Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government by T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

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How few of our members approach the ideal expressed by Edmund Burke in
his address to the electors of Bristol:--"Parliament is not a congress
of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests
each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and
advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of our nation, with
one interest--that of the whole--where not local purposes, not local
prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the
general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed, but when you
have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of
Parliament." It must be confessed, however, that Burke's ideal is rather
exalted; it is the duty of a member to make known the requirements of
his district. It is the ministry which is specially charged with
looking after the interest of the whole and of resisting illegitimate
demands. But it cannot do so if its position is so insecure that it must
purchase the support of the "parish pump" politician.

The only way to nationalize politics is to ensure that every electorate
shall be contested on national issues by organized parties, and that
every locality shall be represented on both parties. The proposed system
will provide this remedy. In enlarged electorates each party will take
good care that its candidates are men of local influence in the most
important divisions of the electorate; therefore, sectional and local
interests will be represented, but they will be subordinated to the
interests of the whole electorate; and where there are a few large
divisions the interests of each will more nearly coincide with national
interests than where there are a large number of small divisions.
Besides, log-rolling will not be so easy between groups of
representatives as among single representatives.

+Incentive to Bribery and Corruption.+--We now come to a class of evils
which to a large extent result from the fact that a few votes in each
electorate decide whether a party gets all the representation or none at
all. Candidates are impelled, in order to gain support from every
faction, to acts degrading to themselves and destructive to the moral
tone of the people. Foremost among these evils is the great incentive to
bribery and corruption; it is manifested not only in direct expenditure
at the elections, but also in promises of patronage and class
advantages. Direct bribery is perhaps worst in America; Professor M.
Cook states, in a paper on "The Alarming Proportion of Venal Voters" in
the _Forum_ for September, 1892, that in twenty-one towns of Connecticut
16 per cent, of the voters are venal. As Professor Commons remarks:--"It
is plain that the bribable voters themselves are adequate to hold the
balance of power between the parties. The single-membered district,
therefore, places a magnificent premium upon bribery." In England the
_Corrupt Practices Act_ has done immense good: nothing reflects so much
honour on the Imperial Parliament as the voluntary transference of the
duty of deciding cases to the judiciary. In Australia this much-needed
reform has not yet been introduced, and direct bribery prevails to a
much larger extent than would be supposed from the number of cases
investigated. Members of Parliament are naturally loth to convict one of
their own number, and the knowledge of this fact prevents petitions
being lodged.

The mere existence of secret bribery is bad enough, but a greater danger
is that acts of indirect bribery are openly practised, with the tacit
approval of electors. "There have been instances," says Mr. Lecky, in
his "Democracy and Liberty," "in which the political votes of the police
force, of the P.O. officials, of the civil service clerks have been
avowedly marshalled for the purpose of obtaining particular class
advantages--a disintegrated majority is strongly tempted to conciliate
every detached group of votes." In Australia this has become a regular
practice; and a still worse feature is that Members of Parliament have
free access to public departments to promote class and local interests.
Class legislation is frequently brought forward on the eve of an
election with the sole object of influencing votes. These conditions
favour the wire-pullers and mere self-seekers, and, in so far as they
prevent the electors from voting on the political views and personal
merits of the candidates, they are inimical to the public interests. Mr.
Lecky has pointed out that a certain amount of moral compromise is
necessary in public life, and that a politician may indulge in
popularity-hunting from honourable public motives; the danger is that
unworthy politicians may screen themselves under shelter of this excuse.

We do not claim that the proposed system would abolish corruption, but
we are justified in hoping that it would mitigate it very much. Even if
the venal vote still held the balance of power between parties, parties
are not so easily corrupted as individuals. But the most important gain
is that it could only exert an influence proportional to its numbers; it
could not decide whether a party gets all the representation or none at
all, as at present. In most cases it would be doubtful if it would
affect a single candidate. Consider, again, the case of individual
candidates of the same party; any candidate resorting to bribery in
order to increase his chance of election would do so partly at the
expense of the other candidates of his own party, who would immediately
denounce him. Instead of being forced to conciliate selfish factions,
the candidates would be free to appeal for the support of the unselfish
sections.

+Continual Change in Electoral Boundaries.+--The irregular growth of
population necessitates a periodical revision of the electoral
boundaries of single-membered electorates. Owing to the influence of
vested interests, this is generally effected in an arbitrary manner; and
the glaring anomalies only are rectified. We have in Victoria at the
present day some country electorates with 6,000 electors on the rolls
and others with only 1,500. An elector in the latter has four times the
voting power of an elector in the former. The process of alteration of
the boundaries offers great temptation to unfairness; and in American
politics the opportunity is taken full advantage of by a practice which
has received the name of the gerrymander. In his work on "Proportional
Representation" Professor Commons writes:--

It is difficult to express the opprobrium rightly belonging to so
iniquitous a practice as the gerrymander; but its enormity is not
appreciated, just as brutal prize-fighting is not reprobated
providing it be fought according to the rules. Both political
parties practise it, and neither can condemn the other. They simply
do what is natural: make the most of their opportunities as far as
permitted by the constitution and system under which both are
working. The gerrymander is not produced by the iniquity of
parties, it is the outcome of the district system. If
representatives are elected in this way there must be some public
authority for outlining the districts. And who shall be the judge
to say where the line shall be drawn? Exact equality is impossible,
and who shall set the limit beyond which inequality shall not be
pressed? Every apportionment act that has been passed in this or
any other country has involved inequality; and it would be absurd
to ask a political party to pass such an act and give the advantage
of the inequality to the opposite party. Consequently, every
apportionment act involves more or less of the gerrymander. The
gerrymander is simply such a thoughtful construction of districts
as will economize the votes of the party in power by giving it
small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the
opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a large number of
districts. This may involve a very distortionate and uncomely
"scientific" boundary, and the joining together of distant and
unrelated localities into a single district; such was the case in
the famous original act of Governor Gerry, of Massachusetts, whence
the practice obtained its amphibian name.[6] But it is not always
necessary that districts be cut into distortionate shapes in order
to accomplish these unjust results. (pp. 49, 50.)

He illustrates a gerrymander which actually made one Democratic vote
equal to five Republican votes. We have quoted this description of the
methods of the gerrymander not so much because the evil has attained any
magnitude in Australia as because it offers a warning of the probable
result of adopting the single-membered district system for our Federal
legislature.

With enlarged or grouped electorates the periodical revision of
boundaries would be entirely obviated, because the size of the
electorate may be kept constant, and the number of representatives
varied. Under such a system all unfairness would disappear, and the
gerrymander would be impossible. Representation would automatically
follow the movements of population.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," vol ii, p 325

[5] Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," vol. ii., note on p. 81.

[6] Governor Gerry contrived an electorate which resembled a salamander
in shape.

CHAPTER VI.

THE HARE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL DELEGATION.

The single transferable vote, generally known as the Hare system, was
first invented by a Danish statesman, M. Andrae, and was used for the
election of a portion of the "Rigsraad" in 1855. In 1857 Mr. Thomas
Hare, barrister-at-law, published it independently in England in a
pamphlet on "The Machinery of Representation." This formed the basis of
the scheme elaborated in his "Election of Representatives," which
appeared in 1859.

He proposed to abolish all geographical boundaries by constituting the
whole of the United Kingdom one electorate for the return of the 654
members of the House of Commons. Each member was to be elected by an
equal unanimous number of electors. The method of election was therefore
so contrived as to allow the electors to group themselves into 654
constituencies, each group bound only by the tie of voluntary
association, and gathered from every corner of the Kingdom. The total
number of votes cast (about a million) was to be divided by 654, and the
quotient, say about 1,500, would be the quota or number of votes
required to elect a member. But some of the candidates would naturally
receive more votes than the quota, and a great many more would receive
less. How were all the votes to be equally divided among 654 members so
that each should secure exactly the quota? The single transferable vote
was proposed to attain this result. Each elector's vote was to count for
one candidate only, but he was allowed to say in advance to whom he
would wish his vote transferred in case it could not be used for his
first choice. Each ballot paper was, therefore, to contain the names of
a number of candidates in order of preference--1, 2, 3, &c. Then all the
candidates having more than a quota of first choices were to have the
surplus votes taken from them and transferred to the second choice on
the papers, or if the second choice already had enough votes, to the
third choice, and so on. When all the surpluses were distributed a
certain number of members would be declared elected, each with a quota
of votes. The candidates who had received the least amount of support
were then to be gradually eliminated. The lowest candidate would be
first rejected, and his votes transferred to the next available
preference on his ballot papers; then the next lowest would be rejected,
and so on till all the votes were equally distributed among the 654
members. Such was the Hare system as propounded by its author. The
electors were to divide themselves into voluntary groups; then the
groups which were too large were to be cut down by transferring the
surplus votes, and the smaller groups were to be excluded and the votes
also transferred until the groups were reduced to 654 equal
constituencies. These two processes, transferring surplus votes and
transferring votes from excluded candidates, are the main features of
the system. Mr. Hare's rules for carrying them out are drawn up in the
form of a proposed electoral law, and in the different editions of his
work the clauses vary somewhat. They are also complicated by an
impossible attempt to retain the local nomenclature of members. As
regards surplus votes it was provided that the ballot papers which had
the most preferences expressed should be transferred; still a good deal
was left to chance or to the sweet will of the returning officer, and
this has always been admitted as a serious objection. The process of
elimination is still more unsatisfactory. Mr. Hare was from the first
strongly opposed to the elimination of the candidate who had least first
preferences, and he therefore proposed that, in order to decide which
candidate had least support, all expressed preferences should be
counted. This involved such enormous complication that in the 1861
edition of his work he abandoned the process of elimination altogether
in favour of a process of selection. He then proposed to distribute
surplus votes only, and to elect the highest of the remainder,
regardless of the fact that they had less than a quota. He then
wrote:--"The reduction of the number of candidates remaining at this
stage of the election may be effected by taking out the names of all
those who have the smallest number of actual votes--that is, who are
named at the _head_ of the smallest number of voting papers, and
appropriating each vote to the candidate standing _next_ in order on
each paper. This process would be so arbitrary and inequitable in its
operation as to be intolerable. It might have the effect of cancelling
step by step more votes given to one candidate than would be sufficient
to return another.... Such a process disregards the legitimate rights
both of electors and of candidates." But the process of selection was
not proportional representation at all, being practically equivalent to
a single untransferable vote, and Mr. Hare finally adopted, in spite of
its defects, the "arbitrary and inequitable" process of elimination in
his last edition in 1873. And all his recent disciples have been forced
to do the same, because nothing better is known.

Mr. Hare's scheme has ceased to be of any practical interest, since it
is now generally admitted that electorates should not return more than
ten or twenty members. Moreover, it is admitted that the electors would
group themselves in very undesirable ways, and not as Mr. Hare expected.
And yet the only effect of limiting the size of the electorates is to
reduce the number of undesirable ways in which electors might group
themselves. Let us briefly note the different proposals which have been
made.

+1. Sir John Lubbock's Method.+--In his work on "Representation," Sir
John Lubbock says:--"The full advantage of the single transferable vote
would require a system of large constituencies returning three or five
members each, thus securing a true representation of opinion."
Three-seat electorates are, however, too small to secure accurate
proportional representation; with parties evenly balanced, for instance,
one must secure twice as much representation as the other.

The following rules are given to explain the working of the system:--

(1) Each voter shall have one vote, but may vote in the alternative for
as many of the candidates as he pleases by writing the figures 1, 2, 3,
&c, opposite the names of those candidates in the order of his
preference.

COUNTING VOTES.

(2) The ballot papers, having been all mixed, shall be drawn out in
succession and stamped with numbers so that no two shall bear the same
number.

(3) The number obtained by dividing the whole number of good ballot
papers tendered at the election by the number of members to be elected
plus one, and increasing the quotient (or where it is fractional the
integral part of the quotient) by one, shall be called the quota.

(4) Every candidate who has a number of first votes equal to or greater
than the quota shall be declared elected, and so many of the ballot
papers containing those votes as shall be equal in number to the quota
(being those stamped with the lowest numerals) shall be set aside as of
no further use. On all ballot papers the name of the elected candidate
shall be deemed to be cancelled, with the effect of raising by so much
in the order of preference all votes given to other candidates after
him. This process shall be repeated until no candidate has more than a
quota of first votes or votes deemed first.

(5) Then the candidate or candidates having the fewest first votes, or
votes deemed first, shall be declared not to be elected, with the effect
of raising by so much in the order of preference all votes given to
candidates after him or them, and rule 4 shall be again applied if
possible.

(6) When by successive applications of rules 4 and 5 the number of
candidates is reduced to the number of members remaining to be elected,
the remaining candidates shall be declared elected.

Objection is commonly taken to this method on account of the element of
chance involved in the distribution of surplus votes. Suppose the quota
to be 1,000, and a candidate to receive 1,100 votes, the 100 votes to be
transferred would be those stamped with the highest numerals. But if the
hundred stamped with the lowest numerals or any other hundred had been
taken the second choices would be different.

Strictly speaking, however, this is not a chance selection--it is an
arbitrary selection. The returning officer must transfer certain
definite papers; if he were allowed to make a chance selection it would
be in his power to favour some of the candidates.

Sir John Lubbock points out that the element of chance might be
eliminated by distributing the second votes proportionally to the second
choices on the whole 1,100 papers, and that it might be desirable to
leave any candidate the right to claim that this should be done if he
thought it worth while.

+2.--The Hare-Clark Method.+--The Hare system has been in actual use in
Tasmania for the last two elections. It is applied only in a six-seat
electorate at Hobart and a four-seat electorate at Launceston. The rules
for distributing surplus votes proportionally were drawn up by Mr. A.I.
Clark, late Attorney-General. The problem is not so simple as it appears
at first sight. There is no difficulty with a surplus on the first
count; it is when surpluses are created in subsequent counts by
transferred votes that the conditions become complicated. Mr. Clark
adopts a rule that in the latter case the transferred papers only are to
be taken into account in deciding the proportional distribution of the
surplus. Suppose, as before, the quota to be 1,000 votes, and a
candidate to have 1,100 votes, 550 of which are marked in the second
place to one of the other candidates. Then the latter is entitled to 50
of the surplus votes, and a chance selection is made of the 550 papers.
The element of chance still remains, therefore, if this surplus
contributes to a fresh surplus.

+3.--The Droop-Gregory Method.+--This method, advocated by Professor
Nanson, of the Melbourne University, is claimed to entirely eliminate
the element of chance. The Gregory plan of transferring surplus votes is
defined as a fractional method. If a candidate needs only nine-tenths of
his votes to make up his quota, instead of distributing the surplus of
one-tenth of the papers all the papers are distributed with one-tenth of
their value. Reverting to our former example, if a candidate is marked
second on 550 out of 1,100 votes, the quota being 1,000 and the surplus
100, then instead of selecting 50 out of the 550 papers, the whole of
them would be transferred in a packet, the value of the packet being 50
votes, or, as Professor Nanson prefers to put it, the value of each
paper in the packet being one-eleventh of a vote. Should this packet
contribute to a new surplus the third choices on the whole of the papers
are available as a basis for the redistribution. The packet would be
divided into smaller packets, and each assigned its reduced value. It
might here be pointed out that the use of fractions is quite
unnecessary, the value of each packet in votes being all that is
required, and that the-same process may be used with the Hare-Clark
method to avoid the chance selection of papers. The only real
difference is this: that when a surplus is created by transferred votes
Mr. Clark distributes it by reference to the next preference on all the
transferred papers, and Professor Nanson by reference to the last packet
of transferred papers only--the packet which raises the candidate above
the quota.

Which of these methods is correct? Should we select the surplus from all
votes, original and transferred, as Sir John Lubbock proposes; from all
transferred votes only, with Mr. Clark; or from the last packet only of
transferred votes, with Professor Nanson? Consider a group of electors
having somewhat more than a quota of votes at its disposal. If it
nominates one candidate only every one of the electors will have a voice
in the distribution of the surplus, but if it puts up three candidates,
two of whom are excluded and the third elected, Mr. Clark would allow
those who supported the two excluded candidates to decide the
distribution of the surplus, and Professor Nanson only those who
supported the last candidate excluded. Both are clearly wrong, for the
only rational view to take is that when a candidate is excluded it is
the same as if he had never been nominated and the transferred votes had
formed part of the original votes of those to whom they are transferred.
Whenever a surplus is created it should therefore be distributed by
reference to all votes, original and transferred. As regards these
surpluses, Mr. Clark and Professor Nanson have adopted an arbitrary
basis, which is no more than Sir John Lubbock has done; and they have
therefore eliminated the element of chance only for surpluses on the
first count. It may be asked, Why cannot all surpluses be distributed by
reference to all the papers, if that is the correct method? The answer
is that the complication involved is enormous. Yet this was the plan
first advocated by Professor Nanson, who wrote, in reply to a definite
inquiry how the Gregory principle was applied:--"I explain by an
example. A has 2,000 votes, the quota being 1,000. A then requires only
half the value of each vote cast for him. Each paper cast for him is
then stamped as having lost one-half of its value, and the whole of A's
papers are then transferred with diminished value to the second name
(unelected, of course). The same principle applies all through. Whenever
anyone has a surplus all the papers are passed to the next man with
diminished value." Now, the effect of this extraordinary proposal would
be that the whole of the papers would have to be kept in circulation
till the last candidate was elected, with diminishing compound
fractional values. In a ten-seat electorate a large proportion would
pass through several transfers, and would towards the end of the count
have such a ridiculously small fractional value that it would take
several millions of the ballot-papers to make a single vote! It is no
wonder that this method was abandoned when the complications to which
it would lead were realized.

A simple method of avoiding this complexity would be to treat
transferred surplus papers as if the preferences were exhausted. It must
be remembered that in all transfers a certain number of papers are lost
owing to the preferences being exhausted, and the additional loss would
be small. Thus at the first Hobart election 206 votes were wasted, and
this number would have been increased by two only. Every surplus would
then be transferred by reference to the next choice, wherever expressed,
on both original papers and papers transferred from excluded candidates.

It might be provided, however, for greater accuracy that all papers
contributing to surpluses on the first count only should be transferred
in packets. Should these contribute to a new surplus, it should be
divided into two parts, proportional to (1) original votes and votes
transferred from excluded candidates, and (2) the value of the packet in
votes. Each part would then be distributed proportionally to the next
available preferences wherever expressed. To divide the packets into
sub-packets is a useless complication. The loss involved in neglecting
them would usually be less than one-thousandth part of the loss due to
exhausted papers.

Having now dealt with the main features of the different variations of
the Hare system, we may proceed to consider some details which are
common to all of them. A difference of opinion exists, however, as
regards the quota. Sir John Lubbock and Professor Nanson advocate the
Droop quota, which we have shown to be a mathematical error; Miss Spence
and Mr. Clark use the correct quota.

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