The Press Tuesday, November 6, 1928. Vote-Splitting and Electoral Systems.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19460, 6 November 1928, Page 10

The Press Tuesday, November 6, 1928. Vote-Splitting and Electoral Systems.

Very few of our politicians have thought very ■ deeply about electoral systems, and it is not very surprising, therefore, that the Minister for Education, Mr R. A. Wright, should have treated as a difficult practical problem the suggestion made by an elector at one of hia meetings that Parliament ought to "do something" to prevent the votesplitting that allows a minority candidate to win a seat. Mr Wright very sensibly said that it was "hard,to see " what could be done to stop it," and if he meant also that Parliament ought not to attempt to "stop it" he was more than sensible. There are good reasons for regretting that the moderate majority should in some constituencies find its affective voting strength divided, to the advantage of the Socialist candidate, but not one single reason why some highly artificial voting system should be substituted for that under which our elections are held. Three such systems have been proposed in New Zealand, and one of them was tried. This was the "second ballot," intro-

duced by the Liberal Administration with the object of consolidating the Liberal and Labour votes. This electoral method had fallen into disrepute in older countries through its subjection of the national interest to the intriguing and bargaining of Parties and candidates between the ballots. It fell into disrepute here for the same reason, and scarcely anyone would now propose its re-introduction. The second method is " preferential voting," which, although it pretends to return " majority" candidates, really does not do so, and which also has the cardinal defect of the second ballot, with this difference only, that the intrigues and bargainings are managed before the poll. The third method is " Propor- " tional Representation." Although "P.R." has many prominent men as its supporters—in England, at any rate—it has been shot through and through over and over again, and to the vital objections to it no satisfactory reply has ever been given. The people who are sincere and disinterested in advocating what they call "electoral " reform "—most of them are not sincere or disinterested at all—are those who take the short view. It can happen that at some particular time the issue, of an. election is of immense importance, but in the long run the course of legislation and the changes of Government follow roughly—-of course they could not follow with mathematical exactness—the course of public opinion. No country can hope for, or need wish for, anything other or better than that. At the present time the people of New Zealand are on the eve of an election at which the paramount issue is, as in the last few elections, thd challenge of the Reds, Owing to the perverseness of some politically backward relicts of the old Liberal Party there is a possibility, in a few electorates, that the moderate majority may be so divided that a representative of the Socialist minority will slip in between the Reform Party and the United Party candidates; But the proper remedy for this is, not an artiflraal system of voting based on an arithmetic that has no way of relating itself to public opinion, but a realisation by the voters themselves of the actual issues of politics.