154 WISCOXSIN" ACADEMY SCIENCES, ARTS, AISTD LETTERS. 



cent. 0-Pthe votes, and any independent candidate would be elected 

 who gets his one pei" cent. — more indeed than is now requisite, so 

 that the voting districts must be enlarged greatly to enable any 

 one to obtain it. This S3^stera is meant to give no special favor to 

 individuals or minorities, but only such justice to all the candidates, 

 that its proper name is not Personal or Minority, but Proportional 

 Representation. 



There are several plans for doing this, the best known being the 

 cumulative, advocated by Horace Greeley twenty years ago, and 

 now in use in Illinois, as well as in England, where, as the London 

 Times says, ''it has made its way by its inherent justice." In Illi- 

 nois it was enacted in 1870 that the 153 legislative districts, form- 

 erly sending each a representative to the legislature, should be con- 

 solidated into 51, with three members each. Each voter casts three 

 votes, which he can concentrate on one candidate or distribute 

 among two or three, as he prefers. This plan was first tried in 

 1872, when, as Mr. Medill stated in the Cincinnati Commercial^ of 

 December 2, 1872, "for the first time each party is represented from 

 ever}- part of the State, and the aggregate representation is exactly 

 in preportion to the numerical strength of each party. For the 

 first time since the Republican party was organized in Illinois 

 (1854), have the Democrats secured a representation from North- 

 ern, or the Republicans from Southern, Illinois, with rare excep- 

 tions. The bitterest Democratic districts down in Egypt now, for 

 the first time in the history of existing parties, elected Republi- 

 cans." The Chicaqo Tribune adds: '"On the whole, it has worked 

 admirably; it has secured the great end sought, and has enabled 

 the people, in many instances, to defeat the objectionable candi- 

 date," which is a fulfillment of the prediction of John Stuart Mill, 

 that "those who would be favored by the cumulative vote would 

 generally be the persons of the greatest real or reputed virtue or 

 talents." (Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform.) 



It was further noticed that in thir<3'--three of these fifty-one dis- 

 tricts, the republicans were in the majority, so that by the usual, 

 or as the Chicago Times aptly called it, the "jug handle" method,, 

 there would have been ninety-nine of one party to fiftj^-four of the 

 other, whereas the estimated proportion was eighty-five to sixty- 

 eight, and the actual result nearly the same, eighty-six to sixty- 

 seven. At the last election in 1874, when the old plan would have 



