Machine Politics 129 



the primaries in each assembly district a full set of 

 delegates is chosen to nominate Assemblymen and 

 aldermen, while others are chosen to go to the State, 

 county, and congressional conventions. Before elec- 

 tion day many thousands of complete sets of the 

 party ticket are printed, folded, and put together, 

 or, as it is called, "bunched." A single bundle of 

 these ballots is then sent to every voter in the dis- 

 trict, while thousands are reserved for distribution 

 at the polls. In every election precinct there are 

 probably twenty or thirty in each assembly district 

 a captain and from two to a dozen subordinates 

 are appointed.* These have charge of the actual 

 giving out of the ballots at the polls. On election 

 day they are at their places long before the hour 

 set for voting; each party has a wooden booth, 

 looking a good deal like a sentry-box, covered 

 over with flaming posters containing the names of 

 their nominees, and the "workers" cluster around 

 these as centres. Every voter as he approaches is 

 certain to be offered a set of tickets; usually these 

 sets are "straight," that is, contain all the nominees 

 of one party, but frequently crooked work will be 

 done, and some one candidate will get his own bal- 

 lots bunched with the rest of those of the opposite 

 party. Each captain of a district is generally paid 

 a certain sum of money, greater or less, according 



* All this has been changed, vastly for the better, by the 

 ballot reform laws, under which the State distributes the 

 printed ballots; and elections are now much more honest than 

 formerly. 



