The Augusta Courier

Charles Bloch,
Distinguished Lawyer, Calls
McGill's Hand About
Misrepresentation Of
Georgia's County
Unit System

Left-Wingers
Goal
Would
Result
In
Destruction
Of State
Governments

Charles J. Bloch, the distinguished Macon lawyer, has called the hand of Ralph McGill when McGill says that the County Unit System is "iniquitous".

Bloch, in a letter written to McGill as editor of THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, calls his attention to the fact that the County Unit System has been a fundamental practice in Georgia since Georgia was a colony.

He quotes an editorial which appeared in THE MACON TELEGRAPH in 1908 which said:

"When the County Unit has gone by the board the state unit will inevitably follow.
The virtual disappearance of county lines involves the practical obliteration of State lines."

Would Destroy States

Bloch invokes this same doctrine today because the tendency at the present time is to destroy county lines and state lines and consolidate all of us under one all-powerful, dictatorial federal government.

Bloch's letter to McGill follows:

April 6, 1959

Editor
Atlanta Constitution
Atlanta, Georgia

Dear Sir:

In Mr. McGill's column on the left hand side of your issue of April 6 is this statement:

"One of the features of Georgia's yeasty political life which has made her a national story is her iniquitous county unit system. It was a device deliberately created in the early years of the century to maintain the rural counties in power by nullifying the large vote in the more urban counties. There was never any pretense about it. From the beginning it was projected as a mechanism to prevent the expression of the popular will."

The truth is:

(1) Certain Georgia officials are nominated under the County Unit system. No one is elected under the County Unit system.

(2) Its beginning was in Georgia's Constitution of 1777, adopted by the people of Georgia when Georgia was an independent state prior to the formation of the Union;

(3) Georgia's convention which in 1788 ratified the Constitution of the United States

(Continued on page 2)
Left-Wingers' Goal Would Result In Destruction Of State Governments
(Continued from page 1)
States was called and held under the County Unit System of apportionment.
(4) When the primary system of nominating officers was born in the latter years of the 19th century, the County Unit system became a part of it under the rules of the party conducting the primary.
(5) Such primaries were so conducted until 1908 when the Honorable Hoke Smith of Atlanta, Fulton County, was Governor and sought to abandon the county unit system in the primary. He was defeated for renomination by the Honorable Joseph M. Brown.
(6) The Atlanta Constitution, then under the editorship of Clarke Howell, hailed the victory of Governor Brown "as a return to sanity, justice and conservatism."
(7) During the campaign there appeared in the Macon Telegraph an editorial written by the late, wise, C. R. Pendleton, President of the Macon Telegraph and editor, decrying Governor Smith's "deviation from the long established representative system, in keeping with our whole American system, whereby whoever was the choice of the majority of delegates appointed by the counties became the nominee."
He made an argument for the County Unit system which is valid, potent and cogent to this day:
"When the county unit has gone by the board the state unit will inevitably follow. The virtual disappearance of county lines involves the practical obliteration of State lines. It may be thought by some city dwellers no bad thing if Fulton, Richmond, Bibb and Chatham counties should exercise a controlling influence in the affairs of Georgia, but the very same persons must shrink at the thought of the identical principle being so employed that the South may be governed by the populous states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, crowded as they are with the foreign born. This new principle (the County Unit rule was so traditional fifty years ago, that Mr. Pendleton called the popular vote plan "this new principle") hastily adopted in Georgia with partisan ends in view is in essence precisely the same as that behind the movement for continuing Federal centralization, precisely the same as that behind the initiative and referendum scheme for the country at large, precisely the same as that behind the proposal to elect Senators and even the President by the direct vote of the people, precisely the same as that behind the demand for a number of Senators from each State in proportion to its population which would dwarf the States of the South and the farther West into mere shadows of themselves as now constituted. The new principle is called 'democracy.' but it is the democracy of the mob, utterly out of harmony with the wisely regulated American representative system, with its safeguarding checks and balances, as well as antagonistic to every policy of Thomas Jefferson. It is not Democratic."
(8) The County Unit system was not written into the Georgia statutes as a part of the nominating process until 1917.
(9) That statute has been declared by the Federal Court to be constitutional, legal and valid, and that declaration is a part of the law of the land.
Very truly yours,
(Signed)
Charles J. Bloch
CJB:mr