent form must go. The voter’s duty will be simple and he can perform it with the maximum amount of intelligence. The function of the electorate in voting is vital because it confers the whole power of the local government upon a body which is directly responsible to the electorate. What place, then, is there for the professional adviser and director to the politically ignorant voter? None! There is no such political ignorance as calls for a director and adviser. The voter needs only enlightenment as to which of two honest and fairly efficient men has a program which the voter on the whole favors. The voter is seeking information of a highly organized sort. He can obtain that only by the use of his mind and a consideration of the promises and programs of the candidates. The candidates now must make an appeal to the voter’s intelligence. What, then, is the need of the present-day extra-legal government? Of course, parties and party organizations will spring up, but they will cease to be mere machines for directing the ignorant voter how to cast his ballot. Instead, they will become instruments for disseminating propaganda on social, economic, and governmental issues.

Once the extra-legal government is eliminated by the concentration of governmental power in the hands of a few, each of whom is elected to office from a wieldy district or by a wieldy “quota,” the electorate may with perfect safety secure control of its representatives in a variety of ways. It may insist upon the recall, the initiative, and the referendum. It is the promotion of these expedients while the ballot is still left as long as at present and the governmental power decentralized as it now is that tends to promote the existence and security of extra-legal unpopular government. With irresponsible extra-legal government replaced by a responsible legal government subject to frequent elections, one might hazard the guess that neither the recall, the initiative, nor the referendum would be much used. The primaries would be utterly out of place. No party names would appear on any ballot. In theory every individual legally qualified for office would have the privilege of running at an election. Individuals should be allowed to put themselves up. To discourage the running of irresponsible persons who have no real chance of election a sum should be forfeited by all candidates who do not receive a certain percentage of the vote cast. Parties with principles and programs would naturally be the only ones which would have any standing. It is highly improbable that any such parties would exist for municipal elections. If they did, they should be left free to run their affairs in their own way, since their candidates must always compete with individuals who wish to come forward in opposition.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The question is frequently put whether it is better to have five commissioners and let them choose their own chairman as a mere presiding officer, or to provide that one commissioner specially elected shall be chairman, with special executive and administrative powers. The two plans represent simply a difference in the degree with which the executive and legislative powers are united. If one commissioner is elected specially as a chairman or a mayor, with administrative and executive duties, and the other commissioners are merely an advisory board, you have a certain degree of separation of the executive and legislative functions. The chairman or mayor must in that case be elected at large from the city. His office will be so conspicuous and important as to overshadow the offices of the commissioners, and there will be the probability of deadlocks between the executive and the commissioners exercising the legislative power. If, on the other hand, all the commissioners are equally possessed of the executive and legislative power, there is a complete union of both functions. The majority of the commission then becomes entirely responsible, not only for the making, but for the enforcement, of the laws and administrative measures. So far as the disrupting of extra-legal government in cities the size of Galveston is concerned, it is believed not to make any material difference which plan be adopted. The surer course is that of making the majority of all the commissioners responsible for the exercise of the entire legislative and executive powers.

It is entirely in accordance with the principle of the union of executive and legislative powers in the commission that it hire a professional municipal administrator to hold office at the pleasure of the commission and delegate to him such executive duties and legislative power, subject always to the control of the commission, as the commission sees fit.

[10] Richard S. Childs, Short-Ballot Principles, pp. 66-67.

[11] For a further exposition of a wieldy district see Richard S. Childs, Short-Ballot Principles, pp. 51-58.

[12] John J. Hamilton, Dethronement of the City Boss, pp. 158-168.

[13] See Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11th ed., XXIII, 115 (from which the description in the text is largely taken); Richard S. Childs, Short-Ballot Principles, p. 58; Ramsay Muir, Peers and Bureaucrats, pp. 236-39; C. G. Hoag, “The Representative Council Plan of City Government,” The American City, April, 1913.