Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1916 — PROGRESSIVES TO VOTE WITH REPUBLICANS [ARTICLE]

PROGRESSIVES TO VOTE WITH REPUBLICANS

Democratic Trick Tries to Make Them Believe They Harve No Right to Thus Affiliate. IE. C. Toner, editor of The Anderson Herald, former state chairman of the progressive party, announced in his paper last Friday, March 3rd, that he intended to vote with the republicans at the primary Tuesday. He calls the effort to influence progressives against identifying themselves with the republicans at this time, a “democratic trick,” and says; —I “The editor of this paper and the j writer of this article voted the progressive ticket in 1912 and in 1914. He intends to go to the primary next Tuesday, call for a republican ballot and participate in that primary as a republican. “All the democrats in Maidiaon county wouldn’t be aible to atop him if they tried, but they won’t, because a supreme court decision prevents them making the effort.” The decision of the superme court was this: Only a member of the party I with which a voter wants to vote ha 3 the right to challenge him. This means that a progressive can I vote with the republicans and no one can challenge his right to do so ex- I cept a republican. No republican will make the challenge.

-Probably no greater treachery to the freedom of the electorate was ever perpetrated than the clause inserted in the law passed by the last democratic legislature that provided the right to challenge a voter and compel him to take an oath that he had voted for the majority of the cam didates of that party at the last election and intended to vote the ticket nominated by the party at the coming election. This would have made it possible for the democrats by stationing a challenger at each polling place to have prevented the return of progressives to the republican party, but the supreme court intervened in the interest of decent government and ruled that each voter had a right to change his politics as he saw fit and to declare his allegiance to any party and to vote in its primary. Any republican of the past who wants to vote the democratic ticket can do so unless some democrat makes the challenge. Any democrat of the past oan vote with the republicans if he wants to do so unless some republican challenges him, and try as hard as the boss-controlled democratic legislature did to deny progressives free agency in voting, they ha\fe the right, given them by the supreme court, to vote any ticket they choose unless challenged by a member of the party with which they wish to vote. Mr. Toner, progressive state chair man of "the party in 1914, announces his intention of voting ip the republican party and defies all the democrats of Madison county to preyent him. Certainly former piogressives, interested in Die welfare of the rejuvenated republican party and anxious to invoke their ideas into the party and ready to support its candidates, will want no higher approval of their right to do so than the supreme court of Indiana and men like E. C. Toner, Horace Stillwell and Frederick Landis. - Come in, vote your choices, take full measure of affiliation and no repqbffcan will question your right to do so. . 4=^2^