such committees."

In Wisconsin another plan was adopted in 1907. Here the
candidates for the various state offices and for both branches of
the legislature and the senators whose terms have not expired
meet in the state capital at noon on a day specified by law and
elect by ballot a central committee consisting of at least two
members from each congressional district. A chairman is chosen in
the same manner.

Most States, however, leave some leeway in the choice of the
state committee, permitting their election usually by the regular
primaries but controlling their action in many details. The
lesser committees--county, city, district, judicial, senatorial,
congressional, and others--are even more rigorously controlled by
law.

So the issuing of the party platform, the principles on which it
must stand or fall, has been touched by this process of
ossification. Few States retain the state convention in its
original vigor. In all States where primaries are held for state
nominations, the emasculated and subdued convention is permitted
to write the party platform. But not so in some States. Wisconsin
permits the candidates and the hold-over members of the Senate,
assembled according to law in a state meeting, to issue the
platform. In other States, the Central Committee and the various
candidates for state office form a party council and frame the
platform. Oregon, in 1901, tried a novel method of providing
platforms by referendum. But the courts declared the law
unconstitutional. So Oregon now permits each candidate to write