the writer resides are called upon to elect a supervisor, a clerk, an assessor, a collector, a commissioner of highways, 5 justices of the peace, 4 constables, a poundmaster, and high-school trustees. These offices are not intrinsically more conspicuous or more important than the village offices just enumerated. Hence the enlargement from 600 to 2,000 voters causes the candidates for office to be proportionately less conspicuous in the community. To the same extent the difficulty to the voter of obtaining information as to the character and attainments of the candidates has been increased. The members of the state Senate and House of Representatives are important officers because they exercise the legislative power of the state. The conspicuousness and importance of each of these offices is, however, weakened by the existence of the other, for between the representatives and senators the legislative power is divided and each is a check upon the other. The members of the House of Representatives in the state legislature are hidden to some extent from the voters because 3 are elected at large from a senatorial district containing 18,000 voters. It is more difficult for the voter to find out about a legislator when he is one of 18,000 than when he is one of 6,000 voters. Twenty-eight thousand electors of the County of Cook outside of the city of Chicago are called upon to vote for 5 of the 15 county commissioners. The office is not likely to be held by men whom it is easy for the average voter of the district to pick up direct information about. To elect one member of the state Board of Equalization 42,000 voters are called upon. Again, the size of the electorate makes it difficult to know who the candidates for the place may be. Three hundred and twenty-two thousand voters are called upon to elect 7 sanitary trustees. Here the darkness of the average voter becomes Egyptian, and he is practically excluded from any means of a personal knowledge of who the candidates for the sanitary trustees are. The same is equally true of the members of the Board of Review, members of the Board of Assessors, the 30 judges of Cook County, the president of the Board of County Commissioners, the judge of the Probate Court, the judge of the County Court, the state’s attorney, the recorder, the 5 clerks of the different courts, the sheriff, the county clerk, the county superintendent of public instruction, and the county surveyor. There are 350,000 voters who regularly cast their ballots for these officers. Among a population containing so many voters it is practically impossible, even for the voter who makes an unusual effort, to acquire any personal knowledge of who the candidates for these offices are. Take the most prominent officials in the list--the judges and state’s attorney. The intelligent man who is a voter has very little chance to acquire any personal knowledge of the fitness of the candidates for these offices. A