The County: The "Dark Continent" of American Politics

by Henry S. Gilbertson

In Virginia at the constitutional convention in 1829-30, local government was the subject of an acrimonious discussion, with the Jeffersonian influences seeking to break down the established power of the self-perpetuating justices, who were charged with inefficiency, and establish in their place the New England town system. But Madison and Marshall, who were both members of the convention, successfully upheld the existing order. By the middle of the century both Virginia and Kentucky succumbed to the democratic influence and there was a complete reaction from the appointive system. New York extended the elective idea to district attorneys and county judges, and Massachusetts and New Hampshire in due time made similar alterations.

In the states west of the Mississippi the tendency to put all the county officers in the elective class was assumed from the start to be the only method of insuring popular control.

“The rule of the people” at last captured the whole country, except Rhode Island, where even the sheriff is still appointive.[2] The movement was at its height during the long period of democratic control from Jackson to Buchanan, and it had behind it the powerfully stimulating spirit of the new West. It was the conception of practical, direct, but superficial thinkers and politicians. To be sure, the particular appointive system in use in New York and other eastern states under the earlier constitutions had behaved badly. The Jacksonians leaped headlong at the conclusion that the trouble lay in the idea of appointment per se. Other alternatives they did not for a moment consider, but with an air of supreme finality declared that “the people must rule”—by electing as many officials as could be crowded on the ballot.

The fact also that the county possessed no satisfactory appointing power left no other course but to let the people undertake the intricate work of an executive. So that through the passing of the years that single course has materially multiplied the number of elective officers—the people themselves, enamored with the dogma that “the cure for democracy is more democracy” looked on complacently while complication has been heaped upon complication.

In the almost unique opportunity for a simplified government which has been presented to the people of any county, they have strenuously and successfully resisted the change. Such an instance happened a few years ago in the county of San Bernardino, California. The people had already adopted a county charter in which the powers of the county were vested in a single small board of elective officers somewhat on the commission plan now in use in many American cities. It was regarded by many as the highest type of modernized county organization adopted up to that time anywhere in the United States. But in the interval that elapsed between the adoption of the charter and its going into effect, someone discovered (or thought they discovered) that the people were about to be deprived of their ancient liberties and that a local oligarchy was about to be erected. Soon petitions were in circulation and this perfectly good charter, which had been adopted but never tried out in practice, was amended so as to nullify the very principle of organization which pointed to greater simplicity and a better fixing of responsibility.

For nearly a century popular government has been galloping down the highway that leads to governmental confusion. Nowhere does the record state that because the people elected long strings of officers, the people therefore controlled those officers. All the while the services which government could render have become more and more numerous and the public needs of the people more pressing. And all the while too, the filling and holding of office for office sake has been vested with exaggerated importance, so that the county more perhaps than any other civil division has been the home of fictitious political “issues.” At regularly recurring intervals the nation-wide county system has been shaken to its foundations over the private futures of their local Tom Joneses and Tom Smiths. One of these respective gentlemen must leave his growing law practice and sacrifice his time to his county by serving papers for the county judge or prosecuting criminals before the Grand Jury. And none but the people is competent to judge which of the two it shall be.

Is the district attorneyship to be filled? Then, properly speaking, there would seem to be nothing to do but to search for the highest technical ability in sight and place it above the influences of any consideration but that of preserving the civil rights of the whole people. It is a simple criterion, around which no “issue” could properly arise. But popular government has regularly and almost universally thrown the selection of the public prosecutor over into the political arena, where tests of fitness for specific duties count not half so much as a good campaign speech or the ability to swing a township into the Republican or Democratic column.

In the same way many sheriffs might have set before them the plain duty to obey the rigid prescriptions of the statutes. But American democracy has all but universally decreed that sheriffs shall be selected after the manner of discretionary, policy-determining officers. As for the coroner, who would suppose that his grim services could be made the subject of interested, intelligent popular discussion? But the coroner, in a majority of states, is on the “ticket,” a subject ostensibly for the citizens to weigh in the balance with a view to the fittest selection. And then the ballot nearly always bears the candidates for the office of county clerk. He, like the sheriff, has his duties minutely described in the laws, to the dotting of an “i” and the crossing of a “t.” But in the estimation of many good citizens it is of supreme importance that a good Republican or a deserving Democrat should be placed in the office, in order, presumably, that the office forms may be arranged for the filing cases according to the historical doctrines of one or the other of the national parties.

Never was there a serious movement to elect United States marshals or district attorneys. Other and more satisfactory methods of selection have been employed. But for the analogous officers in the states, nothing but popular choice would satisfy the temper of the young American republic.

[2] By the legislature.