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SELF-GOVERNMENT OF THE COMMUNES.
287
The total number of persons entitled to vote in communes in 1910 was
923 391, being nearly 17% of the entire population. About half of the adult
male population has the communal suffrage. In 1885 there were about 44 000
and in 1900 over 59 000 women entitled to vote in the communes: and this
number must have since then considerably increased. Stockholm alone in 1910
had 20 900 women voters, as compared with 61 793 male voters.
Swedish women will soon have possessed the communal franchise for two hundred
years. When the law of 1734 expressly laid it down that a widow was not under
guardianship, she thereby obtained the communal franchise. A married woman,
too, as early as the eighteenth century had, in the absence of the husband, the
right to exercise the vote attached to the common property in the case of the
election of a parish-priest. When an unmarried woman ceased to be under
guardianship in 1858, she thereby gained the communal franchise for her
property and her income.
The communal franchise is exercised in accordance with a scale of 40
grades, calculated for each voter on the basis of the total income for which
he is liable to pay communal rates. In the rural communes, one vote is
assigned for each 100 kr. or part of 100 kr. for such income up to 1 000
kr., and for incomes above 1 000 kr., one vote for each 500 kr. or part of
500 kr. In towns one vote is assigned for each 100 kr. or part of 100 kr.
for such incomes up to 2 000 kr., and one vote for every 500 kr., or part
of 500 kr. for incomes above 2 000 kr. The maximum number of votes is
40, and in the countrj^ districts the maximum is one-tenth of the total
number of votes.
As a ride the number of votes corresponds to the assessed value and
income set forth in Table 54. A person who has income from different
kinds of real property, or from both real property and capital or work,
has as many votes as he is entitled to by the combined amount of his
income.
C. The communal authorities are of two kinds — determinative and
executive. With regard to the determinative authorities the peculiar
circumstance holds that this capacity is exercised, as a rule, not by any
representative body, but immediately by the entire body of the voters
themselves. It thus happens that one may see determinative communal
assemblies of several hundred persons, or even of thousands.
This ultra democratic system (a direct descendant of the old primitive
Germanic Folk-meetings) prevails, with some few exceptions,
throughout the rural communes. In the towns, on the other hand, it is only
allowed in the smallest, i.e., those with a population of less than 3 000.
Even these small towns, moreover, may, if they so wish, elect a
representative body — which is done in almost all cases; and, as has been
mentioned, this is obligatory in the case of the larger towns. — The
deliberative and determinative General Assembly is called, in the country the
Communal Meeting (kommunalstämma), in the towns the Municipal
Meeting (allmän rådstuga).
The Communal Meeting elects its own president and vice-president for four
years, but in the towns the mayor is ipso facto president. Ordinary assemblies
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