Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/212

 first place on his paper, proposed as a fit person to represent it. Where any such names occur first on the voting paper, the business of the returning officer will be to forward them to the registrar. The returning officer is to confine his attention (except as to such transmission) to the voting papers in which the name of a candidate, or of the several candidates, for his particular constituency stand at the head,—that is, are named successively, one or two, or any successive number, according to the voters' peculiar predilection, down to the point at which he introduces the name of one on the list who is not a candidate for his special constituency. As soon as such other name intervenes, a farther combination is introduced, which brings the appropriation within the department of the registrar.

Suppose the case of several thousand voters, and one or two candidates for the constituency, having each more than the quota required. The returning officer ascertains, first, who have the majorities, counting on this occasion only the voting papers in which the candidate has the first votes,—he then separates the 1840, or 2000, or whatever the quota may be, last polled for the candidate who has the majority, and causes his name, where it stands at the head of the other papers, to be cancelled. The second name on those papers then becomes the first, and the voting papers making up the quota for the second candidate are taken, and his name cancelled on the remaining papers, bringing a third name forward to the first place, and so on, until the name of one who is a candidate elsewhere occurs, or until the quota can no longer be made up; and the returning officer then forwards the remaining voting papers to the registrar.

These duties may be prescribed by the rules or laws which follow:—