Now observe the effect of the application of the principles of the commission form of government for cities to the state government. The office of legislator has been made important and conspicuous because it is the only office in the state government (except that of governor) for which the voter casts his ballot, and because the successful candidate will cast one of two hundred ballots for the selection of the real executive. Under such a system it is certain that the voter will know in advance that a vote for candidate A means a vote for B, as the real executive or leader of the council of state. Thus a vote for state legislator will be a vote to confer the entire legislative and executive power of the state upon a given group of legislators and their leaders. We have indeed made the voting privilege of the elector so important that he will not only be sure to vote, but he may be expected to do much to keep himself fully informed about the candidates. We have made the act of voting so simple that the elector cannot fail to use such intelligence as he has and to spend any extra time which he may have in informing himself further. By providing for the election of single legislators from wieldy districts or by wieldy “quotas” we have brought the voter as near the candidates as possible. By stimulating the number of candidates we have given the voter as wide a range of choice as possible. These devices all have a tendency to eliminate the politically ignorant vote. The actual intelligence of the electorate is given the fullest possible play, and even stimulated to unusual efforts of comprehension. This is a guaranty, and it is the only guaranty, against that political ignorance on the part of a large number of voters which provides the opportunity for the professional politician to step in and, in the guise of advising and directing the voter how to vote, in effect to cast his ballot for him. The essential condition upon which a vote-directing political machine is founded and maintained has, therefore, been eliminated. Under such circumstances a vote-directing machine, instead of slipping over, in the darkness and obscurity which comes from a multiplicity of elections and offices to be filled, those whom it can control, for ends of which the electorate does not really approve, must begin to appeal to the voter’s intelligence with candidates of character, arguments, platforms, and pledges of legislation which those elected have the power to keep. Such activities on the part of any organization will at once change it from a mere vote-directing machine into a legitimate party with real principles and a real program. The leaders of such an organization will necessarily stand for election in the real government, which will now be the legal government. Real party leaders will appear in the legislature with real party programs for legislation and real party responsibility.
We have, however, in the scheme of state government presented, not only done our utmost to destroy at the roots extra-legal unpopular government, but we have provided a government which can operate. We have cut off all bickering between the legislature and executive. We have given power to an executive council which will enable it to do something. We have constituted a government which will be inactive, not because its hands are tied, but because it chooses not to do anything. The leader of the successful party cannot say that he has failed to keep the party pledges because he had no power to act. No one, however, need fear that the concentration of power in the hands of a few will prove in any way dangerous to the liberties of the people. The council of state can exercise power only so long as it retains the confidence of a majority in the legislature. Even out of the season of elections the legislature will necessarily be sensitive to public opinion, and a council of state that did not consider the effect of public opinion upon a majority of the members of the legislature could not long hold power. By frequent elections the majority may be changed and the council recalled in favor of the leader of an opposition. The effectiveness of voting will thus be enormously increased, for the electorate will not have to turn out a dozen different officers at several different elections in order to change control of the legal government. Voting at a single election does it. Upon a poll of the districts or of the “quotas” it is determined whether one set of legislators or another shall control the executive and legislative power centered in a single chamber. No government can be unpopular or an executive council remain in office against the will of the electorate under such a scheme of government. No government can remain in office and avoid the consequences of failure and inefficiency when so organized.
If such a scheme of government does not break the malign influence of an extra-legal government founded upon a vote-directing machine, then such a power cannot be broken. If the scheme of government which has been outlined does not give the electorate a real opportunity to express its will through its representatives and to make that will into law and then enforce the law through those same representatives, then our attempt to achieve representative government will have failed and we shall have been unsuccessful in securing that which other nations, even though in form at least still governed by kings, have been able to achieve.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] The Illinois plan of minority representation in the legislature provides for the election of three representatives from each district and allows each voter to cast three votes as he pleases, one for each candidate or three for one candidate or one and a half for each of two candidates. Where extra-legal government by politocrats is strong, this has for years resulted in members of the legislature being appointed by the extra-legal government. The electorate has been wholly and palpably disfranchised. If there are two political machines in the district, one dominant and the other with a fair strength, they have by agreement between them arranged that the dominant machine should nominate only two candidates and the other only one. Thus the voter is given no choice whatever and the nominations are an appointment. If there are three equally strong political machines, each by agreement will nominate one candidate. As a matter of fact without agreement the number of candidates nominated will usually be as above indicated under the circumstances named. Thus the electorate in very many Illinois districts has had comparatively little or no real representation in the lower house of the legislature for years. The worst elements in the house have under this system been returned again and again. See editorial in the Chicago Tribune for December 22, 1912, on “Minority Representation.”
[16] This assumes the existence of a second chamber as suggested in chap. xvi.
CHAPTER XV
CONTEMPORARY PLANS LOOKING TOWARD THE UNION OF THE EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE POWERS OF STATE GOVERNMENTS
Our state legislatures are now for the most part composed of members elected from fairly wieldy districts. Governmental changes then which look toward the application of the principles of commission government to the state, as outlined in the preceding chapter, have to do principally with the union of the executive and legislative powers. Several recent proposals for changes, coming from Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oregon, indicate that legislators, governors, and political scientists with practical experience have concluded that the executive and legislative powers must be brought nearer together. The interesting fact, however, is that no plans have been suggested by which the legislature is to absorb the control of the executive power by placing it in the hands of the leaders of a majority of the legislature. On the contrary, the proposals for bringing the executive and legislature nearer together have, with one exception, been along the line of conferring upon the executive greater power to control and coerce the legislature.
The Illinois House of Representatives at its 1913 session adopted a rule for which Representative Morton D. Hull was responsible. It provided as follows: