Anderson/Doherty 3
governing that process. Reforms enacted during this period served, arguably, to sever the ties both
between the party and the electorate and between the party and the government by remodeling the
vehicle by which elected representatives were chosen: the electoral process. Measures such as the
adoption of the Australian ballot, voter registration, and the direct primary all sought, in the Progressive
tradition, to professionalize the administration of the electoral process in order to reduce the corrupting
influence of party patronage.
The Mugwumps’ flight from the Republican Party following James Blaine’s nomination for
president in 1884 helped launch a movement to end the corruption that dominated local and national
elections. Spawning the formation of reform groups such as the City Reform Club and the
Commonwealth Club, both of New York, as well as the Dutch Treat Club of Boston, good government
advocates called for civil service reform in the early 1880s and, several years later, helped spark a
movement for electoral reform. Richard Henry Dana III, an “arch-mugwump” who drafted
Massachusetts’ civil service reform act in 1883, was one such crusader for electoral reform in Boston.
In concert with other like-minded reformers from the Common Council of Boston, Dana helped draft,
and then implement, the nation’s first state-wide Australian ballot law.
4
The Massachusetts Australian ballot law of 1888 inspired many other states to adopt similar laws
in the ensuing years, prompted in part by allegations of corruption and vote-buying in the presidential
election of 1888.
5
Between 1888 and 1910, 42 of the 46 states then in the union adopted Australian
ballot laws; of these states, 39 adopted the core provisions
6
of these laws in the nine years between 1888
and 1896. Table 1
7
depicts the number of states adopting core provisions of Australian ballot laws per
year and illustrates the widespread success of ballot reform in the years immediately following 1888.
4
Fredman, 1968.
5
Ibid 22.
6
As we shall discuss further in the following section, the core provisions of Australian ballot laws called for secret voting, a
blanket ballot for each election, and government printing, distribution, and collection of ballots.
7
Ludington, 1911.
Convention