REPRESENTATTON I!V THE TRANSFER.\]?I,E VO'II-:. I -I 



1. With the transferable vote the voter, instead] of marking- 

 as now a cross X opposite the name of the man lie votes for, 

 marks in the order of his preference for them, with the numerals 

 I, 2, 3, 4, the four or more candidates, whom he tliinks the best. 

 If the returning officer finds that the man marked i is alreadv 

 elected, and therefore does not need the vote, he transfers it to 

 the candidate marked highest on that voting paper, who does need 

 it to help him in his election. He does exactly the same if he finds 

 the man marked highest turns out to be an unsuccessful candi- 

 date. He thus makes use of every vote that can possibly become 

 efifective, that is, that can possibly help to return a member. 

 W'e get every possible vote used, giving us true representation 

 of all the voters ; and any section of them numerous enough 

 to elect a Member can secure representation. We have section^ 

 election in place of our present system of relative majority 

 election. 



2. I would ask the reader to consider two actual cases of 

 election under our present system. In one in Cape Town there 

 were two candidates; the successful pne got 1,695 votes, his 

 opponent 296. One more than 296, that is, 297 votes, secured 

 the member's return, were effective votes, helped to elect him ; 

 and the surplus 1,398 votes had nothing to do with electing him: 

 they were non-effective votes, just as were his opponent's 296. 

 Less than 15 per cent, were effective, more than 85 per cent, 

 were non-effective; and it is these 85 per cent, of votes which 

 the transferable vote enables us to use in securing through sec- 

 tional election true representation. 



The second case is that of the last Midland Division election 

 at Gwelo. Colonel Heyman got 392 votes, the next candidate, 

 Mr. GilfiUan, got 116. In this case the effective votes were 

 117; out of the 686 votes given for the four candidates, just 17 

 per cent, were effective, 83 per cent, were in this case non- 

 effective; 166 votes out of every two hundred were non-effective. 



With the transferable vote all these 569 votes would be 

 used, to give some other candidate his quota — that is, the mini- 

 mum number of votes, that will ensure his election, if it were 

 possible so to use them. 



3. Note please, that in every case of election where the 

 majority exceeds two, or where a thjrd candidate gets two votes, 

 majority election necessitates a majority of non-effective votes. 

 Say with 50 voters, one candidate gets 2^, the other 2}^. the 

 effective votes are 24, the non-effective. 26. With an odd 

 number, 51 voters, say. the candidates get respectively 27 and 

 24, the non-effective votes are 26. These are the most favour- 

 able cases possible, where the election is with an absolute 

 majority. In the two actual cases we have considered, under 

 the British system of a relative majority, we found the non- 

 effective votes were 85 and 83 per cent. ^ — *~-«-^ 



This fault, the large number of non-effective votes, i>^'^(3il C/f/S 

 evitable in this system of single member constituencies ; it ^/^^^!l,.-rr^-^ / 



