ELECTORAL REFOR.M— PROPORTIONAL 

 REPRESENTATION. 



P,v juiix Prowx, M.D.. CM., F.R.C.S., L.R.C.S.E. 



(Ercniiuj discourse delivered in the Library Board Room, 

 Bii!aK'a\o. on Tuesday. July 4, 191 1.) 



Abstraet.) 



The lecturer began his acUh-ess by alhiding to a recent 

 debate in the Rhodesian Legislative Council, the outcome whereof 

 was the ado])tion of a motion requesting the Government to take 

 into early consideration the subjects of additional representation 

 and redistribution. Some of the speakers, he said, advocated 

 single-member constituencies, and some referred to the trans- 

 ferable vote — the best means of securing effective voting and 

 true representation. After outlining the method of employing 

 the transferable vote, the lecturer said that while single- 

 member constituencies result in strife and difficulties,, as the 

 Union of South Africa was already experiencing, transferable 

 voting tends to bring peace and progress and to promote united 

 action in the problems which a legislature has to face. 



The question of real representation is at present occupying 

 a prominent place all over the world. Tasmania has secured 

 effective voting, and all over Australia men were calling out for 

 it. Every vote given should help to return a member, and thus 

 become effective. There would thus be no more majorities and 

 no more minorities, but every member would have his due share 

 of all the votes, and the elected body wotdd exactly represent 

 the electors. However impossible this may seem, it is regularly 

 carried out in the Pretoria and Johannesburg Municipal elections. 

 The speaker then referred to the meeting of the National Con- 

 vention at Durban, where, he said, its members began their work 

 with the most important and fundamental matters, including the 

 best method of Parliamentary election. They devised the most 

 perfect system of electing both Houses of Parliament that the 

 world had ever seen, one which made every vote effective, secur- 

 ing, as nearly as possible, one man, one vote ; one vote, one value , 

 and each member the same number of votes. A few months 

 later, at Bloemfontein, this splendid system was given up, and 

 they fell back on the antiquated, inaccurate British plan of 

 single-member constituencies under which the non-effective 

 sometimes outnumber the effective votes by six to one. 



For true representation, the lecturer continued, the elected 

 House should reflect, as in a mirror, the voters that elect it, but 

 in practice sometimes only 15 per cent, of the votes help to elect 

 the member, yet we delude ourselves with the idea that we have, 

 by a majority of votes, elected a representative. True repre- 



