22. Should we pass laws limiting the total amount which any political candidate may spend in the campaign for nomination and election?
23. What are the advantages and disadvantages of placing party emblems at the head of ballots?
24. To what extent will civic education remedy the evils of the spoils system?
25. How will you determine which party you prefer to affiliate with, when you become of age?
26. How would you determine whether or not an individual ought to abandon his party? Suppose that an individual has severed connections with a party which he had reason to suppose was corrupt. Under what circumstances should he return to the ranks of that party?
CHAPTER XXXV
CHOOSING THE AGENTS OF GOVERNMENT
434. THE PROBLEM.—In an important sense, good government is a matter of getting the right men into office, hence one of the most vital problems in American democracy has to do with the choice of public officials. In any representative democracy nominations and elections must be a difficult and complex matter; in the United States the problem is rendered doubly difficult by the great size of the country, and by the rapidity with which its population is increasing. In this country hundreds of thousands of public officials are placed in office annually, all of them either elected at the polls, or chosen by agents who are themselves elected.
The problem before us involves four questions: First, how can we perfect the mechanism by means of which the officers of government are selected? Second, how can we elect officials who represent a majority, rather than a plurality [Footnote: See Section 444.], of those actually voting? Third, how can voters be helped to make intelligent choices at the polls? Fourth, how can we encourage qualified voters to make an habitual use of the ballot?
435. NOMINATION BY CAUCUS.—One of the earliest methods of choosing party candidates in this country was by means of the caucus. The caucus was an informal meeting in which the local members of a political party nominated candidates for town and county offices. Candidates for state offices were named by a legislative caucus, in which legislators belonging to the same party came together and determined their respective nominations. The legislative caucus spread to all of the states, and in 1800 was transferred to Congress as a mode of nominating the President and Vice-President.