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WELLINGTON TOPICS.

ELECTORAL REFORM, HOW NEW ZEALAND STANDS. (Special Correspondent. Wellington, Feb. 13Probably one of the effects of the recent compromise between the two Houses of the Imperial Parliament by which a committee is %eing set up to prepare a scheme for electing a hundred mombers of the House of Commons upon the principle of proportional representation, will be to stimulate agitation for electoral reform in this country. Zealand with its universal suffrage, one-clector-onc-vote and nominally equal electorates, has taken such a prominent part in democratising parliamentary representation that a majority of its people are inclined to think they have achieved perfection and nothing humanly practicable remains to be done. This, of course, is not the place to discuss How for they are right or how far they are wrong, but the time may not he inopportune for showing, without trenching upon the party Question at all, how the system of single electorates has failed to give the great mass of them an equitable share of representation. VOTES AND SEATS. For the sake of convenience the titles 'Reform" and "Liberal-Labor" may be retained to represent the two parties that contested the last general election, hut they will bo used in a purely nonpartisan and impersonal sense. Of tho 515,907 valid votes polled, 243,476 were cast for Reform candidates and 272,431 for Liberal-Labor candidates. tf each party had secured representation in exact proportion to the number of votes it polled the Reform Party would have returned thirtv-pix members and the Lib-eral-Labor Party forty members to a House of seventy-six. But as a matter of fact the Reform Party, with the smaller number of votes, returned thir-ty-nine members and the Liberal-Labor Party, with the larger number only thirty-seven. Briefly, one party secured three members more than its fair share of representation and the other three members less. AN INEFFICIENT SYSTEM. This result, however, does not illustrate the full inefficiency of the single electorate system. There were inequities all over the country, but the errors in one batch of constituencies counteracted tho errors in another batch. In the twenty constituencies forming the southern portion of the North Island, for instance, 05,010 votes were cast for Liberal-Labor candidates and 04,900 for Reform candidates. This left the Liberal-Labor Party with a majority of 1,004 votes, and ait equal division of the twenty seats obviously should have resulted. But under the single electorate system only six seats went to the Liberal-Labor Party nnd fourteen to the Reform Party. This injustice to the majority in the southern portion of the ' North Island, however, was more than balanced by its undue success in the northern portion of the South IslandHere 75,914 votes were polled for Liber-al-Labor candidates and 52,355 for Reform candidates. A fair division of the representation would have been twelve Liberal-Labor members and eight Reform members, but tho actual result was sixteen and four respectively. WASTAGE. These results may have been due in some small measure to the operation of the "country quota'' and to the lack of organisation on one side or the other. but there can be no question they arose mainly from inherent defects in the system itself. Of the 515,907 votes polled, 289,177 were cast for successful candidates and 220,730 for unsuccessful candidates. The electors who voted for unsuccessful candidates got no representation of any kind, and even this did not represent the full extent of the wastage. Of the 289,177 votes cast for successful candidates, 74,022 were not required, that is the candidates they favored would have been returned without their assistance. Only 214.555 votes were necessary to return' the successful candidates, so that in addition to the 22(1.730 votes given to unsuccessful candidates there were 74,022 surplus voteS i given to successful candidates, a total 1 wastage of 301.352 votes. That, briefly, is New Zealand's latest experience of its ow n electoral system and it must be confessed the contemplation of its results is not particularly edifying.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19180216.2.32

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Taranaki Daily News, 16 February 1918, Page 6

Word count
Tapeke kupu
657

WELLINGTON TOPICS. Taranaki Daily News, 16 February 1918, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS. Taranaki Daily News, 16 February 1918, Page 6

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