Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 190.djvu/261

1911.] lists would in the first place receive as many seats as the total of their unrepresented votes might contain the electoral quotient, and then the group of allied lists which may have polled the absolute majority of the voters would obtain the still remaining seat or seats. To allot the seat or seats which may have been attributed in that manner to a group of allied lists, recourse is had to the largest average.

The following example will render the working of the system quite clear. In a department having to elect seven Deputies, 105,000 voters go to the poll. 105,000 divided by 7 therefore gives the electoral quotient of 15,000. There being, say, three lists, A, with 35,000 votes, gets 2 seats, and has 5000 unrepresented votes; list B, with 18,000 votes, gets 1 seat, and has 3000 unrepresented votes; and list C, with 52,000 votes, gets 3 seats, and has 7000 unrepresented votes. 6 seats are thus disposed of, but 1 still remains to be allotted. Lists A and B are allied, but their unrepresented votes, 5000 and 3000, making a total of only 8000, cannot claim the seat on the ground that their unrepresented votes are equal or superior to the electoral quotient, 15,000. But the total number of their votes, 35,000 and 18,000, making a grand total of 53,000, or more than the absolute majority of the 105,000 votes recorded at the election, the allied lists are entitled to the remaining seat. To decide to which of the two allied lists the seat thus obtained is to be given, the largest average is obtained by dividing the total of the suffrages polled by each list by the number of seats already allotted to it, plus 1. List A having polled 35,000 votes, and having thus already obtained 2 seats, 35,000 must be divided by 3, which gives 11,666; and list B having polled 18,000 votes, and having already obtained 1 seat, 18,000 must be divided by 2, which gives 9000. List A, having the largest average, gets the seat secured by its alliance with list B. The complete result of the election is, therefore, list A, 3 seats; list B, 1 seat; and list C, 3 seats.

Both M. Monis and M. Caillaux after him accepted, it may be said reluctantly, the proposal for the electoral reform comprising the adoption of the Scrutin de Liste, completed by the proportional representation of all parties, because they knew no Ministry rejecting it could hope for a prolonged existence. The proposed system of "apparentement" is, however, far from satisfying the pure proportionalists, who see in that concession, and especially in the amendment which would permit electors to give all their votes to one man, or to divide them not only between candidates whose names appear on the same list, but between men whose names figure on different lists, a device calculated to deprive the R. P. of all its advantages, and to perpetuate the abuses which for so many years have given French elections the character