OF ELECTION IN TASMANIA. 87 



arranged and ultimately carried out by me as supervising 1 

 assistant under Mr. Davies, I had the sanction and hearty 

 approval of the law advisers of the Crown. With my own 

 judgment independently concurring with the special advice of . 

 the law officers, who originally drew up every one of the 

 provisions of Section 115, I have no fear that any person, 

 however astute, who has not had the grave responsibilities 

 of execution, and who has not devoted the same time and 

 trouble to the study of our Electoral Act, 1896, Section 115, 

 will be successful in the discovery of any flaw either in the 

 interpretations put upon its various provisions, or in the pro- 

 cesses adopted for carrying it into effect. 



Those who profess to have discovered a flaw in the mode of 

 determining the quota-excess in Hobart have misled them- 

 selves by taking hold of only a part of the truth — a source of 

 danger in most cases to inexperienced persons. 



So far as the ordinary misconceptions are concerned regarding 

 the provisions made for determining the division of transferable 

 quota-surpluses, it is apparent for the most part that they arise 

 from unskilled or hasty reading of clauses v. and iv\, 

 Section 115. Both of these clearly provide for the manner in 

 which quota-surpluses are to be distributed, and both have for 

 their object the distribution of the excess, freed altogether 

 from arbitrary selection by returning officer, and freed, as fairly 

 as practicable, from the element of chance selection. But the 

 stumbling block of the average inexperienced or incautious 

 critic is his failure to discern that the law recognises and 

 distinguishes two distinct orders of quota-excess, while the in- 

 cautious critic either only recognises one, or confounds or 

 mixes up part of the provision of the one when dealing with 

 the other. For the sake of greater clearness we may call the 

 quota-excess provided for in Clause V. as quota-excesses of the 

 first order, and the quota-excesses contemplated in Clause VI. 

 as those of the second order. Now the manner in which the 

 quota-excess of the first order is to be determined in distribution 

 is altogether different from the manner provided in Clause VI. 

 for the determination and distribution of quota-excess of the 

 second. 



For the former (i.e., first order) the quota-excess — as in case 

 of the only one of this order, the Fysh surplus, 44 — Clause V., 

 " Shall include as nearly as practicable in respect of each 

 candidate the same proportion of ballot-papers having the 

 figure 2 set opposite to his name as the number of such ballot- 

 papers included in the whole parcel bears to the total number 

 of ballot-papers in the whole parcel.'" The quota-excess of 

 the first order has been derived wholly from the successful 

 candidate's l's without the aid of a single transfer ballot-paper 



