Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/722

 702 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Proportional Representation. — Even with a just division of electoral districts the votes of electors have not an equal value, and a proportional representation of the different party groups in the electorate is not secured in the popular representation. The cause of disproportional representation is to besought in the division into election districts as such. Indeed, this division permits no other result than that the popular representation becomes a representation of victorious majorities in single election dis- tricts instead of a representation of the whole electorate.

If it be presupposed that an election law is intended to serve the purpose of validating the constitutional principle of the equality of votes, then an election law which cuts up an electorate into many territorial election districts is unjust and imprac- tical. It is unjust, because thereby it engenders great difference in the value of the votes. By this method of election no small number of electors will be sentenced to silence from the beginning, viz., all voters who live in election districts which are already conceded politically to one party or another. The method is impractical, because thereby the popular representation becomes only in a distorted way the representation of the political te ndencies among the people. A division into election districts could, nevertheless, be justified if the election districts should present economically and culturally a half-way closed whole ; but the opposite is the case.

There are two methods of securing proportional representation — the quotient method, which is practicably applicable only with small constituencies, and the list- competition method, applicable with both large and small constituencies. We shall discuss only the latter. According to this method both large and small parties present through unions of voters, at an ofificial place and at a definite time before the elec- tion day, nominations, lists of candidates, with as many names as each party can hope under the most favorable circumstances to elect. On election day the voter polls a double vote. In the first place he votes for a certain candidate. In the case that this candidate does not need his vote, either because he has already enough, or because he does not receive enough to elect him, the voter gives his vote to the remaining can- didates upon the list. That is, the voter presents a list of men whom he wishes chosen, under obligatory preference of one among them. This method makes possible a pro- portional representation of parties. The loss of votes which assumes so great dimen- sions with the election-district system is here reduced to a minimum.

But it is claimed that this method secures proportional representation at the expense of delocalizing the party and of sacrificing the feeling between voter and can- didate. The program takes the place of the person, and wire-pullers rule the polit- ical life. Very recently, however, the theory of proportional representation has had a supplementing, the significance of which can hardly be overestimated for the utility of the system. It is concerned with nothing less than the reconciliation of decen- tralizing local interests with centralizing tendencies. Richard Siegfried, in a book on proportional representation, discusses this new method in connection with the Wurt- temberg electoral system. It is called the method of "connected lists" (verbundene Listen). A country is conceived as covered with a network of local committees of the different parties. Every committee nominates its own candidates and hands in its own nominations. But the local committees of one and the same party in the whole country designate their lists of candidates as "connected lists." At the ascertain- ment of the result of the election, first of all is determined how manv votes have fallen to the nominations of the same party ; that is, to the local candidates of the sev- eral parties. According to this is computed the number of mandates which falls to each body of " connected lists." The further distribution of mandates is then made to the single lists upon the basis of the number of votes which every single list has received. Within these the mandates are further distributed to the candidates accord- ing to the number of votes which have fallen to each. The technique of proportional procedure gains through these " connected lists " a great elasticity and is applicable to great constituencies. The weightiest consequence of the possibility of "connected lists" will be decentralization of parties, and therewith an avoidance of all the disad- vantages which we have become acquainted with as consequences of a proportional method. The centrifugal and centripetal tendencies are happily equalized. — Dr. Rudolf Einhauser, " Proportionalwahl," in Zeitschrift fiir die gesamte Staatswissen- schaft, viertes Heft, l8g8.