Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[115] that he put the envelope in the box. That was undertaken in Lowell, but the attempt thus to control his vote was as easily met by the voter. He brought his envelope with him and changed envelopes, voting the one he had brought and keeping the one that had been given him. On the night of election day many workingmen brought into the committee rooms of their party the envelopes which had been given them by their overseers, and described the manner in which they had eluded the men who attempted to control them.

If the law in its entirety had stood one year longer, a single provision that no one should be in sight of the voter when he deposited his envelope would have removed all possible objection; and such a provision would have been made. But the Whig party got control of the legislature in 1854, and, not daring to attempt directly to repeal the secret ballot, passed a provision making it “optional” with the voter to vote the secret ballot. Then the employer knew that if his laborer voted a secret ballot he desired to conceal his vote; so that voting a secret ballot told, in closely contested elections, for which party the elector voted. The optional provision, therefore, entirely defeated the objects of the law, and such voting fell into disuse.

We have now adopted the Australian system, which is by no means so simple or so effective, and which will cause the State to expend very many thousands of dollars at each election to carry it out. I am opposed to that system by which a man who is not instructed as to the names of the officers to be voted for upon his ballot, can be easily deluded into voting for those whom he desires not to vote for. I am opposed to that system in which a man refuses to mark his ballot through disgust with the performance of finding out candidates for his vote that have not even, so far as he knows, the endorsement of his party. While I write this a gentleman sitting near says: “If he can read the words ‘ Democratic ’ and ‘ Republican’ he can find out, can he not?” To which I answer that he can find out that those two words are there; but who put them there, or whether they are there honestly, or whether they represent the sentiments of the candidate, the voter has no means of determining.

Early in the session of 1851 Robert Rantoul, Jr., than whom the State never boasted a more eloquent or logical man as a political