the electors were elected by the people on a general ticket. In two, the State was divided into congressional districts, in each of which two candidates for elector were chosen, from which the legislature elected one as an elector. In Virginia alone, were the electors elected separately in each district.

Fifteen States took part in the election of 1792. In nine the electors were chosen by the legislature. In three, they were elected by the people on a general ticket. In Virginia, as before, the electors were elected in separate districts, and Massachusetts and North Carolina adopted schemes partaking in part of the nature of an election by the people in districts, and in part of the nature of an election by the legislature.

In the election of 1796 sixteen States took part. In nine, the electors were appointed by the legislature. Two adhered to a popular election on a general ticket. Three adhered to the district system. Massachusetts adhered to its own system and Tennessee delegated the power to citizens named by the legislature.

In 1800 party strife ran high, and some changes were made and others attempted with a view to affect the general result. Massachusetts and Virginia gave up the district system and adopted that of electing by the legislature. Pennsylvania adopted a modified form of the latter system.

The action of the two populous States of Virginia and Massachusetts in abandoning the district method in the election of 1800, but for opposite political or party reasons, settled the fate of that method, and it was only a question of time when it would entirely disappear. The system of electing by general ticket was definitely adopted by North Carolina in 1812, Kentucky and Massachusetts in 1824, Indiana and Illinois in 1828, New York, Delaware, Tennessee, and Maine in 1832; and by Maryland in 1838. Since the presidential election of 1832, the district method has not been used by any State in the union.

This is an abandonment for sixty years; and when the reasons which led the States to this course are considered, it is certainly a most important and significant fact. The method of having the electors appointed by the concurrent or joint

vote of the two houses of the legislature of a State, was also abandoned as a part of the same evolution, and with nearly the same unanimity. South Carolina, with a legislature always fresh from the people, continued the practice until 1860. All the other States had abandoned the system by 1828, except Delaware, and it was abandoned there before 1832. During the reconstruction period, before all the Southern States had been re-admitted to Congress and the Union, Florida used the legislative method for a single election, that of 1868, the legislature and state officers having been elected in May, and no other state election being provided for until 1870. Colorado was admitted to the Union August 1, 1876, and a legislature and state officers were elected on the first Tuesday of October. To save the expense and trouble of another election, the legis lature made the appointments for that year. The legislative appointments in Florida and Colorado were, therefore, provisional or temporary; and that method was resorted to because of the exceptional conditions, and not for the purpose of overcoming or overriding the political sentiments or preferences of a majority of the people in those States.

The district system of choosing electors was not obnoxious to the Constitution in its original object and purpose, for the reason that if that object and purpose had been attainable and had been actually accomplished, any division in the votes of the electors of a State, would have been the result of an exercise by each elector of his individual judgment and discretion, and not the result of the political will or partisan voice of the district by which he was chosen; but it is obnoxious to that plan as it was practically and ultimately developed, and as it has now for sixty years actually existed. The legislation establishing it in the early history of the nation took place in times of partisan excitement, and should have no more weight with a court as a construction of the Constitution than the law that we are discussing should have weight; for the legislation then was prompted by and born of the very same spirit of which this law is born, a mad desire for temporary power. There is no rule of constitutional interpretation, or of judicial duty, which requires the court, in determining the constitu

tional validity of the district system, to adhere to the obsolete original design of the Constitution, and to disregard the plan of the electoral college as it actually exists, after a century of practical experience and development.

In the late Mr. Justice Miller's Lectures on the Constitution of the United States, p. 149, is the following: "As originally adopted, and as it now exists, it was supposed that the body of electors interposed between the state legislatures and the presidential ofiice would exercise a reasonable independence and fair judgment in the selection of the chief executive of the national government, and that thus the evil of a President selected by immediate popular suffrage on the one side, and the opposite evil of an election by the direct vote of the States in their legislative bodies on the other, would both be avoided. A very short experience, however, demonstrated that these electors, whether chosen by the legislatures of the States, as they were originally, or by the popular suffrage of each State, as they have come to be now, or by limited districts in each State, as was at one time the prevailing system, are always but the puppets selected under a moral restraint to vote for some particular person who represented the preferences of the appointing power, whether that was the legislature or the more popular suffrage by which the legislature itself was elected. So that it has come to pass that this curious machinery is only a mode of casting the vote to which a State is entitled in the election of President in favor of that candidate who is the favorite of the majority of the people entitled to vote for the more popular branch of the state legislature in each State."

And in In re Green, 134 U. S. 377, 379, this court said, speaking through Mr. Justice Gray :

"The sole function of the presidential electors is to cast, certify and transmit the vote of the State for President and Vice President of the nation. Although the electors are appointed and act under and pursuant to the Constitution of the United States, they are no more officers or agents of the United States than are the members of the state legislatures when acting as electors of federal senators, or the people of

the States when acting as electors of representatives in Congress. Constitution, art. 1, sects. 2, 3.

"In accord with the provisions of the Constitution Congress has determined the time as of which the number of electors shall be ascertained, and the days on which they shall be appointed, and shall meet and vote in the States, and on which their votes shall be counted in Congress; has provided for the filling by each State, in such manner as its legislature may prescribe, of vacancies in its college of electors; and has regulated the manner of certifying and transmitting their votes to the seat of the national government, and the course of proceeding in their opening and counting them. Rev. Stat. $ 131-143; Acts of February 3, 1887, c. 90, 24 October 19, 1888, c. 1216, 25 Stat. 613.

Stat. 373;

"Congress has never undertaken to interfere with the manner of appointing electors, or, where (according to the general usage) the mode of appointment prescribed by the law of the State is election by the people, to regulate the conduct of such election, or to punish any fraud in voting for electors; but has left these matters to the control of the States."

II. The Michigan Statute is in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

The electoral system, as it actually exists, having been recognized by those amendments, the general ticket method for choosing presidential electors was thereby made the permanent and only constitutional method of appointment.

At the time of the adoption of those amendments in every State of the Union the male inhabitants thereof twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, by express provision of law, possessed and exercised the right of voting at an election for the electors of President and Vice President of the United States, and the right of voting for all the electors of President and Vice President of the United States to which the State was entitled.

That this was a right and a privilege no one will deny; that it cannot be abridged by state legislation must be conceded.

The only question that remains is: does Act No. 50 of the Public Acts of 1891 deprive any citizen of the United States of twenty-one years of age, who is an inhabitant of Michigan, of his right to vote for electors of President and Vice President of the United States, or does it in any manner abridge this right? Under the prior law every citizen of the United States who was a male inhabitant of Michigan and twenty-one years of age had the right to vote for as many electors of President and Vice President as the State was entitled to elect of Senators and Representatives in Congress. At the coming election in Michigan that would be fourteen. Under Act No. 50 no such citizen has the right to vote for more than two such electors. In other words, his right under the Fourteenth Amendment, if it is applicable, is to vote for fourteen electors of President and Vice President, while under Act No. 50 that right is so abridged that he can vote for but two. It is too plain for argument that if the amendment applies there is an abridgment, if not a denial, of this right.

I am not unmindful that this reasoning will render necessary the striking out of Article II, section 1, clause 2, of the Constitution, the words "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct." Such, I believe, to be the effect of the amendment.

The electors of President and Vice President, under the amendment, must be chosen by the votes of the qualified citizens at an election for that purpose. There cannot be any other construction of the words "the right to vote at an election for the choice of electors of President and Vice President of the United States."

It cannot be said that if the voter votes for members of a legislature which chooses the electors, this will satisfy the amendment. The amendment gives him by its express terms the right to vote for "members of the legislature" and "electors of President and Vice President."

This right to vote for electors -- not for one elector, not for as many as the legislature may name, but for all this right which is specifically named, cannot be taken away by any subsequent act of a state legislature.