Fifty Million Voters

Cynthia McGuire's old man was so violently opposed to woman suffrage that he made Cynthia promise she would never vote. She kept her promise. But last week, aged 89, she registered at her home in Council Bluffs, Iowa, defiantly prepared to vote this year. She thought it was her duty. She intended to vote for Mr. Roosevelt.

To many another U. S. citizen, looking anxiously at Europe's vanishing democracy, the opportunity to vote took on a prime importance in 1940. U. S. citizens last week registered in record-breaking numbers. Of the 131,409,881 people in the U. S., statisticians estimated that some 45% would be qualified to vote on Nov. 5. From 15 to 20% of these (the bedridden, the nonplussed, the indifferent) probably will not show up at the polls; but indications last week were that the total vote would exceed 1936's record-breaking 45,647,117 by about 4,000,000.

California expected 765,000 more than the 2,638,882 who voted four years ago; New York, 606,000 more than its 1936 high of 5,596,398. Whopping increases over 1936 expected by other States: Pennsylvania, 462,000; Ohio, 238,000; Massachusetts, 260,000; New Jersey. 204,000.

Worried politicians, who a few months ago expected only a sizable and seizable vote, tried to figure which way this new and unknown swarm would jump, arrived at only one conclusion: an increasingly unpredictable election had become more unpredictable than ever.

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