Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/355

Rh choice of 299 voters, and third in the choice of 200, is excluded, and E, who was only third in the choice of 101, is elected.

Mr. Lytton has shown by his own argument that the combination supposed is politically preposterous, and, by a calculation made by M. Andræ, abstractedly, haying regard only to probabilities, next to impossible.

I am willing, however, to accept the problem as it is stated by the opponents of the system, and adopt the result, which I believe is perfectly reconcilable with the principle which is at the foundation of this method of voting, and also reconcilable with justice.

The object is to give the elector the means of voting for the candidate who most perfectly attains his ideal of what a legislator should be, but it does not contemplate giving him the choice of more than one. The simple operation of the principle is seen when it is implied to an election viva voce without voting papers, as is suggested for municipal elections (pp. 282-3). A and C would there have polled quotas, and E the comparative majority. The primary purpose of giving the voter the opportunity of adding to his paper the second, third, or other names for one of whom his vote is to be taken on the contingency of the name at the head not requiring it, is not to add greater weight to his vote, but to prevent it from being thrown away or lost owing to a greater number of voters than is necessary placing the same popular candidate at the head of their papers. The purpose is, in fact, to prevent what would have happened in the case supposed, if provision had not been made for the contingency, for the result of the above disposition of the votes would then have been that A alone could have been elected. Keeping in view this main purpose, to which all other objects are secondary, and comparatively unimportant, it is immaterial in what order the votes are counted. I should have stated the problem thus,—600 votes are found to have been given for A, 200 of these only are appropriated to him. A further number of 200 votes are next appropriated either to C or to B, depending on the order in which the voting papers bearing A's name at the head have been liberated by his return, and which depends again, in Denmark, upon the order in which the votes issue from the urn, and in the system here proposed, on the localities or particular constituencies for which A happened to be a candidate, and which govern the rule of appropriation. (See Clauses XVIII., XIX., and XXIV.) In whatever order or manner the votes have been taken, there, will remain a majority, or, as I have named it, a comparative majority, and a minority of 101, or 99. If B has succeeded in obtaining the quota of 200 in the process, C will have the majority of 101,—if C has succeeded in obtaining that quota, as in the case put by Mr. Lytton, B is in the unlucky predicament of having the votes of his friends exhausted in their successful efforts to elect A and C, and he is left with the minority of 99,—E being supported by 101 voters, who have given no vote to B. The first 200 voters, whose voting papers are appropriated to A, have no ground of complaint, for their votes have