The Class Day Elections.

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Owing to a mistake in paragraphing, the alternative proposition for Clause III was not put in its proper connection in the plan for class elections published in today's CRIMSON. If this third clause, prohibiting the appearance of any name on the official ballot for more than one office, had been without the alternative (placed by mistake under Clause VII), then the plan would be open to the objection pointed out in the editorial, namely, that if a prominent Senior should fail to be elected, say to a marshalship, the class would have no opportunity to give him a place lower down on the list. But if the eighteen places were divided into the two groups into which they logically fall; if, as was proposed in the alternative to Clause III, the secretary, marshals, literary officers, and chorister, were to be elected on one day, and the committee men on a later day, then a man who had failed for an office proper (for example, a marshalship) could still come up for a committee place. If all-day voting by the Australian ballot be adopted, this balloting on two different days, while a little more inconvenient perhaps to the tellers, would be no great hardship on the individual elector who who could vote between lectures without sacrifice of time. This must still seem far preferable to the antiquated method of spending an evening, and perhaps a good part of the night in a meeting where speeches must of necessity be forbidden and where most of the time is taken up by the monotonous waits for the tellers to count the ballots.

In the first group of offices, some special qualification generally determines the choice; in the second group, however, this rule does not apply, since a man is usually as well fitted for one committee place as for another. Hence, it has happened that the candidates for the committees have as a rule fallen into the exact places for which they were "slated." Furthermore, it seems desirable to prevent successive nominations of a man for committee places, because that practice has in the past been more subject to abuse than use. It has frequently happened just as it happened last year, that an absent man has been nominated facetiously by men who did not intend to support him,- being already pledged to another candidate,- but who simply utilized the absentee to divide the unpledged vote of an opponent dangerous to the candidate they were actually supporting.

A GRADUATE.November 29, 1897.