particular judge or a particular candidate for state’s attorney may become to some extent known to the voter and have the confidence of the voter. But these are exceptional cases. The average candidate for these offices is beyond the reach of any thoroughgoing knowledge on the part of the voter. The difficulty of obtaining information about one inconspicuous member of so large a population is too great. In Illinois, to select a secretary of state, an auditor, a treasurer, a state superintendent of schools, 6 trustees of the state university, a clerk of the state Supreme Court, and 2 congressmen at large, 1,100,000 voters are called upon. Here again the inconspicuousness of the offices compared with the size of the electorate is such that the obstacle to the voter informing himself about candidates is practically insuperable. One would think that the voter had difficulty enough in finding out about candidates as a result of the simple process of requiring comparatively inconspicuous and unimportant offices to be filled by a very numerous electorate. But his difficulty has been enormously increased by the process of requiring the voter to do the larger part of his investigating for the purpose of voting at a single election. For instance, the writer is called upon at a single election in November to investigate the qualifications for office of a president and vice-president of the United States, a congressman for his district, 2 congressmen at large, about one-half of the state officers, and about one-half of the county officers. To be exact, he must look up candidates for 34 different offices (not including the presidential electors) presented upon the long ballot given _supra_ (opposite p. 29), to the number of 181. Assuming that information about some of the candidates for the more important offices, such as members of Congress and members of the state legislature, could be looked up and reliable information obtained, the chances are that this will not be done because other more important offices, like that of president of the United States and governor of the state, are to be filled. This process of preventing the voter from investigating candidates for even important and conspicuous offices by putting so much investigating upon him at a single election that he cannot do it has operated to produce political ignorance on the part of the electorate as to candidates for Congress and the state legislature. These are important and conspicuous offices. The candidates come from comparatively small districts. If selected at an election where they were the only offices to be filled, a very considerable amount of intelligence might be displayed by the electorate. But these offices are hidden among half a hundred other offices for which several hundred other candidates are running. In the mass the voter is distracted and fails to a considerable extent to distinguish the important from the unimportant. The extraordinary