Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1898 — The State Vote. [ARTICLE]

The State Vote.

The official canvass of the state of Indiana gives Ralston, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state 265,895 votes. Hunt, the Republican candidate 282,796. The Republican plurality is 16.890. For Hart, the Republican candidate for state auditor, the plurality is 17,681, which is about 800 more than Hunt’s plurality. And yet, strangely enough, Hunt’s entire vote is over 4,000 more than Hart’s. The mystery is explained by the fact that both Democratic and Republican voters in considerable numbers still try to vote straight tickets by stamping the small square for the first man on that ticket, and thereby lose all of their vote except for the one man at the head of the ticket. The returns indicate that about 4,400 Republicans and 5,200 Democrats made this mistake this year. The greater number of Democrats than Republicans making this mistake, would have the effect of giving Hart, the second man on the ticket, a larger plurality than Hunt, the first man, got. Crist, the Prohi, candidate for secretary, got 2,997 votes; Wadsworth, the Pop. got 8,626; Kingsbury, the National, got 2,500 and Moore, the Socialist, 283.