When it is remembered that immigrants may be naturalized after a
residence of five years; that when naturalized they automatically
become voters by all our state constitutions; that in eight states[A]
immigrant voters are not even required to be citizens; that the right
to vote is limited by an educational qualification in only seventeen
states, and that nine of these are Southern, with special intent to
disfranchise the Negro while allowing the illiterate White to vote;
that evidence exists to prove that there is an unscrupulous body
ready to engage the lowest elements of our population by fraudulent
processes to oppose a suffrage amendment; that there is no authority
on the election board whose business it is to see that an amendment
gets a "square deal"; that the method of preparing the ballot is often
a distinct advantage to a corrupt opposition; and that when fraud is
committed there is practically no redress provided by election laws,
it ought to be clear to all that state constitutional amendments
when unsponsored by the dominant political parties which control the
election machinery, must run the gauntlet of intolerably unjust and
unfair conditions. When suffragists have been fortunate enough to
overcome the obstacles imposed by the constitution of their states
and a referendum to the male voters has been secured, they must
immediately enter upon the task of surmounting the infinitely greater
obstructions of the election law. They make their appeal to the public
upon the supposition that a majority of independent voters is
to decide their question. Instead, they may discover that in a
determining number of precincts the taking of the actual vote is a
game in which the cards are stacked against them. One woman, who had
watched at a precinct all day in a suffrage amendment election, said
"Something went out of me that day which never came back--and that was
pride in my country. At first I thought it was disappointment
produced by the defeat of the woman suffrage amendment, but when I had