With the general adoption of the Australian ballot, whether pure or modified, a certain rigidity and official formality was introduced, which makes independent action, or the rejection of “regular” party candidates, however unworthy they be, increasingly difficult. This put a premium upon the control of conventions and party machinery, and the naming of party candidates by whatever means. To secure a fair, untrammeled expression of popular will in the initiatory step of making nominations, a system of primary election laws has been evolved, and now exists in almost every State. The early forms applied where parties voluntarily, in primary elections, made nominations, sometimes of candidates by direct vote, but more often only of delegates to conventions, all under party management and control, subject to such public laws; the later forms are mandatory, requiring all parties to nominate candidates, or delegates, at an official primary election, under public control. The usual course of evolution has been to hold primaries for naming delegates, and then to assume the nomination of all candidates without the intervention of delegates. About 1879 or 1880 a primary election law was enacted in Kentucky, but no obligation was imposed on any party or persons to nominate candidates by primary election. In 1895, almost simultaneously, several States adopted compulsory primary laws, limiting their operation at first to one or several large cities, and later extending them over the State in either a mandatory or an optional form. So widely do these enactments differ, that it is hard to deduce general statements of their features. Many have been upheld, and not a few overthrown. There has been a general tendency to substitute mandatory for optional laws. After a bitter fight, extending over a series of years, Wisconsin by a majority of over 50,000 adopted a mandatory primary election law in 1904, that provides for nomination by direct vote, of almost all officers from the smallest up to candidates for United States Senators, by all parties upon the same day at the same polling places and with the same election officers, who are publicly chosen from the two leading parties in the State. In 1900 California expressly recognized the primary election by a Constitutional provision, and empowered the Legislature to prescribe conditions on which voters may participate in such elections. The Constitution of Mississippi, Section 247, declares that the Legislature shall enact laws to secure fairness in primary elections. Where the primaries are official and mandatory, all expenses are paid by the public; where they are voluntary, the cost falls on the party holding them. Myriads of questions have arisen out of these elections, and Legislatures have sought in a variety of ways, to solve them. The proclivity of some voters to take part in all primaries has been an ever-present problem in those States that permit the several parties to hold their primaries at different