The Oasis

AN ISSUE NOT TO BE EVADED.

The educational qualification law enacted by the Twenty-fifth Legislative Assembly of Arizona, last year, has become a full-fledged issue which the democrats of the territory would like to evade but cannot. Had the Arizona democracy been frank, and open and square about the matter the measure would not have returned now to plague them. In the first place they misrepresented the object; it was purportedly to raise the intellectual standard of the electorate, when in fact the intention was to shut from the ballot box so far as possible a native element which is largely republican in one or two of the counties, by elimination of which it was hoped to make those counties democratic; further it was purportedly to put a stop to the alleged wholesale purchase of voters by both parties, when no effort had been made at any time by the men advocating enactment to put a stop to the purchase of votes by a strict enforcement of the anti-bribery laws, some of whom as district attorneys in their various counties had possessed the power to do so; and the act was alleged to be modelled upon the educational qualification in the constitution of the state of Maine, which it was not, through omission of most important clauses. It was by working the Maine subterfuge that there were secured endorsements of the proposed act by prominent republicans, who approving the broad principle of raising the standard of the electorate were trapped into endorsement of a measure that in detail is different entirely from the Maine constitution. The trickery perpetrated has had much to do with making the measure odious.
The following is the provision erected into the state constitution of Maine:
"AMENDMENT XXIX."
"Educational Qualification of Voters"
"No person shall have the"
"right to vote or be eligible to"
"office under the Constitution"
"of this State, who shall not"
"be able to read the constitu-"
"tion in the English language"
"and write his name; provid-"
"ed, however that the provis-"
"ions of this amendment shall"
"not apply to any person pre."
"vented by a physical dis-"
"ability from complying with"
"its requisitions, nor to any"
"person who now has the right"
"to vote, nor to any person"
"who shall be sixty years of"
"age or upwards at the time"
"this amendment shall take"
"effect."

The penultimate clause in the foregoing, which has been italicised purposely, is the crux of the situation. Had the Twenty-fifth legislature included in the educational qualification act a similar clause, then would have been true the allegation that the act was modelled upon the constitution of Maine; and in that case native citizens of Arizona, who pay taxes and are educated well in Spanish, would not have been disfranchised. It is that vital omission which has torn from Arizona democracy the mask of subterfuge and made the educational act of Arizona a burning issue in the constitutional campaign.