PREFERENCE VOTING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 222, 25 October 1909, Page 2

PREFERENCE VOTING.

Therearc few people, we are inclined to ■ (liink, who would" willingly acquiesce In Mr. Fisher's proposed Legislative Aineii.!-m-cnt Hill, the object of which is to in pen! the Second Ballot Act and to sub stilute for it a system of preference voting, Mr. Fisher claims for his system that it wonld secure proper reprosc-it.i lion as the result of the expressed opinion? of the whole of the electors who vole. The BilT sccksTo grant a prclccntial power lo the elector-n power which must be exercised if tile elector votes at all. Under Mr. McNab's Absolute M'ajm-ity Hill tile exercise of the j preferential vote, was optional, hut Mr. | Fisher proposes to mn KB u compulsory. The elector would he asked to express his preference for candidates liy means of figures, and the returning officer, when counting the votes, would multiply tie elector's first preferential vol; by the nuuibpr .of candidates. The so;ond preference vote, Mr. Fisher's Bill proposes, wonld count OOP point less than the first one, and so on according tp the number of candidates; in other words, of preferences. To our mind, whatever I arguments might bo advanced against tha second ballot, the fact that it is not simple and democratic in its opera- ' lion is not one of t-liem. Such cannot be said of Mr. Fisher's Hill, wfcich could only lead to endless confusion. Klectots have enough nf mystification put hefoie ilifiji in the ballot-box now without beiny compell.o*--If they hope their votes lo be valid-—"lo number off the candidates as they prefer Ihrm, in addition to ;:i3-lcrin>- the puzzles of the local option papers The principle of one man, one vote is intelligible to Hie most illiterate voter, but the "one, two, three, rie.," business, instead of achieving the | otii-ret for which it is intended, would in thousands'of cases, through ignorance, result in invalid voting. The principal argument used in the en<lcavp r tp prevent the Second Ballot Bill becoming ' law was that thousands of electors I , would he disfranchised through indiffcr-i' Mice to, or inability to exercise thci/ '

electoral privilege at. the second ballots. Hut th« results have completely exploded that idea, and in more than one in-1 stance more votes were actually cast at the second than at the first ballot. Granted that the second ballot system is iiiori costly than a single ballot (with preference voting), it is, nevertheless, by iti .simplicity in expressing the opinions ot electors, 'inlinitejjr to be preferred to a lystem that could only bewilder the voter.