THE BOA CONSTRICTOR OF POLITICS. 155 



elected fifty-four republicans to ninety-nine of their opponents, 

 the new one gave seventy of the former to eighty-three of the lat- 

 ter, of whom indeed there were twenty-seven independents and 

 fifty-six democrats, almost exactly the allotment justified by the 

 vote. 



Seven of the districts, however failed to get their exact share, 

 most of these discrepancies being due to the voters scattering their 

 ballots among too many candidates. In England, however, at an 

 election of the Birmingham school board, the Liberals, though 

 slightly in the minority, tried to elect all the fiiteen meuibers and 

 so got in only six, while really entitled to seven. Such failures of 

 this method can be prevented only by strict party discipline, though 

 they would be much less frequent if no voter were allowed to vote 

 for more than the majority of the candidates, or indeed, where their 

 number is even, for more than one half of them. Thus no voter 

 in Illinois should be allowed to vote for more than two of his three 

 representatives, and the one hundred assembly districts in Wiscon- 

 sin might well be consolidated into ten, in each of which there 

 would be ten candidates to be elected, and five votes to bedistribut- 

 by each, citizen. 



All the essential advantages of the cumulative plan Avould thus 

 be preserved, and it would become still better fitted for electing 

 members of congress than the form recommended by Senator Buck- 

 alew in 1869, which, for instance, would give each New Yorker 

 thirtj'-three votes for repre-^entative, whereas he would have exact- 

 ly as mnch power if he had but seventeen, and any independent 

 candidate getting above three percent, of the vote would be equally 

 sure of election under either arrangement. It would, however, be 

 better still to have three districts, each sending eleven delegates 

 and allowing six votes. 



This restriction of the number of votes would lessen immensely 

 the diflBculty of counting them, and the distribution bv the indi- 

 vidual would b^ much easier when the parties were equally 

 balanced, while the labor of marshalling the voters of a party large- 

 ly in the majority, so as to get all the benefit of them, would not 

 be increased. 



Neither form of cumulative vote would be likely to abolish the 

 caucus, which indeed can scarcely be spared, but either form would 

 restrain its abuse, by the facility it would offer for defeating its an- 



