68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of state, county, and city officers has always been conceded to the state legislatures exclusively. An amendment of the national constitution or a mutual agreement of all state law must be necessary to the choice throughout the United States of all such local officers upon uniform daj's.
What legislation, then, is practicable? Each state has full power to establish time uniformity for the choice of its state and minor officers, and to provide within its own bounds three dis- tinct chains of action. Uniform dates for the primaries and con- ventions incident to the election of the national executive and representatives are plainly within the scope of congressional legislation. This gives a powerful national initiative and influ- ence. Just as the laws of 1845 and 1872 have drawn the states to their November Tuesday for the election of city, county, and state officers, so a law requiring all national primaries to be held on the second Tuesday in May would draw state, county, and city primaries together. Congress can forestall such an undesirable tendency by forbidding the holding of any primaries, conven- tions, and elections for the offices of a state or lesser government at the national polling places or by the conventions nominating national officers. It can require separate election officers, ballot boxes, tickets, conventions, and membership of central commit- tees. It can do away with state conventions for the nomination of presidential electors and the selection of delegates to national conventions, and require that they shall be named by congres- sional district conventions. Some easily devised method of election may procure the choice of a state's delegates and elec- tors at large as the united act of its congressional district con- ventions, each voting in a separate place. In this way the state convention can be made an exclusively state function. So, also. Congress can effect some further disentanglement and sim- plification by enjoining the choice of the delegates to these congressional district conventions by the primaries directly, thereby removing the county convention as a link in national politics.
With national evolution have come the knowledge, experi- ence, and organization which justify a fuller legal regulation of
