PROPORTIONAL VOTING.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 586, 19 July 1913, Page 2

PROPORTIONAL VOTING.

THE SYSTEM EXPLAINED. NEW BILL CRITICISED. The appearanca of the new Bill Lor the reform of the Legislative Council has created renewed interest in the various schemes for proportions! representation. The subject has long been a favourite study of Mr J. McCombs, and a Lyttelton Times reporter interviewed him on Saturday regarding the new Bill and its provisions. Mr McCombs said that, taking' it for granted that a bicameral system of government was necessary, he had nothing but praise for the Government's efforts to give the country an elective Upper House, based ob the most scientific methid of creating a representative chamber. Do you think the new Bill is any improvement on th 3 Bill of last session? Mr McCombs was asked. "In some respects, 'no' " was the reply. The creation of four electoral districts instead of two was not an improvement, he said, and the substitution of the Tasmanian method for Lord Courtney's method of counting the votes was a doubtful improvement. Either method was good, and he did not want to quibble about details, as he desired to give the Government every assistance to demonstrate the value of proportional representation. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION EXPLAINED. In order to show the difference between the two methods, said Mr McCombs, it would be first of all necessary to state that what proportional representation aimed at was the representation of the whole of the people in Parliament, each political party having representation in exact proportion to its strength. The representative chamber thus created would be a miniature of the whole nation. Suppose a country had 400,000 voters, and tbera were 40 members to be elected, then each 10,000 electors would be entitled to one representative. To ensure that each 10,000 voters got the representation they were entitled to, various systems of proportional representation had been invented. It was remarkable how for generations people would put up with a crude, inefficient, haphazard method of election, but when it came to making a change they wanted a sytem that was mathematically perfect. Both Bystems that the Government had introduced were good, probably the best that had yet been devised.

LORD COURTNEY'S METHOD. I Lord Courtney's method, Mr McCombs continued, was the work of the I British Proportional* Representation ' Society, which had in its ranks some of the brainiest men in Britain. The method of election was that each elector had a single transferable vote and i marked his ballot paper 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on after the name of the candidates in the order of preference. This was all that was required of the elector. The first count was similar to counts under the majority representation system, only fit preferences being considered. The ballot papers were placed in parcels. All papers with A marked first preference were put in A's parcel, first preferences for B in B's parcel. Each parcel was then counted and thn results were added together in order to find out how many persons had voted. If 400,000 had voted, then each 10,000 was entitled to a representative, and under Mr Hare' 3 or M. Andr'ae's method the 10,000 would be the quota. But such a quota involved unnecesary counting, besides having other disadvantages. It should be borne in mind that nothing worthy of the name of proportional representation could be applied to less than a three-member constituency. In a single-member constituency a candidate who polled one mora than half the votes must ultimately receive the whole cf the votes in a process of transfer which successively eliminated the bottom man. So in a two-member constituency the least number necessary to ens ire election wa3 one more than a third, for not more than two candidates could poll 3cmuch, and in a three-member constituency one more than a fourth, and so on. Therefore, to ascertain the quota, the scientific method was to divide the total of the votes by one more than the number of scats to be rilled and add one to the result. That was known as the Droop quota, having first been suggested by Mr 11. R. Droop in 1881. That briefly explained the method of arriving at the Droop quota, which was the least number of votes sufficient to renier certain the election of a candidate. The total number of electors, 400,000, was divided by 49 plus 1 and to the quotient was added 1, the resulting quota being 9757, fractions being disregarded. Supposing that A, a leading Liberal, at the first count had four times the quota, or roughly 40,000 votes, enough to elect four candidates. Under proportional representation all votes in excess of the quota had to be transferred, so that A's party would get the full representation it was entitled to. The surplus votes in this case, 30,000, were distributed in accordance with the wish of each elector to the unelected candidates marked 2 on the ballot papers. There a difficulty arose. It mattered not to A which papers were transferred, but it did matter to D, F and K, the; men of the same party, who had shared the second preference of A's supporters. Lord Courtney's method provided that the votes should be transferred in strict proportion If all A's votes were transferable and three-quarters of them had to be transferred, then three-quarters of the ballot papers giving D second choice must be transferred and three-quarters of those for F and K and so on, D, F and K each receiving their strict proportion of the surplus votes. But if D had a surplus aa the result of the transfers, then the third preferences would have to be counted, and when D'a surplus came to be transferred to ensure the same accuracy as in the first transfer the proportion of third preferences in the ;

A D votes! \v<iiil'l have to be considered. To meet Coin dillieulty, Mr J. ]!. Gregory, of Melbourne, had Bug gested thai A';; linllni. papers shouid all bo tr-'irj:ir<-f 1 »■' f.j*<• ir transfer value,, iiaincly, I hr< <- quarter 3 of a ! vote, '•>()('-iiuarl.i'r hem;/ n up in sei curing the return «,i A. That wag | th« 'i'aamaniiui or fr;.':h"iwil method of trarislcr, and il, ha'l much to recommend it. DEFECTS OF TIN-: TASMANIAN SYSTEM. In looking through the TaHtnunian Act of 1907 and comparing it with Lord Courtney's Bill, he hud noticed that whprea3 Lord Courtney based his proportion on transfers on the transferable votes, the Tasmanian Act based it on the total number of votea cast for the candidate, and that he considered a serious defect in the Tasmanian sy>tem and one that New Zealand should avoidIn order to make the difficulty clear Mr McCotnbs and the reporter resorted to figures and reduced them to the following table, it being understood that A was elected with 40,000 votes, of which 30,000 had to be transferred and 32,000 were transferable:— Courtney System. Paperß. Second preference shown for D on 12,000 Second preference slnwn for F on- 10,000 Second preference shown ior K on 10,000 Total of votes capable of transfer 32,000 No second preference shown on • 8000 Total of A's votes' 40,000 With 10,000 votes as the quota, the total number to be tranpferred was 3U/000, and it was neceßsary that they should be taken from the AD, AF and AK parcels in strict proportion, that was, in the proportion which thfe subparcels bore to all the votes capable of transfer. Therefore D's 12,000 votes were multiplied by 30,000, the totsi number to be transferred, and divided by 32,000, the total votes transferable. The result would be that D would receive 11,250 voets, or 1516ths of the 12,000. Similairiy, F and K, with 10,000 second preference vote, would each receive 9375 >in a total of 30,000. THE TASMANIAN METHOD. According to the Tamanian Act, which aimed at precisely the same thing, namely, the transfer of the 30,000 surplus votes while safeguarding the interests of the third and subsequent preferences, the method prescribed in the Act read: —"The surplus of the elected candidate shall be divided by the total number of votes him on the counting of tho first choices, and the resulting factions shall be the transfer value." Referring to the illustration given with 30,000 votes transferable, if those 32,000 votes were transferred at the transfer value (vide Tasmanian Act)* the total transferred Would be that D, with 12,000 seconl preferences, received three-quarters of them, or 9000, that being the sum arrived at by multiplying- the vote by 30,000, the total number transferable, and dividing by 40,000, the total number polled. Similarly F and K would each receive 7500 votes, a total of 24,000 votes transferred That disclosed a remarkable discrepancy of no fewer than 6000 Votes, a very serious matter. It would be seen that GOOO ware actually lost when they should and could have been transferred, and the candidate's party suffered accordingly. What wss a very serious defectin the Tasmanian Act, and if the New Zealand Government wero forced to choose between the two systems lv would have no hesitation hi saying it ought to choosa the machinery clause 3 provided in Lord Courtney's Bill. "But," Mr McCoinbs asked, "why should not New Zealand lead the way by having the most perfect machinery yet devised, embodying the excellencies of the two most excellent systems. If they changed the clause to sscure a division by the total number of votes capable of transfer, instead of by the total votes recorded for the candidate it would mean v. marked improvement—something new in legislation of this character. MINC.R POINTS. Trie Council, Mr MeCombs added, ; should be elected for three years only, so that it cculd constantly be in touch with £ind reriect public opinion. The proposal to make the Councillors retire en nloc was distinctly good, because the greater number to be elected gave free.: play to the operation of proportional representation. Those who did not understand the system would object and persist in looking at it through imaginary representative spectacles that the big constituencies were not in the interests of the poor man. As a matter of fact, the big constituencies under proportional representation gave the poor man and the small party a much better chance than they row had. Take the North Island, for instance, the quota required to ensure election would be practically the same in each of the two proposed constituencies as it would be if tire North Island polled as one constituency. If one doubled the number to he elected and doubled the size of the constituency the quota remained practically the same, and if a man could secure the qjota in one electorate his chances were doubiea when the electorate was doubled. Suppose the quota was 12,000. and a small political party throughout New Zealand cculd muster 25,000 all told, and that those voters were fairly evenly distributed through the four electorate?, 6000 to GluO in each electorate. The suppo&ed party would not secure a single representative in any of the constituencies, while it would have secured one seat in Island constituencies, or two goats if the Dominion wero polled as one electorate. With every division under

proportional representation there was the possibility of any party, large or small, receiving one leas representative than it wag entitled to; therefore, every furtner division, auch as the one suggested in the new Bill was to be deplored. Forgetting the disadvantages resulting from basing the transfers on the total vote instead of the total transferable votes, he was inclined to think that such advantages as were gained through the fractional method of transfer were more than loßt by dividing the Dominion into four, instead of into two electorates.