THE DECLINING VOTE

Voting is fast becoming a decadent art in the United States. The Federal Council of Churches report shows that since 1880 the number of qualified voters who registered a choice at the polls has declined from 80 per cent to a mere 49 per cent in 1920. State percentages are even more discouraging. In South Carolina in 1920 only 8.5 per cent of the qualified voters stuck a ballot in the box. In New England, the stronghold for the free suffrages of the people, Massachusetts was high, with a total of 53-3 per cent. Politically minded citizens seem to have moved to the West, where staggered totals of over 60 per cent of the qualified voters were discovered in some of the more politically active states. These figures are all for Presidential years. In the Congressional election of 1922 in Massachusetts, only 17 per cent of the qualified electorate thought it worth while to go to the polls.

Professor Holcombe has urged the three political clubs at Harvard to unite in telling students how to vote if they are away from home, and to urge all men who are of age to vote. Voting by mail is comparatively easy, and it is simplicity itself for the student to cast a vote if he lives near Boston.

Unless something energetic is done to stimulate interest in voting, the presidential election of 1940 will be decided by the candidates and their families. The candidate who has the most sons and daughters of voting age, if he has been wise enough to scatter them among the several states, will be returned victorious.