498 . PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 



transferable vote. At the end of the election the numbers oppo- 

 site each name are counted, and the candidates witli the highest 

 aggregates to the required number are elected. This has the great 

 practical advantage over the Hare system, that the work of the 

 returning officer is reduced to mere sin.ple addition, instead of a 

 complicated transfer and re-transfer of votes. 



Only one objection has been urged against this method of 

 Laplace, but it has been urged as a very weighty one. I give it 

 in the words of Mr. Ashworth : — 



" If candidates are the nominees of a number of independent' 

 sections, each of which is anxious only to secure the return of its 

 own candidate and to defeat those who stand in his way, the ten- 

 dency will be to place those more popular candidates, whose success 

 is feared, at the bottom of the list, so as to give them as few marks 



as possible This is the weak point in Preferential 



Voting: any small section can insure £he rejection of a candidate." 



Tlie argument thus presented undoubtedly expresses a real pos- 

 sibility. If preferential voting had such grave defects as limited 

 voting or cumulative voting, this objection might be fatal. But 

 Laplace's proposal has such great practical advantages, and is so 

 easily understood, that it is worth while to stretch a point in its 

 favour if we can do so. 



Suppose that >n members are to be elected on a club committee, 

 say, and one candidate is distasteful to a fraction - of the 

 electors. It can be established that, in order to prevent his elec- 

 tion, they must run m7i + 1 candidates. If - is small, then n 

 is large, and vm -f 1 is vert/ large. It is quite probable, therefore, 

 that the strength of this objection has been overstated. 



The Scheme Outlined. 



Up to this point the inquiry has consisted of an examination 

 of the various electoral systems with which the world has experi- 

 mented from time to time. Brief as the study has been, it has, I 

 think, been possible to summarize the good and bad points of each. 

 The question now arises: "Can we reject the bad points of the 

 different methods, and combine the good ones into a perfected 

 scheme of proportional representation suited to Australian con- 

 ditions?" The problem may be stated as follows: — 



It is required to find a scheme of proportional representation 

 which shall in any constituency allot the representation to the con- 

 tending parties as nearly as possible in the proportion of their 

 voting strength. Consistently with tliis an elector should be given 

 as much pov/er as possible to express preference for individual 

 candidates. A combination of the " party-list " and " transferable 



