"Well, what you an' me's a playin' for is moral effec' on Boyd Westover. As fer 'lectin' him, they won't be no trouble 'bout that. But ef the moral effec' is to be strong, we mus' git the biggest vote we kin for him down among the plantation people. Fust off, then, he's got to be enominated by that sort o' folks, without no hint o' Judy Peters or the mountings in it. That's your fust job. You go down there, sayin nothin' 'bout Judy Peters or the mountings, an' git a lot o' the stuck-ups to jine you in enominatin' him." In those days the "Reformers" who plead for independence in politics had not yet invented their ingenious devices for compelling the voter to make a choice of evils in deciding for whom he would vote. There were no such things as "official ballots" limiting the choice of the voter to men formally nominated. Every man was free, as every man everywhere ought to be, to vote for whomsoever he pleased without consulting an "Australian" ballot sheet to find out what men he was permitted to vote for. And any man who aspired to office was at liberty to announce his candidacy in person or through friends as an appeal to his fellow citizens for their free suffrages, without asking permission of any caucus or boss or primary or convention, and without the necessity of spending money corruptly in order to secure the privilege of being voted for if his fellow citizens wished to vote for him. Judy continued: "When you git all the big-bug signatures you kin, jest send a nigger round to post up the enomination papers everywhere. Have 'em printed, Carley, 'cause print sort o' carries weight, an' printin' don't cost much, an' even ef it did, 'twouldn't make no difference, 'cause I'd pay the bill." "You can't do that, Judy. Westover's friends down there'll attend to that. I'll have twenty or twenty-five signatures to the paper, and I'll have five or six hundred printed, so as to post one on every gate post and every tree that anybody's likely to look at. How many do you want, for use in the mountains?" "None at all! Not one!" answered Judy, emphatically. "They won't be needed up here, 'cause I'm a takin' care o' the mounting vote, an' I ain't a sayin' nothin'. Let 'em keep a guessin' 'bout how the mountings is a goin' till they hears the answer to the riddle when the polls is closed. You see ef they find out the mountings is agin 'em they'll try to do somethin' up here, an' ef they's uncertain they won't care to stir up things. But besides all that, there's the drymatic climax to think of. Tom Hardaway tole me all about that wunst, so I know what a drymatic climax is, an' I mean to have one this time, jest for the sake o' that banty rooster, William Wilberforce Webb, who'll find all his tail feathers pulled out by the roots when the 'lection's over."