Nevertheless, we think that no candidate's agent should be permitted,
at least in the vicinity of any polling-booth, to ask any man, directly or indirectly, how be had voted. No doubt these voting-cards are not real evidence of the vote, and might just as well be given if the voter had voted the other way. But they might very well alarm the timid voters; and they certainly would embarrass the timid but conscientious voters who wished to vote the other way without daring to decline the card or to destroy it. No law while in force should be liable to evasion of this kind, and there can be no doubt that this voluntary card system amounts to an evasion of the intention of the law. Another very unsatisfactory point appears to have been the procedure in con- nection with the illiterate voter. One case is reported in which voters professedly illiterate were allowed to state aloud for whom their vote was given, in the hearing not only of the agents of the candidates, but of some conductor who had apparently brought them up to the poll. These illiterates appear to have received their reward immediately on leaving the booth in which their intentions had been thus publicly verified. That is a gross viola- tion of the principle of the Act, and opens the way for effectual bribery of the most bribable class, the illiterates. Very strong assertions are made as to the great facilities for personation, both at Preston and at Birmingham, where a municipal election has- been held under the Ballot ; but these assertions were quite cer- tain to be made, and will need to be carefully sifted. The certain point is, however, that, even in spite of the hourly published Conservative estimates of the state of the poll, great tranquillity and order were the rule of the election.
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