months of study, it drafted an act which, after having been approved by the Commonwealth Club, the Reform Club, the City Reform Club, and the Single Tax party, was presented in the Assembly of 1888 and was known as the "Yates bill." The bill[1] was referred to the Committee on Judiciary and was amended by certain provisions taken from similar bills introduced by Mr. Saxton and Mr. Hamilton. The measure was supported by the Republicans and passed both houses of the legislature, but was vetoed by Governor Hill. Agitation was started anew by its friends and a ballot league was formed.[2] In the session of the legislature of 1889 the Saxton bill was amended and again introduced, the bill as amended having received the indorsement of a committee of the Young Men's Democratic Club of New York. The legislature again passed the Saxton bill and it was vetoed a second time by Governor Hill. In 1890 the Yates-Saxton bill with some modifications was again introduced, and a monster petition from New York City containing over one hundred thousand signatures was presented to the legislature. Governor Hill saw that something had to be done, so he expressed a willingness to sign a bill looking to the improvement of the election laws, but declared that under no circumstance would he approve any bill following the Massachusetts or the Australian system.[3] Certain of the leaders, despairing of the adoption of their reform, decided to accept the governor's overtures. The result was the unsatisfactory compromise law of 1890 which provided for the so-called "party and paster ballot."
The rapidity of the spread of the Australian ballot in the United States during the next few years was most gratifying to its friends, but its triumph was not secured without a hard struggle. The opposition came from two sources: the ultra-conservative members of the community, and the machine politicians, who profited by the vices of the old system. The New York Herald, in an editorial, said: "The only persons who can have an interest in elections as they are, are the leaders and managers, whose power depends upon their successes in manipulating the ballot so that the suffrage will express, not the will of the people, but the success of their schemes."[4] As Mr. Wigmore shows in his summary
- ↑ Ivins, On the Electoral System of the State of New York, p. 24.
- ↑ Electoral Reform, with the Massachusetts Ballot-Reform Act, pp. 15-16.
- ↑ Ivins, On the Electoral System of the State of New York, pp. 26-27.
- ↑ New York Herald, editorial, May 11, 1888; Harper's Weekly, XXXIII, 851. "This goes far towards explaining the opposition of the Democratic members of the legislature to the Saxton bill, for they were for the most part small city politicians who owe their chances in politics to the methods which that bill was intended to destroy" (New York Times, editorial, May 18, 1888).
