[Footnote A:  Oregon, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, California, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Pennsylvania.]

In Wisconsin suffrage referendum the suffrage ballot was separate and pink.  It was easy to teach the most illiterate how to vote “No” and to check up returns with considerable accuracy.  In New York there were three ballots.  The official ballot had emblems which easily distinguished it.  The other two were exactly alike in shape, size and color and each contained three propositions:  those which came from the constitutional convention and the other those which came from the Legislature.  The orders went forth to vote down the constitutional provisions and it was done by a majority of 482,000, or nearly 300,000 more than the majority against woman suffrage.  On the ballot containing the suffrage amendment, which was No. 1, there was proposition No. 3, which all the political parties wanted carried and to which no one objected.  It could easily be found by all illiterates as it contained more lines of printing, yet so difficult was it to teach ignorant men to vote “Yes” on that one proposition that, despite the fact that orders had gone forth to all the state that No. 3 was to be carried, it barely squeezed through.

In Pennsylvania there are no emblems to distinguish the tickets and on the large ballot the suffrage amendment was difficult to find by an untutored voter.  In probable consequence Pennsylvania polled the largest proportional vote for the amendment of any eastern state.  In Massachusetts the ballot was small and the suffrage amendment could be easily picked out by a bribed voter.  In Iowa the suffrage ballot was separate and yellow while the main ballots were white.

In the North Dakota referendum the regular ballot was long and complicated and the suffrage ballot separate and small.  It was easy to teach the dullest illiterate how to vote “No.”  It might be said that it would be equally easy to teach him to vote “Yes.”  True, but suffragists never bribe.  Both the briber and the illiterate are allies of the opposition.

A referendum on a non-partisan issue has none of the protection accorded a party question.  Election boards are bi-partisan and each party has its own machinery, not only of election officials but watchers and challengers, to see that the opposing party commits no fraud.  The watchfulness of this party machinery, plus an increasingly vigilant public opinion, has corrected many of the election frauds which were once common and most elections are now probably free from all the baser forms of corruption.  When a question on referendum is sincerely espoused by both the dominant parties it has the advantage of the watchfulness of both party machines and is doubly safeguarded from fraud.  But when such a question has been espoused by no dominant party it is utterly at the mercy of the worst forms of corruption.  The election officers have even been known to wink at irregularities plainly committed since it was no affair of theirs.  Or, they may even go further and join in the entertaining game of running in as many votes against such an amendment as possible.  This has not infrequently been the unhappy experience of suffrage amendments in corrupt quarters.