Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1920 — STRAW BALLOT OLD CUSTOM [ARTICLE]

STRAW BALLOT OLD CUSTOM

History Proves It to Have Boon Used at Gladiatorial Contests in * Ancient Rome. America’s quadrennial visitation has again ravaged the country from Key West to Puget sound, from Maine to California. It is the straw ballot, the New York Evening Poet states. The straw ballot, as such, is a disease that rages rampant only in the United States. Yet It has existed In other countries. In oldT Rome straw ballots were once used at gladiatorial contests. Later, because of a shortage of straw, the Romans had to use thumbs, an art at which legend has

it they became quite ambidextrous. And lnsMexico, for another instance, straw ballots are not unknown, except that in the southern republic they are usually designated as “presidential elections." One of the first references to straw is In Exodus, when Pharaoh pronounced his famous “Ye shall no more give the people straw; let them go and gather straw for themselves." Pharaoh was evidently the political boss of his day, and a shrewd one, for it is reported that “the people were scattered abroad to gather stubble instead of straw.” Notwithstanding the usefulness of ballots of straws—to which Webster pays its compliments as “a thing of smallest worth” —they are as fashionable now as appendicitis ever was.