Whether or not you vote is not your business; it is Uncle Sam’s business. HOW you vote is your business.
It’s always safe to trust all the people. If all the people vote, they will vote right.
Cast your own ballot. When you don’t vote, somebody else votes for you.
How many votes has a man? You say one. If you don’t vote somebody else has TWO votes.
Tags were the weapons directly used, and they had a profound effect. Committees of women, drawn from mothers’ clubs, women’s clubs, parents’ associations, etc., gave out the tags at the polls, asked the voters to wear them, and pinned them on when they could. The only way to get a tag was to vote; everybody who voted found it to his interest to wear one; and those who didn’t have tags wished they had. For the tag said:
“I am an American. I voted. Did you?”
The effectiveness of these tactics in arousing not only sentimental enthusiasm, but that kind of practical personal action at and in the ballot box which decides elections, is convincingly attested by the great increase in the registration and in the total vote.[161]
The essential purpose of the job was to get to the polls every individual entitled to vote; but incidentally, or perhaps better to say, fundamentally, to train the rising generation as to their privilege and duty of participation in public affairs, and to accelerate the naturalization and Americanization of the alien. In order to accomplish the first of these last two purposes, the campaign was carried into the public schools; in order to accomplish the second, great stress was laid upon naturalization. There were three other slogans:
Send the alien to the county clerk.