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in the effort to put both parties on an equal footing in elections. The first intimation which I can find in the laws of New York that political parties actually existed was in the election law of 1842, which provides for the election of three inspectors of elec- tions, but permitted the elector to vote for only two. This was doubtless designed to give the minority party one of the inspec- tors. But the party organization as such was not yet acknowl- edged, the theory still being that candidates, not parties, were being voted for. Parties as actual factors in elections were first recognized not until after the war, in the election law of 1870, which provided for bipartisan police and election boards in New York city and Brooklyn. This act provides specifically that the choice of the third inspector should not be left to chance, as in the law of 1842, but that he should be chosen "from the party in general political opposition on state issues to the party elect- ing the two successful candidates." An act of 1880 provided for a board of registration in counties of more than 300,000 population, to be appointed from both political parties. And a general law of 1880 provided that every "political organization that shall present a candidate or candidates" shall appoint watchers to oversee the inspectors in counting the ballots. These laws were merely a negative recognition of parties and did not give them a place in the legal machinery of government. They merely protected them against each other. The same was true of the first primary law of 1882, providing penalties for those who should willfully obstruct the primaries, and placing the presiding officers under oath.
Another negative legal acknowledgment of parties is the so-called civil-service-reform legislation. The appointment of strictly administrative officials to strengthen the party is an unwarranted use of these offices, except as the necessity of sur- vival dictates. Civil-servic reform aims to exclude this necessity. Here for the first time legislation deals with political parties by taking away one of the strong props of their organization. Such legislation is an effort, not to incorporate parties into the machinery of government, but to exclude them from a large section of this machinery.
