Note 9 — Chapter XXVIII · The Road to Autonomy

Under the present law, the Philippine Assembly has some eighty members, each supposed to represent 90,000 people, more or less. This tallies, roughly, with the census total of population, which is 7,600,000.9 Under the existing law in the Philippines, the qualifications for voting are really of two kinds, though nominally of three kinds. There is a property qualification, and there is an educational qualification. In any case, in order to vote, the individual must be twenty-one years old, and must have lived for six months in the place where he offers to vote. The property qualification requires that the would-be voter own at least $250 worth of property, or pay a tax to the amount of $15. The explanation of how a man may not own $250 worth of property and yet pay $15 taxes is that under the old Spanish system, which we partially adopted, a man might pay such cedula or poll-tax as he preferred, according to a graduated scale, certain civic rights being accorded to those voluntarily paying the higher poll-tax which were denied to those paying less. The educational qualification requires the would-be voter to speak, read, and write either English or Spanish, or else to have held certain enumerated small municipal offices under the Spaniards—before the American occupation. Mr. Jones’s bill proposes to add the speaking, reading, and writing of the native dialect of a given locality10 to the educational qualification. This would double, or perhaps triple, the electorate, and would, in my judgment, be wise. Thousands upon thousands of natives who only speak a little Spanish can both speak, read, and write their native Tagalo, Ilocano, or Visayan, as the case may be. The total of those qualified to vote for members of the Assembly in 1907 was only about 100,000. At a later election, that number was doubled. If there are 7,500,000 people in the archipelago, one fifth of these should represent the adult male population, say 1,500,000. Under Mr. Jones’s bill, the electorate would probably increase to half a million long before the date he proposes for independence, July 4, 1921. But all such details as qualification for voting might, it seems to me, be left to people on the ground, their recommendations controlling. Under a promise of independence by 1921, a very fair electorate of at least one third, possibly one half, of the adult male population, could be built up. As the majority report on the Jones Bill, dated April 26, 1912, says: