WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 December 1922, Page 1

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

ELECTORAL REFORM.

SPECIAL IO GUARDIAN. WELLINGTON, Dee. (i. Whatever may be the result of the contest in progress to-day, and however it may he brought about, it will be the bounden duty of the Government weak or strong, to introduce a measure of electoral reform that will release the democracy of this country from the bondage in which it has been held for more than half a century. We do not blame Air Massey alone for delay in this matter. Mr Seddon, the great Liberal leader, was as great tan offender as is the present Prime Minister, and perhaps with less excuse. Mr Seddon could have afforded to trust the people at any time during his long career. There never was any need for him to manipulate the electoral law for his own political .advancement. With Mr Massey it is different. He never has had a majority of the elections with him and his tenancy of office always has depended upon the maintenance of the first past the post system. But now the eyes of the whole country have been opened to what is going on. Even Mr .Massey’s political friends can no longer keep up the pretence of believing that a system which enables a minority to triumph over a majority can he right and equitable. That of course would he a renunciation of the first principle

of our representative system which rests on the basis of universal suffrage. We do not wish to harp on Mr Massey’s broken promise in this matter. That is a story eight years old, and there is many another politician whose good resolutions have been dissipated by the insistence of experieney. Bait we do wish to protest strongly against the Prime Minister’s persistent misstatements in regard to the operation and effect of Proportional representation. He has declared over and over again during the campaign that is culminating in to-dav’s contest that

; proportional representation has been j a failure in New South Wales, and his i elaquers up and down the country ! have enlarged upon this to the extent |of shouting it has been a failure I wherever it has been tried. Mr Alas- ! soy and Ids friends are either as- ] toundingly ignorant or deplorably disingenuous. Proportional represoutaI tion cannot tail in what it professes to ; do. Tt gives to every individual in • the community and to every section of i the community precisely the measure of representation to which it is enj titled. Its operations are not govern ed by chance hut by mathematical ncI curacy and are as easily understood as are the simplest exercises in arithmetic. The voter is required to put forth no greater mental effort in marking Ids ballot pa per than lie is under the present- system, and Ill’s chances of making a mistake, it anything, are rather smaller.

Unfortunately the first election unde proportional representation in Now South ’ Wales was held while a Prime Minister adverse to the system, was iu office. The worst he could do towards discrediting it was to require by regulation that the elector should

mark in order his preference for every candidate on the ballot paper. In some of the five member constituencies there were as many as thirty candidates. and it is easy to understand that apart from his .objection to giving a preference of any kind to a candidate, he did not wish to see elected the elector was liable to make mistakes in attaching members in irregular order to thirty names. Naturally there were numbers of mistakes and consequently numbers of informal ballot papers. But at the next election the voter was required to give preferences only to the number of the candidates to he elected, three or five, as the ease might he, and in the largest poll over recorded in the State, the number of informal votes was exceptionally small. Mr Massey is iust as well aware of these facts as anyone else who lias given the slightest attention to the matter, and we cannot imagine any sort of explanation that would excuse the distorted construction he has placed upon them.