Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/77

 representatives to be chosen, the product or quotient will be the maximum number of the constituency sufficient to secure the election of a member.

It will be convenient at this point to begin the draft of the proposed, with the clauses which specify the manner in which the quota or number of votes sufficient for the election of a member is to be ascertained and made known at every general election. They point out portions of the duties of the returning officers and registrars, and would fell within that part of the Treatise which describes those duties, but they are necessary in this place for the elucidation of that which follows. It may be assumed that at this stage of the election the registrars and their clerks assemble together, for a few days, at a central point—for which some town in Derbyshire, or the south of Yorkshire, may be more suitable than London.