THE TRANSFERABLE VOTE IN ELECTIONS. 169 



voters who are pleased at having returned a member, the more 

 confidence does the member feel in the discharge of his duty, the 

 more interest does the voter take in his member's doings and 

 sayings. Yet as a rule, under our present system of election, con- 

 siderably more than half the votes given are non-effective ones. 

 In the Cape Town Municipal Election that we shall consider the 

 percentages of the three classes, effective, non-effective surplus, 

 and non-effective minority votes, were 42, 13 and 41^ respectively, 

 giving in all 58 per cent, of non-effective votes. 



2. The best and truest representation is obtained where we have 

 a good and efficient choice of well qualified candidates, a large 

 number of voters interested in the election and the doings of the 

 Council, a large proportion of efficient votes electing a member, 

 who will exercise an independent and unfettered judgment. The 

 greater the share in the election of the member that falls to the 

 intelligent voter the better. 



3. Our present system of election is by a "relative majority 

 vote"; 297 votes were sufficient in the election I have mentioned; 

 in a close contest in another constituency with the same number 

 of voters it might have required five times as many votes to ensure 

 election. Every election entails a competitive contest, a struggle 

 for victory, a fight, in fact, with all its inevitable attendant evils ; 

 and the results are usually anything but satisfactory, and entirely 

 fail in electing a representative council. In the triennial elections 

 in the London Boroughs in 1906, in Bethnal Green, Fulham and 

 Lewisham for all the seats in the Councils, a monopoly representa- 

 tion of 30, 36 and 42 members, was returned, not one of the other 

 four parties securing one single representative in any one of these 

 three boroughs. 



4. As to Parliamentary representation, the Report of the 

 Royal Commission appointed to inquire into Electoral Systems, 

 published this year,* says of the last seven Parliamentary Elec- 

 tions from 1885 to 191 o : — 



"Only in one case, the election of 1892, can the actual results 

 be said to represent approximately the balance of voting power possessed 

 by the two parties. If these conclusions are checked by the figures for 

 contested elections only, they are merely confirmed. In the contested 

 elections of 1895, a- Conservative majority of "]"] was returned by a 

 minority of 25,000 voters. In England, in 1906, an unusually cogent 

 example, because out of 465 seats only 20 were uncontested, a Liberal 

 majority of 200 members was returned by a margin of voting strength 

 which only warranted a majority of 55." 



These are the results of our present system of election. 



5. Fifty years ago Hare and John Stuart Mill raised the cry 

 for the election of the best men, and one vote one value. 



Their solution was to substitute for majority representation 

 by a "relative majority of votes," the sectional representation of 

 all parties, proportionally to the number of votes their adherents 

 cast. In a city of ten wards and ten thousand voters, instead of 

 ten annual Ward fights, or one triennial city contest, settled by 

 a "relative majority" in each case, they would have had ten mem- 

 bers, each elected by one thousand voters. Sav there were three 

 parties in the city, "A" with 6,000 voters, "B"^with 3,000 voters, 



*i9io. Cd. 5,163. 



