Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY. JANUARY 14, 1919. PREEERENTIAL VOTING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1926, 14 January 1919, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY. JANUARY 14, 1919. PREEERENTIAL VOTING.

A BY-ELECTION which look place recently for the Federal constituency of Corangainile affords a valuable illustration of the operation of preference voting, which was used for the first time in a Federiil election.- The first count was thus: Coldham (Independent Nationalist) 1,174; Gibson (Farmers’ Union'), 6,064; Knox (Nationalist) 5,73 m Lea per (Soldiers’ Political Party), Still: Senilin (Cilicia! Labour), 10,064. On the "lirst past I lie post" system, Seullin was an easy winner. But under the preference system the elected man has (o get an absolute majority over all the others. So Leaper was eliminated, and Ids .second preferences counted and allotted, with this result: Coldham 1,280; Gibson, 0,814; Knox, 0,208 Seullin, 10,732. No one yet having an absolute majority, Coldham was eliminated, and his second preferences allotted. They were divided almost equally between Gibson ami Knox, and the third count resulted: Gibson, 7,418; ..Knox, 0,855; and Seullin, 10,707. Knox was.(hen eliminated. It was found that 0,078 of his second preferences were for Gibson, and only 177 for the Labour man, so the final result was Gibson 14,060, and Seullin 10,914. Labour, out of the 7,560 votes taken from eliminated candidates and reallotted, got less than 300. Soldiers, Farmers, and Nationalists ran their.own candidates, but when the test came they were all together in their opposition to Labour. The net result is that the man who represents Corangamite represents a majority of the people there, while Seullin. had he been declared elected on the lirst count, would have represented a minority. But the 10,000 Labour votes who supported

Scnllin nrc now, under the present system, left unrepresented. Under the proportional representation system, which New South Wales has just adopted, 1 lie preference system embodied above is included, but for each constituency there are to bo three of five members, so that no substantial minority will be left: unrepresented, as is the case at Coraugamite.