PREFERENTIAL AND OTHER VOTING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 250, 16 July 1919, Page 8

PREFERENTIAL AND OTHER VOTING

Sir, —While the present system of votjng is wholly except where iinlv two candidates offer, such preferential voting as your correspondents suggest and command is but tinkering with .the problem. There is but one sound . and scientific system, and that is large constituencies with proportional representation. It may be impossible to introduce 6uch a system in time for the approaches election; but one thing is certain, that until such a.system (somewhat cumbersome though it may be) is introduced, many minority interests 'must go unrepresented, or only very inadequately represented, in our Parliament. s Hasty legislation in (his matter is undesirable. We are really becoming a laughing-stork to ourselves from the anomalies of our legislation, due to careless or hurried drafting. Our bigamy legislation is tragically comic. I have reason to believe that New Zealand law does not permit a. man to marry bis deceased wife's sister's daughter. He can lhsrrv his wife's sister, but not a daughter of that sister! Just fancy, a. man can marry a girl's mother, but 'not the girl herself! That, at any rate, is said to be the position according to New Zealand law. Let us beware of hasty legislation and of incompetent legislators.—! am, etc., FESTINA LENTE.