paratively few, in some States only one to a county.[1] The distance which a voter travelled and the time he therefore consumed in voting were several times the present requirements. Colonel Timothy Pickering writing from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, January, 1789, says: "The citizens of Philadelphia would hardly travel from five to one hundred miles to attend any election whatever. But the people of this county must do it, or our elections will be small."[2] As only five States chose electors by the people, there is no popular vote for the first presidential election. The figures for the vote in the first congressional election are scattering. An estimate of the total vote based upon such statistics are as accessible may be ventured. The number of voters in Maryland was 7,784 which number is 3.6 per cent of 217,000, the free population of the State according to the census of 1790. If the same ratio held in all the States the total vote would be 116,000. Let us compare these figures recent ones. In the presidential election of 1880 the ratio of population to voters was 18.6 (total population,[3] 49,400,000, total vote, 9,200,000), or a little more than five times that in Maryland. The percentage for New Hampshire in the congressional election of 1788 is the same as for Maryland—3.6 (free population 142,000; voters, 5,126.)[4] The percentage in Massachusetts is 3, (free population, 379,000; voters, 11,460); and in Pennsylvania, leaving out Fayette county, 3.5.[5] The large increase in the relative
- ↑ For a fully treatment of the voting unit, see G. D. Luetscher, Early Political Machinery in the United States.
- ↑ Upham, Timothy Pickering, II, 426.
- ↑ Hart, Practical Essays on American Government, 24, 30, 34.
- ↑ New Hampshire, State Papers, XXI, 433.
- ↑ Pennsylvania Packet, January 1, January 20, 1789.
