Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment | Page 6

to mean a majority of all votes cast at the election, but in a later case (in re Denny) it was taken, exactly as it reads, to mean all the people in the State eligible to vote--and this in the face of the fact that the number of people eligible to vote is unknown even to the Federal Census Department. Indiana also requires that while one amendment is under consideration no other can be introduced. She is, needless to say, one of the states whose constitution has never been amended.
Other states besides Indiana have time requirements to insure the immutability of their inspired state document. Thus the Vermont Constitution can be amended only once in ten years--it was last amended in 1913--and five others set a term of years before the same amendment can be submitted again. Among these are New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which having submitted the Woman Suffrage amendment in 1915 cannot do so again till 1920.[A]
[Footnote A: The five states are Illinois (four years), Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Kentucky (five years), and Tennessee (six years).]
In no state is the Constitution so safeguarded from change as in New Mexico, whose iron-bound rules are in a class by themselves. For the first twenty-five years of statehood a three-fourths vote of both houses of the Legislature ratified by three-fourths of the electors voting, with two-thirds at least from each county, will be required to change the suffrage clause. After twenty-five years the majority will be reduced to two-thirds. This is the state whose Constitution provides that illiteracy shall never be a bar to the suffrage; her democracy falls short only in the matter of women whom she makes it constitutionally impossible ever to add to her electorate.
Where constitutions can be revised by the convention method as well as by amendment there is some hope; if amendment fails revision holds out a chance. But twelve states[A] hold no constitutional conventions; in Maryland conventions are twenty years apart and in many other states it is as difficult to call a constitutional convention as to revise the Constitution by amendment.
[Footnote A: Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, North Dakota, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia.]
New Hampshire amends by constitutional convention alone and these conventions are held infrequently.
Only in Delaware is the Constitution amended to-day by act of the Legislature without the people's vote and without any technical requirements except a large Legislative majority.
Yet in twenty-four states[A] before the Civil War the foundations of male suffrage were laid by legislature or constitutional convention alone, and in many cases, furthermore, the conditions of suffrage were dictated by the Federal Government. Even as late as the '90's five State Constitutions were adopted, suffrage clause and all, by State Legislatures or constitutional conventions without the referendum.[B]
[Footnote A: New Hampshire, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Vermont, Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri and Arkansas.]
[Footnote B: Many reconstruction constitutions also but these were not permanent. The five constitutions in the 90's were Mississippi, South Carolina, Delaware, Louisiana and Virginia, and Kentucky made changes after the constitution had been submitted.]
In the other states universal male suffrage came easily at a time when thinly populated states wanted to hold out inducements to male immigrant labor. To-day any male once naturalized, and in some states before he is naturalized, becomes automatically a voting citizen of any state in the Union after he has fulfilled the state residence requirements and, in some states, an educational requirement.
The one word "male" shut women out in the old days from these easy avenues to citizenship and to-day her path by the state by state method is beset by almost insuperable difficulties.
CHAPTER III.
ELECTION LAWS AND REFERENDA
To establish a "government of the people" is to follow an ideal set by the growth of democratic principles, but, after such government has been established by a constitution, it remains to be determined how the will of the people is to be recorded and each state accordingly has enacted an election law to provide for registration and for taking the vote. These laws are so defective as to give unquestioned advantage to dishonesty and corruption in most elections upon referendum questions. In several states there is little doubt that suffrage amendments have been lost through fraud. All the suffragists in Michigan seem to agree that the amendment was counted out in the first campaign of 1912 and that ballot boxes were stuffed in the second, 1913. Willis E. Reed, Attorney General of Nebraska, has declared that he believes the amendment was counted out in that state. An investigation has revealed forty-seven varieties of fraud or violation of the election law in forty-four counties in the Iowa suffrage election of June 5, 1916. Given a