HOUSE ELECTIONS

The survey of the methods of election to the House Committees, which is printed in this morning's issue of the "Crimson", reveals two items worthy of comment.

Five of the seven House Committees originally nominate men from the Sophomore and Junior classes whose names then appear on the ballot for election to the Committee, while the other two provide for original nomination by petition.

Although in the case of the first five Houses mentioned, extra names may be added to the ballot through petitions signed by ten or more residents of the House, usually few names are added, since the general attitude of the students is one of apathy towards the elections. In the Houses where original nominations are by petition few men have the up-and-get to circulate pleas for their friends, and the job of selecting candidates falls back on the Committees.

Thus willy-nilly the House Committees find themselves in virtual control of the names that appear on the ballot.

So far there have been few charges of "politics" in reference to the men that the Committees have nominated, but this is no guarantee that the story in the future will be so tranquil. It appears an easy temptation for a Committee to nominate only those men whom they desire for the ballot, and the student body in the House is forced to spend considerable energy to add other men to the list by the cumbersome petition system.

If all the Houses were to adopt a uniform method of election like the "open primary", it would do away with this possibility for the House Committee to place names on the ballot that were not popular choices. Under an "open primary" set-up, one week before the elections were to take place, the residents of the Houses would vote for the men they wished to elect. The results would be counted, and the three or four persons receiving the greatest number of votes would automatically be put up for the final election. Out of this four, one or two would be finally selected as needed.

If this system of voting were made uniform throughout the College, all residents of the Houses would have a much more direct control over those whom they were going to vote for, and consequently would be inclined to take a greater interest in the affairs of the House. Voting would be a two minute job before or after a meal, thus dong away with the difficulties of collecting signatures for petitions to add names to a ballot that a partisan Committee might have committed.