The Cleveland nonpartisan ballot provides for three choices. One of the objections urged against the nonpartisan ballot has been that the second and third choices would be used only by the more intelligent voter; that the less intelligent would vote for but one. In the elections studied in which this three-choice system was used, 20 per cent of the native born expressed second choices; the foreign born followed in this order: TABLE XLV PER CENT OF CERTAIN RACES EXERCISING SECOND AND THIRD CHOICES ===================================================== |SECOND CHOICE| THIRD CHOICE RACE | PER CENT | PER CENT -------------------------+-------------+------------- Native born | 20 | 7 Jugo-Slav | 18 | 7 Jews | 14 | 5 Italians | 12 | 7 Magyars and Bohemians | 10 | 7 Polish | 7 | 3 ===================================================== A smaller per cent exercises third choice, but three foreign-born groups equaled the native born with 7 per cent. The Jews with 5 per cent, Magyars with 4 per cent, Polish with 3 per cent, were the lowest. While there is little in these figures to justify generalization, it may be said that, on the whole, the voters presumably more intelligent are in practice rather afraid of the second- and third-choice business because they recognize some danger that in expressing a second choice they may, in the final count, negative their first choice; therefore there is a marked tendency among the politically sophisticated to vote only a first choice. At all events, no substantial distinction can be drawn from any available statistics between native and foreign born, as such, with regard to their intelligence or their tendencies in the use of such a device. When one comes to consider what might be called the _human_ aspects of politics, these elections in Cleveland show, what elections everywhere show, interesting but in no way surprising facts. One is that the voters of any race tend to support a candidate of that race, or a man well known as friendly to its members. Mr. Davis was exceedingly well known and popular among the Bohemians, who are both numerically strong and racially influential in Cleveland. In the first election studied, that of 1911, Mr. Baker, a Democrat, carried the three Bohemian (Czech) precincts by substantial pluralities as against Mr. Hogen. His total vote in these precincts aggregated 445 to Hogen’s 183. But in 1913 Mr. Davis carried one of the precincts. And over against this fact is the consideration that in 1913 Baker was generally much weaker as a candidate than in 1911--for reasons having no appreciable racial bearing. In 1915, as shown in the table above, there was a heavy swing in the three Bohemian districts in favor of Davis, the Republican candidate.