liKPIiKSKNTATIffX. 3ST 



the election Juliaimcslmig was om- sinijk' foMstitiit'iicv ict uiiiitiL,' a 

 certain miinber of inenibers- "Ji, if T am tjot mistakt-ii. A iiunil)ei' of 

 the best men in tlie town banded themselves toi^ether and formed a 

 so-called ticket. I'liere was no itarticulai- policy at stake, but they 

 were all br<iad-n>in<led business men of kindred views, and all were 

 returned. 80 were otheis, and a non-ticket man actually headed the 

 poll. It is now generally conceded tliat since the return to the w;ii<l 

 svstem the class of men returned has deteriorated, but T will nut 

 belabtiur that point. In the case of Johannesburg- I thiidc the result 

 of the " ticket " was good, liut it might just as w»'ll have turned 

 tjnit the other way. The system cannot aiul does not claim to give fail' 

 minority representation : indeed, it can absolutely stiHe minorities, as 

 a moment's reflection will show. Suppose f^)r a moment that some 

 supreme issue was at stake, and that the large cimstituency had 41,000 

 voters, -21,000 on one side and 20,000 on the other. If the :^1,000 

 were sutticiently well (hilled and sutticiently pliant, they could through 

 their ticket secure the entire representation. Indeed, there are ca.ses 

 where a small minority has secured practically all the repiesentation 

 by meajis of the ticket. The greatest objection to the ticket system 

 is the chance it gives self-seekers and unscrupulous men to run, 

 say, the affairs of a town, in their own interest without any inside 

 ci'iticisni at all — vide American municipal government. The one 

 pc>int in its favour is that a body of honest men can also b;ind 

 themselves together to .secure representation, but theii- very banding 

 themselves together on a ticket can be their undoing, as has fre- 

 quently been .shown. This .system must therefore static! condemned 

 on every count. 



T pass on now to the system 



(d) Thk "Cumulative" Yotk. 



Under this system each elector has as many votes as there are 

 members to be elected in his constituency, and may either cunudate 

 them all on one candidate, or divide them between the different can- 

 didates in any proportion he pleases. This system is something akin 

 to that of the general ticket system, but it undoes precisely what that 

 system endeavours to attain, viz., the leturn of a compact bo(iy of men 

 pledged to a particular policy. It was really introduced in the fii'st 

 instance as a means for securing minority representation, and, un- 

 doubtedly, it floes attain this object to a certain extent. In Eng- 

 land it is the s^'stem adopted for the school board elections, and in 

 practice it does give an all-round representation. But the system of 

 proportional representation, which I shall consider next, secures the 

 same thing in a much more accurate manner. The cuinulative system 

 is quite unsuitable if any important i.ssue is at stake, for the simple 

 reason that it learls to a great loss of voting power, as the following 

 example will show. In the first Marylebone school board election 7 

 members had to he returned, and there were 22 candidates. 



