The Press. Wednesday, DECEMBER 18, 1918. Proportional Representation.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16398, 18 December 1918, Page 6

The Press. Wednesday, DECEMBER 18, 1918. Proportional Representation.

Tho circumstances attending the lapsing of the special meeting of the City Council which had been arranged to discuss tho method of elocting members show that the Council can bo exceedingly unbusinesslike. The question to be discusscd was one of much importance and great interest, but no care whatever was taken to ensure that the meeting would actually be held. The supporters of proportional representation appear to have grasped eagerly at the opportunity to avert what they probablV had reason to believe would bo a decision in favour ot roverting to the method of election ■which is considered good enough by cities not less progressive and intelligent than Christchurch. Tho adoption of the special order restoring that method must bo made at least three months before the next election, and thos/ who are opposed to a return to the former method have doubtless calculated that they can secure by jmanceuvring what they could not sooure by the test of a vote. Plain citizens, who could not Hceolve, by sines and tangents straight, Ii bread or butter wonted weight; And wisely tell what hour o' the day The clock does strike, by algebra, and who regard with mingled awe and apprehension the earnest souls who yearn to perform tho equivalent of those facts in municipal politics, may be excased for feeling sonie surprise that men so devoted to principles should succumb to the temptation to make a point by means of what looks yery like "slimncss." We wero never able to understand the necessity for applying the principle of proportional representation to the eloction of the City Council, nor did the actual application of it persuade -us that it had any balance of advantage over the system it replaced. The Council which is now conducting the city's affairs is identical with the Council that would havo been chosen had the old method of election been used— a fact which has raised in the minds of rplain folk a doubt respecting tho necessity for P.lt. which tho advocates of tho "scientific" system have never attempted to resolve. This may havo been oniy an accident —although wo had imagined that accidents could not happen with proportional representation but it requires to bo explained. Our own opinion is that tho old method will give us .Councils just as good, and in the long run as representative, as thoso which aro worked out by long and apparently unnecessary arithmetical calculations. Onoof the most striking features of the election held in April, 1917, was the clear evidence that tho puzzled electors in very many cases gave their yotcs and their preferences according to the position of the candidates on the ballot paper. This was inevitable where there was a very long list of candidates for a large number of seats. Whatever may be said for proportional representation in cases where only three or four persons are to be elected, it was made last year that tho system is

altogether unsuited for the election of a body of sixteen members. In time, perhaps, if party lines became very strictly drawn, and compact party tickets were drawn up, the voters might be educated to tho point of being able to vote tho party ticket very rigidly. Tn that event, proportional representation would doubtless reflect tho state of parties with accuracy. But it is not. desirable that the party system should be fortified in this way, or that the public should elect its local governing bodies without regard to the personal qualifications of the candidates. At every election, r'rdinarify, there is a good deal of cross-voting, and it is as well that this should be so, for in this fact is 7-eflected a common human habit of tolerance and discrimination, the

existence and operation of which arc

implicitly denied by the proportional representation system. Tho city got on well enough under the old method, and it owes to the new method nothing (exeept some confusion, delay, and expense) that it could not have pot by the old. The public did not authorise tlie change effected in 1916, and it has no desire that that change should be perpetuated. "We hope that the Council will be, given an opportunity to abandon the present system at the next election.