To convince Parliament of the beneficence of secret voting at elections took forty years of unremitting advocacy, though meanwhile the franchise had been enlarged. Grote, the historian of Greece, who sat as a Radical for the City of London from 1832 to 1841, annually moved a resolution in favour of the ballot. It was always rejected. On the retirement of Grote into private life in 1841 Henry Berkeley continued to move the motion every year, with the same want of success until 1851, when, despite the opposition of the then Whig Government, headed by Lord John Russell, he carried it by a majority of thirty-seven. Nevertheless, twenty-one years were yet to elapse before the ballot was finally established by Act of Parliament. A Select Committee of the House of Commons, which sat in 1868 to inquire into corrupt practices at elections, reported in favour of the ballot as a measure likely to conduce to the tranquillity, purity, and freedom of contests. The undue influence which was exercised in various forms at open elections is strikingly set forth in the evidence taken by that committee. Its most common shape was the direct physical terrorism exercised by hired mobs. There was also the more subtle intimidation of tenants by landlords, of workmen by employers, of servants by masters, of tradesmen and shop-keepers by customers, and, more reprehensible still, the undue spiritual influence of ministers of religion, who, in the guidance of their flocks as to the way they should vote, did not scruple to invoke the terrors of the world to come.
The report of the Select Committee, which appeared in 1869, greatly helped to turn public opinion in favour of the ballot. In the following year W. E. Forster, a Member of the then Liberal Government, with Gladstone as Prime Minister, introduced a Bill abolishing nominations at the hustings and introducing vote by ballot. It passed through the House of Commons, only to be rejected by the House of Lords by 97 votes to 48, on the motion of the Earl of Shaftesbury. The arguments against the measure had been set forth long before by John Stuart Mill, one of the ablest and most distinguished opponents of secret voting. As the franchise was a public trust, confided to a limited number of the community, the general public, for whose benefit it was exercised, were entitled to see how it was used, openly and in the light of day. The ballot, therefore, meant power without responsibility. It was also cowardly and skulking. Under its shelter the elector was likely to fall into the temptation of casting a mean and dishonest vote for his own benefit as an individual, or for that of the class to which he belonged. The Bill was reintroduced in the following session of 1872. It passed again through the Commons, was sent up to the Lords, and, despite the renewed opposition of Lord Shaftesbury, was carried to the Statute Book. Since then the elector has been free to vote as he pleased, according to the dictates of his conscience, his political convictions, his foolish whims and his wayward fancies without anyone knowing a bit about it. The Ballot Act was not, however, made the permanent law of the land. In the House of Lords an amendment limiting the operation of the Bill to eight years was accepted by the Government. Therefore, from 1880 the Ballot Act had to be renewed every year by being included in the Expiring Laws Continuance Act—otherwise the measure would have had to be reintroduced and carried through all its stages in both Houses—until 1918, when a clause of the Representation of the People Act transformed it from an annual into a permanent statute. Yet there is one election to which the Ballot Act does not apply—an election for the representation of a University. During the time allowed for the polling—about five days—electors can vote either personally or by proxy papers, which, having been signed before a justice of the peace, are sent by post to the University, and in either case the votes are openly declared before the presiding officer.
In the Life of Grote there is recorded an interesting conversation between him and his wife on the subject of secret voting after the Ballot Act had been passed. “You will feel great satisfaction at seeing your once favourite measure triumph over all obstacles,” said Mrs. Grote to her husband one morning at breakfast. “Since the wide expansion of the voting element, I confess that the value of the ballot has sunk in my estimation,” the historian replied. “I don’t, in fact, think the electors will be affected by it one way or another, so far as Party interests are concerned.” “Still,” said the wife, “you will at all events get at the genuine preference of the constituency.” “No doubt,” said Grote; “but then, again, I have come to perceive that the choice between one man and another among the English people signifies less than I used formerly to think it did. The English mind is much of one pattern, take whatsoever class you will. The same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise; the same antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated though benevolent efforts to eradicate human evils, are wellnigh universal. A House of Commons cannot afford to be above its own constituents in intelligence, knowledge, or patriotism.” But this must be said—thanks to the ballot, all parties are united in eliminating from the stock of political arguments rotten eggs, stale fish, dead cats, over-ripe fruit and decaying vegetables, and, in agreeing that in electioneering it is better to count heads than to break them.
3
One of the most memorable of General Elections under the Ballot Act surely was that held in December, 1918, following the passing of the Representation of the People Act and the close of the World War, when women voted for the first time. The scenes I saw in London on the polling day, that historic Saturday, made a profound impression on me. Women in thousands flocked to the booths as well as men. Many wives and mothers of the working class brought their babies in perambulators. What did they think of it all? They were not subdued in demeanour and thoughtful, in keeping with the greatness and gravity of the occasion. On the contrary, they were joking and laughing, as if quite elated at the notion that they should be voting for a Member of Parliament—and a Parliament in which, as it turned out, a representative of their own sex was to sit for the first time in the person of Lady Astor, of the Sutton Division of Plymouth.
Even so, was not this the last word in ordered and organized democracy? Could there be, I asked myself, a more advanced and striking manifestation of the free citizenship in the most perfectly planned Republic? Then I wondered what the Barons of Magna Charta—whose statues I have so often looked upon in the House of Lords—would have thought of it, those feudal lords who, over 600 years before, extracted from an absolute King the first great enunciation of constitutional liberty? Nay, why go back so far and remotely? What would the working men who, as a protest against the denial of electoral reform in July, 1866, tore down the railings of Hyde Park, have thought of it? What they wanted was the extension of the franchise to male householders. They could never have imagined that their grand-daughters would have that which they themselves did not then possess—the vote for a Parliament the least fettered in the world by a written Constitution and the most omnipotent in the exercise of its legislative powers.
4
The counting of the votes takes place on the night of the polling day, or the next day as the returning officer may appoint. In county constituencies, where the polling stations are many miles apart, it is impossible to commence counting the votes until the next morning; but in boroughs, where all the ballot boxes are delivered up to the returning officer within a quarter, or at most half an hour, of the close of the poll at 8 or 9 p.m., the counting is got through as a rule by eleven o’clock. No person may be present at the counting of the votes besides the returning officer and his counting clerks, the candidates and their agents, except by the authority of the returning officer, and everyone present is placed under an obligation to maintain, and aid in maintaining, the secrecy of the voting.
The first thing that is done is to check the number of votes in each ballot box with the return furnished by the presiding officer of the number of ballot papers issued at the polling booth, in order to see if they tally. All the ballot papers from all the boxes are then mixed up together in one great heap, so as to make it impossible to find out how the voting went in any particular polling district. The ballot papers are next placed on the table faces upward, so that the number printed in each case on the back—the only thing which might give a clue to the identification of a voter—shall not be seen. Any person who attempts to obtain the number of a voting paper in violation of the secrecy of the ballot is liable to six months’ imprisonment. The ballot papers are then distributed among the large staff of counting clerks seated at scattered tables in the room, and the counting of the votes recorded for the several candidates begins. There are two ways of counting in vogue. In one—the London way—the clerks are divided into pairs. One clerk is provided with a sheet of foolscap containing the names of the candidates with a number of squares under each, and the other clerk goes through the ballot papers calling out the name of the candidate opposite to which the voter has placed his cross. If the vote is given for “Robinson,” a stroke is inserted in one of the squares under Robinson’s name; if it is given for “Smith,” a stroke is put in one of the squares under the name of Smith. Provision is made on each sheet for 250 votes to be thus counted, and when either of the candidates has received that number the figures for each are put at the foot—“Robinson, 250,” “Smith, 76”—and the sheet is passed on to the returning officer. Under the other system of counting, each clerk places on the table in front of him the ballot papers for each candidate in separate piles, makes them up into packets of fifty, placing an elastic band round each, and hands them over to the returning officer.
The work of the counting clerks is closely watched by an agent representing each of the candidates. All votes about which there is any doubt are referred to the returning officer. Any paper which has on it any writing or mark by which the voter could be identified is rejected. Some electors are so vehemently partisan that, not content with making the simple “X,” they add personal remarks about the candidates or comments on the political issues as the strong feelings of the moment prompt them. I remember at one election where only Liberal and Socialist candidates stood many angry Conservatives wrote across their ballot papers such phrases as “Betwixt the devil and the deep sea,” and “God help England!” Every voting paper so defaced is cast aside. Any paper which contains votes for more candidates than the elector is entitled to vote for is also void. There are also voting papers about which hang the element of uncertainty. On some the “X” is made on the candidate’s name; on others it commences in one square and ends in another. Other electors, again, impishly desirous no doubt of puzzling everybody concerned, make their “X” meet exactly on the line which separates the names of the candidates. Each paper thus irregularly marked is judged on its own merits, but the guiding rule is that the vote is given to the candidate whose name appears within that section of the voting paper where the lines of the voter’s cross touch each other.