Government by Default

New Jersey's Governor Walter Evans Edge said bluntly: "The public interest in primary elections has become so apathetic they might as well be abolished."

The Governor, whose own slate won the Republican primary by 5-to-1 majorities, had no ax to grind. The facts were enough. In industrial New Jersey, where even the busiest war worker could find some time to vote during the 13-hour poll day, they straggled into the polls at the rate of six an hour. Nowhere except in Frank Hague's well-regimented Hudson County did the vote exceed 15% of the registration, either Democratic or Republican.

The pathetic Jersey showing was a low point in a nationwide war trend. Even in the Wisconsin primary, where Wendell Willkie staked his Presidential chances on the outcome, only 33% of the qualified bothered to vote. Forty years ago reformers crusaded for primaries in the confidence that they would "take Government out of the hands of the politicians and return it to the people." Now a politician could rightly say that the people didn't seem to care.

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