The suffrage, or the right of voting, is sometimes regarded as a natural right, one that belongs to a person simply because he is a person.

People will say that a man has as much right to vote as he has to acquire property or to defend himself from attack.  But this is not a correct view.  The right to vote is a franchise or privilege which the law gives to such citizens as are thought worthy of possessing it.  It is easy to see that everybody cannot be permitted to vote.  There must be certain qualifications, certain marks of fitness, required of a citizen before he can be entrusted with the right of suffrage.  These qualifications differ in the different States.  In most States every male citizen over twenty-one years of age may vote.  In four States, women as well as men exercise the right of suffrage.

But the right of voting, like every other right, has its corresponding duty.  No day brings more responsibilities than Election Day.  The American voter should regard himself as an officer of government.  He is one of the members of the electorate, that vast governing body which consists of all the voters and which possesses supreme political power, controlling all the governments, federal and State and local.  This electorate has in its keeping the welfare and the happiness of the American people.  When, therefore, the voter takes his place in this governing body, that is, when he enters the polling-booth and presumes to participate in the business of government, he assumes serious responsibilities.  In the polling-booth he is a public officer charged with certain duties, and if he fails to discharge these duties properly he may work great injury.  What are the duties of a voter in a self-governing country?  If an intelligent man will ask himself the question and refer it to his conscience as well as deliberate upon it in his mind, he will conclude that he ought to do the following things: 

     1.  To vote whenever it is his privilege.

     2.  To try to understand the questions upon which he votes.

     3.  To learn something about the character and fitness of the men
     for whom he votes.

     4.  To vote only for honest men for office.

     5.  To support only honest measures.

     6.  To give no bribe, direct or indirect, and to receive no bribe,
     direct or indirect.

     7.  To place country above party.

     8.  To recognize the result of the election as the will of the
     people and therefore as the law.

     9.  To continue to vote for a righteous although defeated cause as
     long as there is a reasonable hope of victory.

“The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.

“To-day alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot-box my throne!”