Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/368

316 of such knowledge, the candidate whose election was defeated by his not reoeiying the vote of 1, 2, or 3 would have no ground of complaint, because he would have received it had they voted last in order. With regard to the second example, in which a greater claim was maintained on behalf of the excluded candidate, on account of his having more primary votes, the fallacy of the objection was equal, though of another kind. It was forgotten that when the contingent votes were used, they had the same force as primary votes. The fact that an elector would have voted for A, if A had wanted his vote, did not render his vote for B less valid, if it were not used for A. Thus, the return of C, in example two, by contingent votes in excess of B's primary votes, is quite legitimate. It was not because the vote was called contingent when placed on the voting paper that it was contingent or inferior when used. It has then become absolute, and of equal power with the primary vote. It was the actual vote of one elector. The third example turned upon the converse fallacy. Here contingent votes were taken into account which had never taken effect The objection assumed that B was entitled to reckon, as influencing his claim to consideration, contingent votes on voting papers actually used for a preceding candidate. These were only votes which would have been given for B, but have not been given in fact They should be, therefore, considered as non-existent for the purpose of the computation, and the objection would then utterly vanish. This system of single voting, without the protection of Hare's adjuncts, was that proposed in the Bill of the Forster Ministry; but as it was never fully discussed, public attention was not attracted to the objections to which it was open, although they at that time very clearly presented themselves to his mind, and he was thereby more prepared to welcome Mr. Hare's discovery as an escape from them. And his friend Captain Ward hinted that some better plan than Mr. Hare's contingent voting might answer all the purpose of this cumbrous system,—this better plan being, as he understood, a public statement of the number of votes already polled for candidates. If his honourable friend had said at once that he proposed to supersede the necessity of a cumbrous system by a system of voting through the electric telegraph, he could hardly have more astonished him. If he would show in what manner his suggestion could be practically carried out, he was willing to relinquish the field to him. The only merit he claimed for Hare's system was that of doing in the most practicable way which has hitherto been propoimded. But what did the publication proposed involve? First, that by some miracle of intuition all the polling-officers in the colony were to be aware of the instant at which any candidate had acquired a sufficient number of votes in the aggregate to effect his return. Secondly, that the polling be then simultaneously stopped, and the fact published, the machinery of election being suspended until all the electors are duly apprised. When, on this being effected, the election recommenced, it could only go on until another candidate were elected, when the polling would again stop, and the same proceedings would be