Page:Carroll (1884).djvu/52

 This method would enable each of the parties in a District to return as many Members as it could muster the proper quota for, no matter how the votes were distributed. There would be no risk of a seat being left vacant through rivalry between two Candidates of the same party: an unwritten law would soon come to be recognised—that the one with fewest votes should give way. With Candidates of two opposite parties, such a difficulty could not arise at all: one or other of them could always be returned by the surplus votes of his own party. The only exception to this would be the occurrence (a very rare one) of an exact balance of votes. This might happen, even in the case of a single-Member constituency, if each of 2 Candidates got exactly half the votes. Of course, in such a case, somebody must give a casting-vote.