ELECTORAI APATHY.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 219, 15 September 1924, Page 15

ELECTORAI APATHY.

(To the Editor.) S:r,—Permit mc, with "Old tland/' id add my high appreciation of the fine article ...in last Saturday's ''Star" oh the above. To-those of us -who take an intelligent interest in public .-affairs,and vote on every question piit to us, the. position is disquieting. If areasonahle majority of the people would dp. this, the present minority Government would cease to exist, and we would not only have one man one vote, but we would have one man one, effective vote; At the last election I, with two thou : sand other .Liberals, went and recorded our protest against,the appalling land scandals of the party of cantj hypocrisy and humbug, yet the result -would have been exactly the same if the.. -whole 2000 of us had stayed, at home and * not voted at all. So what is the use .of having a vote:when the vote does hot count? If-we had proportional representation and group electorates with a single traneferable vote, and the man of .our first choice did not'get in, the votes would be carried forward to the next of our choice, and so On; 6t if our first choice gOt in with vdtes to spate the surplus votes would be "carried forward to the next of our choice; 3Hfi Massey knows quite well that- this is the only scientific and just way to get representative government; but, for party he has thrown his ; real convictions' overßßard. . Then, with another somersault,'he would apply it to.the cities) where Labour threatens to sweep the polls. This'/woUld. give «Reform tEeir share of representation in the cities, and more .'than their share . iri'.the country, where ,the firsttpaet-ihe-post system would remain. His juggling on this question is so obvious that I sometimes think that men wjth ; heads on them no larger than doorknobs ought to have seen through it ere this.—l am, etc., POLITICAL STUDENT.