BY E. L. PIESSE, B.SC, LL.B. 35- 



1913. 



The smaller party thus obtains 25 seats with only 

 100,000 votes, while the larger party with 120,000 votes 

 obtains only 15 seats. 



76. Professor Edgeworth {^^) has shown that in the 

 general elections of 1886, 1892, and 1895 in Great Britain 

 the ratios, fn umber of Unionist supporters) 4- (number of 

 Unionists and number of Gladstonians) in the various 

 constituencies, were distributed about an average in accord- 

 ance with the normal law of error. Such a distribution 

 will give a majority to the larger party in the House which 

 will be a greater percentage of the House than the 

 strength of the larger party in the country is of the total 

 number of electors, as appears from a comparison of the 

 actual result of these elections with the percentages of 

 representation calculated from the curve of error repre- 

 senting the distribution. 



The Right Hon. J. Parker Smith, in his evidence before 

 the British Royal Commission on Systems of Election f^^), 

 gives reasons why the majority is usvially exaggerated if 

 single-member constituencies are used. He mentions a 

 calculation by Major Macmahon, who has shown that if 

 in a two-party contest the voters are in the ratio of A 

 to B, then the members elected may be expected to be at 

 least in the ratio of .4^ to B^. Thus if the strengths of the 

 parties are 55 % to 45 % (A : B = 11 : 9), the members may 

 be expected to be in the ratio of IP to 9'', or nearly 2 to 

 1; i.e., a party with 5 % more than half the electors may 

 be expected to get nearly two- thirds of the members. 



77. Statistics of elections in' single-member constitu- 

 encies in which the conditions of § 74 — approxi- 

 mate equality between the constituencies in num- 

 ber of votes, and either only two candidates or else 

 preferential voting — are fulfilled, are scarce. It is one of 

 the disadvantages of single-member constituencies, especi- 

 ally in new countries, that redistribution is required much 

 more frequently than with grouped districts, and the 

 sizes of the constituencies are usually by no means equal 

 when a few years have elapsed since the last redistribution. 

 Also, the proportion of electors who vote varies largely 

 from one constituency to another. In Australia at the 



{^) Misri'llaneouii Applic itions of the Calculus of Prohahilities, 

 Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, September, 1898 (LXL, 534 544). 



('^) Muiutm of Evidence tahfn 'hefov the Boy at Cominiaxion on 

 Siii^tcms of Election (Stationery Office. London, 1910, Cd. 5352), Question 

 1253, p. 81. 



