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A Substitute for Primaries

About This Item

  • Title: A Substitute for Primaries
  • Date: 30 November 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00990
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 30 November 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "A Substitute for Primaries." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00990.xml (TEI)
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A SUBSTITUTE FOR PRIMARIES.

Postmaster Peck1 and others of the Kings County Democratic Association have drawn up a plan for preventing fraud in primary elections. There are several good minor features in it—for instance, requiring the name of each voter, forbidding primaries to be held at a liquor store, &c. But so long as the inspectors are appointed by committees, most of whom are generally themselves candidates for nominations, there is little hope for a fair count of the ballots. But the leading and best feature of the new plan is that it does away with the collections of strikers and suckers known as nominating conventions, by directing the electors in primary meetings to vote directly for the candidate they prefer, the one having most votes in the district to be the nominee. We cannot too strongly commend this idea. All that is needed beside it, to make nominations a perfect reflex of the wishes of the party at large, is to secure an honest and impartial set of inspectors and clerks.

Notes:

1. William H Peck (1808-1868) was a Democratic Party member and local politician. He was appointed as Brooklyn Postmaster by President Buchanan in 1857 and served in this position until 1861. [back]

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