Official Ballot for the Fifteenth Election District of the Ninth Assembly District of New York.

To vote for

a person mark a (X) in the square at the left of the name.

The above is a modified form of Massachusetts ballot which, under the new constitution of the State of New York, might be used in the 15th Election District of the 9th Assembly District of New York City, at an election to be held in an odd year, provided that the same candidates voted for at the election held November 6th, 1894, should be renominated.

HE necessity for protecting the purity of the ballot has been recognized in New York State for many years. Beginning with the downfall of the Tweed ring, when changes in law were made in the direction of an "honest count" of the vote cast, the tendency has been in the direction of improving the method of voting itself, so as to prevent, if possible, bribery and intimidation of individual voters. The experience of Canada and Australia has shown that if it were made impossible to insure the delivery of a vote as agreed upon, bribery at elections would practically cease. It followed, therefore, that if voters were required to select and cast their ballots in secret, the person bargaining for a vote would have nothing but the word of the voter bribed that the contract had been carried out. It was very generally agreed that the manner in which best to accomplish this result was to require the printing and distributing of all ballots at public expense, the preparing of such ballots by each voter, screened from the observation of others, and the depositing of them folded so as to conceal the voter's choice of candidates. It is around these provisions that all "Ballot Reform " measures have been prepared.

It is not the purpose of this article to go into details upon a subject which is so generally understood, but to present a brief history of the course of such legislation in this State, with an explanation of the most recent adaptation of the Australian ballot, which has been adopted by the Good Government Club system of New York City.

During the session of the Legislature of 1888 three "Ballot Reform bills were introduced in that body: One by Lieutenant-Governor Charles T. Saxton, then Assemblyman from Wayne County; one by the late Robert Ray Hamilton, Assemblyman for the Eleventh New York District, and one by Austin A. Yates, Assemblyman for Schenectady County.

All of these measures had been prepared with care, as a result of a very general discussion of the subject. The Yates bill, which had been prepared by Messrs. William M. Ivins, James W. Pryor, Lewis L. Delafield, A. C. Bernheim and Charles E. Lydecker, acting as a joint committee of the City Reform Club and the Commonwealth Club of New York City, was introduced during the latter part of the session of the Legislature. The Judiciary Committee of the Assembly incorporated most of its provisions in the Saxton bill, then in an advanced position on the calendar.

In general this bill contained most of the provisions of the so-called “Ballot Reform" bill, which became a law in this State in 1890, but its most vital provision, which required a single ballot only, upon which the names of all candidates of all parties were to be arranged in alphabetical order, according to offices, was not accepted by the Governor, David B. Hill, who vetoed the bill