REPRESENTATION l!^' THE TRANSFERABLE VOTE. I73 



6 to I, 5 to 2. i.e., down to i to 6 or o to 7 : in stages or degrees 

 varying by one-seventh of the voters. 



7. Sectional election may seem more difficult and too com- 

 plicated. It may be thought, it is all very well in tlieory, but 

 in practice it could not be done. Two years ago at Pretoria 

 it was tried for the first time; 2,814 votes were given for 13 

 candidates to elect 6 members. If each of the 6 members got 

 403 votes, that would be 2.418, leaving onlv 396 over, not enough 

 to give that number, 403, to a seventh candidate. The votes that 

 were actually given to the six members were 2,382, just t,6 less 

 than the utmost possible number of votes that could become 

 etTective. Only 36 votes that might have been efifective were 

 non-effective, .015 or three two-hundredths. three votes in 200, 

 compared, as we saw at Gwelo, to 166 in 200. 



It is the system that is at fault, not the voter. It would be 

 a scandal and an untruth to say the Rhodesian voter was less 

 intelligent than the Pretoria municipal elector. The voters in 

 Rhodesia are as intelligent as you will find anywhere, and they 

 would need to be, for their circumstances are peculiar. They 

 are in a land where the British South Africa Company have 

 spent millions of pounds directly and indirectly in obtaining and 

 developing the country, without as yet one single halfpenny 

 of return in the way of dividend. At one side of the Council 

 table sit five members nominated by the Company, and at the 

 other side seven members elected by the people; and these seven 

 should be the very best men in all the land, not necessarily the 

 richest, but the very best ; they should not be elected by 17 per cent, 

 of the voters, but by all as far as possible. The interests of the 

 people and those of the Company are identical, and it is absolutely 

 necessary that the people should have true representation, and 

 the very best seven men they can elect. Think of the increase 

 of power behind them if 99 per cent., not 17 per cent., of the 

 voters elected them. 



8. This result, 99 per cent, of the possible efifective votes, 

 will be got by substituting sectional for majority election ; imder 

 it each seventh equal section of the voters elects a member by 

 the same number of votes, who represents that section. In this 

 way we can make use of nearly every possible effective vote. No 

 system can make use of voting papers, whereon not one is marked 

 of the names of the candidates, whom 99 per cent, of the possibly 

 eft"ective voters think the best. In Rhoclesia these cases should 

 be conspicuous by their absence. By the transferable vote we 

 use the 85 or 83 per cent, of non-effective votes in the examples 

 we examined, and thus secure true representation. 



9. What are the actual published results obtained by the U3e 

 of the transferable vote in two elections at Pretoria, two at 

 Johannesburg, and in five Parliamentary elections in Tasmania?' 

 The result is that as a rule 99 per cent, of the votes it is possible 

 to use are actually used in electing the members. In one case 

 in Tasmania it was 97^ per cent., but that is just six and a half 



