The one word "male" shut women out in the old days from these easy
avenues to citizenship and to-day her path by the state by state
method is beset by almost insuperable difficulties.




CHAPTER III.

ELECTION LAWS AND REFERENDA


To establish a "government of the people" is to follow an ideal set
by the growth of democratic principles, but, after such government has
been established by a constitution, it remains to be determined how
the will of the people is to be recorded and each state accordingly
has enacted an election law to provide for registration and for
taking the vote. These laws are so defective as to give unquestioned
advantage to dishonesty and corruption in most elections upon
referendum questions. In several states there is little doubt that
suffrage amendments have been lost through fraud. All the suffragists
in Michigan seem to agree that the amendment was counted out in the
first campaign of 1912 and that ballot boxes were stuffed in the
second, 1913. Willis E. Reed, Attorney General of Nebraska, has
declared that he believes the amendment was counted out in that
state. An investigation has revealed forty-seven varieties of fraud
or violation of the election law in forty-four counties in the Iowa
suffrage election of June 5, 1916. Given a group determined to prevent
women from getting the vote, a group provided with money and knowing
no scruple, and the inadequacy of the law in many States offers