went further, making the count of
ballots public, ordering it carried out near the polling place, and
allowing municipalities to insure a still more secret vote and an
instantaneous, unerring tally by the use of voting machines.

In the North and West the tendency of the new fundamental laws was to
widen the suffrage, rendering it, for males over twenty-one years of
age, practically universal. Woman suffrage, especially on local and
educational matters, spread more and more, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and
Utah women voted upon exactly the same terms as men, In Idaho women sat
in the legislature. There was much agitation for minority
representation. Illinois set an example by the experiment of cumulative
voting in the election of lower house members of the legislature.

Nearly everywhere at the South constitutional reform involved negro
disfranchisement. The blacks were numerous, but their rule meant ruin.
It was easy for the whites to keep them in check, as had been done for
years, by bribery and threats, supplemented, when necessary, by flogging
and the shotgun, But this gave to the rising generation of white men the
worst possible sort of a political education. The system was too
barbarous to continue. What meaning could free institutions have for
young voters who had never in all their lives seen an election carried
save by these vicious means! New constitutions which should legally
eliminate most of the negro vote were the alternative.

In Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Georgia, North and South Carolina, proof of having paid taxes or
poll-taxes was (as in some northern and western States) made an
indispensable prerequisite to voting, either alone or as an alternative
for an educational qualification. Virginia used this policy until 1882
and resumed it again in 1902, cutting off such as had not paid or had
failed to preserve or bring to the polls their receipts. Many States
surrounded registration and voting with complex enactments. An
educational qualification, often very elastic, sometimes the voter's
alternative for a tax-receipt, was resorted to by Alabama, Arkansas,
Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia in 1898 rejected
such a device. Alabama hesitated, jealous lest illiterate whites should
lose their votes. But, after the failure of one resolution for a
convention, this State, too, upon the stipulation that the new
constitution should disfranchise no white voter a