Proportional Representation.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17127, 23 April 1921, Page 10

Proportional Representation.

The', most: about; 'fpoftional ,|v aß applied to the electidn of a large body like the City Council is its tendency to "confuse the e)ectofp. • To*day, at the request of the Town. Clerk, we print a para-: graph in which the electors are told what the.y must 30, arid we "print a few interesting-figures' from, a letter by Mr J. McCombsj which we have sot .space to print in frill.. It is pretty; obvious that few pebple : Tinderstand the working of.'the .system, .or can over >be riiade to understaid it. Tliis is we need hardly say, a'conclusive argument, against its adoption, although it' is a little surprising to us that bur socalled .'democrats are so little • constitutionalist v iii spirit that they look with'"coihplacency upon a democracy voting according to a system it does riot uri'derst'and,. Better—we should have thought they would say—better that : a free "man" should go" fo his grave •without voting than that he should go through the farce of turning the handle of an unintelligible machine. They have -satisfied 'theniselve^'•'•.. iio that' the machine "does ■ the "rest" wisely arid certainly, but,surely they should hold that it is less to be desired ( that a man should do right than that he should know exactly'what he-is doing. Even those who »have atudSed the ; subject thoroughly—and 'some.of:us have had to digest the endless publications by Mr Humphreys and the innumerable articles and speeches on. the subject in other countries—have a great'deal''of sympathy with those ■who, not. understanding the system, dislike it. _[

' There are other objections to P.R. to which wo have never seen' a satisfactory answer. In the first place it encourages factions and cranks, and tends to subordinate large and practical issues to the- fads of sections. And since the special virtue.claimed' for the P-.R. system is that. it aims at' giving representation to every section of opinion and .every group, it is clear that the system produces its effect the more' .truly the more groups to which it gives encouragement and representation, yln a large representative assembly P.lt. in ' its most effective form will have been responsible for a large number of groups, with no absolute majority- for any oho of them. No stable government could be formed in such circumstances .without concessipn* and compromises, involving, very often, bargains in which the public interest would not be. considered in the least. If it he said that in practice .P.lt. does not, or will not, work out like that, then one may reply that this implies that the practical usefulness of PJt: depends upon its not being thoroughly effective. It is a strange recommendation of any system'that the less effectively it does what it' professes to do the_ better it will be for- everybody.

The system has not been established long enough iiere to bloom in its purpst' beautyj we suppose that it will not give us a City Council much different, if different at .all, from the Council that ..would bo elected on the simpler system that has-been temporarily discarded. One of the newspapers

supporting P.R. declared the other day that "it was proportional representation and nothing else that enabled "Independent candidates to secure " election to the City Council in 1917." Whether this was. so very desirable a result we do not know, but we do know that it was not to "proportional representation and nothing else" that any single Councillor elected in 1917 owed his success. The sixteen. leading candidates on the first count—the candidates who under the old system would have been declared elected forthwith — actually were finally elected after the complicated transferring of votes and recounts prescribed by tho rules of the P.R. system. It is very possible that we may see tho same kind of thing happen again. If tho advocates of P.R. claim that such a result will at least show that their system is as good as the old system, the plain man ; will reply that it shows rather that the P.R. system is simply a nuisance, and thatyit will be better to have the Council elected ,I>y. electors who will really know what they are doing than by electors who have little idea of what the arithmetic of -the new system amounts to. .. ;