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236 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE
eryone an opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice by
assisting in
placing his name on the ballot; it would also cause petitioners to lose at
least half a
day's work and pay; and by requiring them publicly to swear their voting
inten-
tions, it violated their voting privacy, effectively nullified the concept
of a secret
ballot, 'and subjected them to possible intimidation. It was expected that
the diffi-
culty, inconvenience, and expense would persuade most people not to try to
nomi-
nate independent candidates. An attempt to organize a new party able to
compete
fully in Baltimore would be frustrated by the need for at least 4,400
voters, evenly
distributed across the city's twenty-two wards, who were willing to make
such
personal sacrifices. Mugwump reformers, who often had organized independent
candidacies in the past, condemned the Carter amendment as "a plan for
making
the nomination of any but machine candidates for the {City} Council almost
impos-
sible. "51
Baltimore's labor organizations were even more vociferous in their
opposition.
Electrical Assembly 6280 of the Knights of Labor, one of the earliest and
most
active supporters of the Australian reform system, denounced the Carter
amend-
ment as destructive of popular rights, and other local assemblies as well
as the
Baltimore District Assembly 41 passed ardent resolutions against the
measure. The
Knights also sent delegations to Annapolis to lobby against this
"disfranchising"
measure. The Critic titled the measure "A bill to suppress independent
candidacies
in the city of Baltimore" and declared that it made the Australian ballot
"an
instrument of oppression, instead of one of freedom, which it was intended
to be.'°52
Democratic politicians agreed that the amended ballot law would "prevent any
more independent candidates" and enjoyed the naivete of their opponents. "No
matter how often we fool the businessmen and innocent mullets," said one
Balti-
more machine politician, "they are always ready to be fooled again. "53
The political effect of the new ballot law was promptly demonstrated in the
fall
campaign when it effectively suppressed the new People's Party. Organized in
August by members of the Farmers' Alliance and directed toward the labor
organi-
zations of Baltimore, the new party secured the necessary five hundred
petitioners
in each of the first, second, and fifth districts to nominate candidates
for Congress
and presidential elector but was prevented by the new law from nominating
candi-
dates in the two districts in Baltimore. "This law was passed after our
party had
obtained a foothold in other states, in order to keep us out of Maryland,"
charged
Populist State Chairman Nelson Dunning of Sykesville. "It is a Democratic
force
bill to keep the People's Party out of this state." Dunning maintained that
the
Democrats themselves would find it difficult to make nominations under the
legal
restrictions but wisely noted "they were making laws for others, instead of
them-
selves." He estimated that the ballot restrictions disfranchised five
thousand voters
in Baltimore, and the Critic agreed: "Many old labor men were in the party
and
are, no doubt, much discouraged. The so-called Australian ballot law
militated
against them very largely. "54
Thus the achievement of the Australian ballot "reform" and its extension to
the
whole state by 1892 did not end the partisan use of the electoral
structure, and
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