Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 190.djvu/258

252, and the Government partisans, the Conservative opposition, and the Socialists should have presented lists, the total number of votes recorded would be divided by 5, and the quotient would be the divisor to be applied to the totals of each list. It is only in the almost impossible case of the divisor being an exact proportion of each of the three totals that the seats could be allotted with absolute justice to each of the three parties. That could only be done if, for an example, the number of electors recording their votes had been 100,000 and the totals of the three lists, say, 20,000, 20,000, and 60,000. 20,000 being the electoral quotient obtained by dividing 100,000, the number of voters by 5, the number of deputies to be elected, the lists would respectively have the right to 1, 1, and 3 seats in the Chamber. It goes without saying the candidates elected would be those standing the highest on the various lists. In practice, such a case would never present itself, so that there would always be one or more seats remaining to be allotted after the division by the electoral divisor.

M. Briand declared the unallotted seat or seats should be attributed to the list having in the division already secured the largest number of seats; and not content with that advantage for the majority, he contended that the electoral quotient must not be obtained by dividing the number of electors who recorded their votes, but the number of persons inscribed on the electoral roll by the number of deputies to be elected. Now he knew very well that, since the proclamation of the third Republic in France, the proportion of electors going to the poll has, with only one exception in 1876, always been below 50 per cent of the persons possessing the electoral franchise. M. Briand, therefore, while professing to accept the proportional representation of the minorities, in reality proposed to swamp them yet more effectually by attributing all the unrecorded votes to the majority! His method of applying the R. P. would have resulted in the majority obtaining not only all the odd votes, but also the votes of all the abstainers.

In order to secure the support of the candidates at the general elections for his proposal, he tried to bribe them with the suggestion that the reform could with advantage be completed by making the Chamber a permanent assembly renewable by quarters or thirds every two or three years. Fortunately, the success of those manœuvres was not so great as M. Briand had expected. Of the 597 deputies constituting the present Chamber, the attitude of 3 towards the R. P. at the general elections has not been officially ascertained. However, of the remaining 594 deputies, the official statistics show that 103 made no allusion to electoral reform, 35 demanded the maintenance of the status quo, 31 the maintenance of the