156 wiscoNsiJsr academy sciences, arts, and letters. 



didates, and electing those nominated by boards of trade or mass 

 meetings called by leading newspapers. This is most easily done 

 when the districts are the largest, hence the advantage of the pro- 

 posed restriction, which makes the distribution and counting of 

 vct.'S but one-half as laborious as would be the case wh°re the same 

 number of voters were to choose the same number of representa- 

 tives by the ordinary form or the cumulative vote. 



A further restriction of each voter to one vote would indeed make 

 counting them still easier, but render the distribution, when the 

 number of candidates is large, extremely difficult and precarious. 

 Either of these plans might, however, be used in choosing directors 

 of corporations and stock companies, and thus enable the holders 

 of a comparatively small quantity of stock to have their own repre- 

 sentative to protect their interests. In such elections compara- 

 tively few votes would probably be thrown away; but at the polls 

 there is great risk, not only of the votes being too much scattered, 

 but of their Ijeing too much concentrated. 



Thus the Democrats, in two of the Illinois districts in 1874, gave 

 all their votes to one man when they might have elected two, and 

 at an election of the Marylebone school board, in England, Miss 

 Garrett got more than twice as many votes as she needed, and more 

 than half of them were thrown away. Now if Miss Garrett's friends 

 could have placed her on a ticket with several other of their candi- 

 dates, and couid have had every vote not needed by her transferred 

 to her associates, they would have been much more fairly repre- 

 sented. 



A plan which would have done this, and which is known as the 

 preferential method, has actually been in use for twenty years in 

 Denmark, and was several times employed in the nomination of over- 

 seers of Harvard University. Many English liberals favor it, and 

 John Stuart Mill places it among the very greatest improvements 

 yet made in the theory and practice of government, "and therefore 

 of civilization." Mr. Thomas Hare, after whom this plan is often 

 named, says: " In framing this system I have always looked for- 

 ward to its reception by the American people with an anxious hope. 

 Surpassing all other people in the arts of peace as they minister to 

 the universal comfort and well being, attaining a not less distin- 

 guished though unhappy eminence in the arts of war, a nobler 

 work remains to them * * * that they become the leaders of 

 mankind in the far greater art of government." 



