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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



and if you shall between two Houses of Con- 

 gress sufficiently inflame the passions of party, 

 the two Houses of Congress differing in party 

 affiliations if you shall sufficiently inflame 

 them to warp the judgments of men or to 

 warp the conscience of men and to set party 

 above country and duty, then the false vote 

 will weigh equally with the true vote, and the 

 State will be disfranchised in the result as 

 plainly as though you gave the veto-power to 

 either House as now. If you count ten votes 

 for the State ticket and ten votes against the 

 State ticket, what is the result? The one has 

 neutralized the other ; the one has annihilated 

 the other; and the vote of the State might as 

 well never have been cast at all. The election 

 would then be an empty form. It is a new 

 and a patent method for the disfranchisement 

 of States where a contested election can be 

 gotten up. That is the result of this second 

 section as I read it. I shall be glad to be in- 

 structed to the contrary. I have read the sec- 

 tion many times ; I have submitted it to the 

 judgment of others whose opinions I value 

 more highly than my own, and have found a 

 concurrence in the belief that this section is 

 an opportunity, if not an invitation, for the 

 annihilation of the electoral votes of States by 

 having the false vote made equal in weight 

 with the true and forbidding the rejection of 

 either except by the concurrent affirmative 

 vote of both Houses of Congress. 



" Mr. President, I will not anticipate evil 

 results. I only say that we should give, so far 

 as we can give, no opportunity for evil results ; 

 that we should not give our consent to a law 

 that would, if carried out, wrongfully make a 

 presidential election a nullity." 



Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, said : "I 

 simply wish to say to the Senator from Dela- 

 ware, that I understand that 'this second sec- 

 tion leaves the rule as it now is. I understand 

 that by this second section if there are two 

 sets of votes sent up from any State, then the 

 concurrence of both Houses as to which shall 

 be counted is required, and that is the rule at 

 the present time." 



Mr. Bayard : " If that be so, then an amend- 

 ment which I have had draughted will not be 

 objected to, to insert at the end of the second 

 section : 



And in such case the validity of any return shall 

 be agreed to by both Houses, or the same shall not 

 be counted. 



Mr. Frelinghuysen : "I had prepared an 

 amendment, which I was going to submit to 

 the Senator from Indiana, to the same effect." 



Mr. Bayard : " The honorable Senator from 

 Ohio (Mr. Thurman) remarks to me sotto voce 

 that that is what the bill means now. I know 

 that I had not the benefit of his audience 

 when this question was being discussed, and I 

 do not propose to repeat what I have said on 

 the subject ; but I cannot conceive that the bill 

 now means that. On the contrary, I believe 

 the bill as it stands now, and if it passes as it 



stands now, will work the result that I have 

 stated, and I am not alone in this view. 

 Wherever a contest can be gotten up, and 

 wherever public opinion is sufficiently excited, 

 wherever the tone of political morality is low 

 enough, there the contest will be raised and 

 then the votes coming here certified in form 

 must be counted under this section, as I con- 

 ceive, unless the affirmative vote of both 

 Houses shall reject them. 



" Mr. President, I do not think this second 

 section meets the difficulty. It does not fill 

 the want which we all recognize exists in the 

 Constitution on this important subject. The 

 Houses shall assemble ; the Vice-President 

 shall open the certificates and a count shall 

 follow ; it is not so important by whom that 

 count shall be made, because being made in 

 the presence of the Houses they are witnesses 

 to a count, which means a valid, a real, a fair, 

 an honest count; and when the time shall 

 come that a dishonest count of such votes can 

 be made in the presence of the two Houses, 

 then your government will be of so little value 

 that the sooner it passes away and makes 

 place for another more honest, more reliable, 

 the better for the people of the country. . 



" But there may well be causes why you 

 should doubt, that the ticket which is repre- 

 sented by these electoral votes was not fairly 

 entitled to be so represented as the sentiment 

 of the people of the State from which it 

 comes, and there should be, as there is not 

 now, some tribunal in whom a deposit of power 

 to determine such contests should be lodged. 

 How shall that be reached ? Only by an 

 amendment to the Constitution, and certainly 

 by an amendment in which all men without 

 respect to party results must join. As I have 

 said before, in dealing with the subject within 

 the powers confided to us by the Constitution, 

 there never was a better opportunity to place it 

 upon a high non-partisan basis than by await- 

 ing the incoming of a new Congress, in which 

 the two Houses shall not be of the same politi- 

 cal opinion. A rule framed between a Demo- 

 cratic House of Representatives and a Repub- 

 lican Senate must of necessity be a non-parti- 

 san rule ; and why, when so golden and valu- 

 able an opportunity awaits close at hand for 

 the purpose of accomplishing an amendment 

 so important and beneficial, should it not be 

 embraced, and why should the regular ordi- 

 nary business of this body be postponed now 

 to accomplish in hot haste that which should 

 be accomplished only by great care and con- 

 sideration? Why, Mr. President, it is well 

 known that measures which challenge our 

 closest care and criticism, measures which de- 

 mand from us laborious and assiduous atten- 

 tion for the next six days, fill the calendar." 



Mr. Thurman, of Ohio, said : " I find the 

 opinions of the Senator from Delaware who 

 has just addressed the Senate and my own on 

 an important section of the bill very far op- 

 posed. Knowing as I do the ability, the in- 



