The Anaconda Standard

The Two-Thirds Rule.
From the Cincinnati Enquirer.

In answer to many inquiries it is herewith stated that it will require a two-thirds vote in the forthcoming national democratic convention to nominate a candidate for either the presidency or the vice presidency. At the St. Louis convention, which nominated Mr. Tilden in 1876, there was an earnest effort to abolish this ancient rule and to substitute a majority vote. The sentiment of the convention was largely in favor of such a change, but it yielded to the claim that the delegates had been elected under the old rule and that therefore they ought to vote under the old rule—that it would be wrong to nominate, at that particular time, with less than a two-thirds vote. This claim, we repeat, was yielded to; and Mr. Tilden and Mr. Hendricks were nominated by two-thirds of the full vote of the convention. But a resolution was adopted asking that, thereafter, democratic national conventions should be called and conducted upon the basis of a majority vote. No attention was ever paid to this resolution, and the two-thirds rule still obtains.