Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/173

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In nearly every scheme of electoral amendment that has been suggested, one part of the proposal has been to substitute a documentary form of tendering and receiving the vote, in the place of the oral form. In the present plan it is proposed that the vote shall be given in the shape of a document, to be deliberately prepared and signed, and (except in some special cases, which will be the subject of a distinct chapter) personally delivered by every voter at his proper polling-place.

It will be remembered, that the system now suggested contemplates the necessity of a certain quota or number of votes for every candidate, and renders more than that number necessary. If, therefore, a popular candidate should receive, as is most likely to be the case, the suffrages of a very much larger number of electors than the number of the quota, it would follow that the excess of votes would be lost, if means were not provided for enabling the electors to transfer their votes, on that contingency, to some other candidate. The plan, therefore, would be incomplete, if it did not enable every elector to provide for such a contingency, and enable the vote to be transferred, as the elector shall direct,—if he shall think proper to give any such direction,—from one candidate to another, until it reaches a candidate whom the