THE SECOND BALLOT.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 336, 24 October 1908, Page 4

THE SECOND BALLOT.

All over the country Ministerial candidates are praising the Secoud. Ballot Act, calling it a "democratic" proposal, of all things in the world,. and giving every evidence that they have not thought about the principle of the Act for five minutes, and know' nothing at all about it excepting that it was passed by tho Ward Government. • That, in their eyes, is,sufficient commendation for any enactment. We commend to the notice of these gentlemen an' article in The Spectator of August 29 last, in which the case against the'second ballot is put with invincible force and logic. It is pointed out that the House of Commons never represents "the mind of the nation." The vice of the existing system, which is the New Zealand system, is that it gives the mind, not of the constituency, but only of the strongest party in tho constituency, and the representative of that party may be the representative of a minority of the doctors, In a constituency of ten thousand, a. three-cornered, fight might show four thousand votes for one candidate, three thousand one hundred for another, and-two thousand nine hundred for a third, with the result that 6000 out of the 10,000 would not be represented 'at all. This "parody of representation," says The Spectator, has been tolerated only because in a general election tho errors tend to balance one another. The advocates of the second ballot propose, as a remedy, that in this imaginary constituency of ten thousand the candidate who got four thousand votos should run against the candidate who got three thousand one hundred. "The two thousand nine hundred electors who voted for tho third candidate wo*uld thus bo set free to turn the election in favour of the others. But so far as the House of Commons is concerned, the result is in no way improved. If tho supporters of the excluded candidate vote for the man who polled four thousand votes, it is unohanged. If they vote for the man who polled three thousand one hundred, the strongest party in tho constituency is left without a member . in order to enable a minority to return the candidate it dislikes least." As The Spectator says, that is "representation in a strictly Gilbertian sense," A pamphlet issued by the Proportional Representation Society gives examples of the working of the system in Europe. The cardinal vice of tho system is the trafficking in votes to which it gives rise. As a rosult, at the last General Election in Gormany the second ballot led to the Social Democrats, who should have had one-third of the seats, obtaining only one-ninth. In Austria the Social Democrats have more than a million votes, and the Christian Socialists just halt as many. Yet, owing to the sccond ballot, the lattor party carried ninoty-six seats, against eighty-six carriod by tho Social Democrats. The writer of the pamphlet 'v.irks out the results of applying the Dflcond ballot in eleven throe-cornered byjaiactiorm that have taken filaco in Groat

Britain sincc 1006. These by-elections returned seven Liberals, two Unionists, and two Socialists. Proportionate representation as it exists in Belgium would have returned four Liberals, iour Unionists, and three Labour men—a reasonable counterpart of the actual distribution of votes, which was: Liberal, 53,307; Unionist, 45,771; Labour, 33,595. The second ballot would have produced results varying according to the combination of parties in the. decisive contest. There were six possible combinations, and the results would have .been: ten Liberals and one Socialist, seven Liberals and four Socialists, seven Unionists and four Socialists,- j .eight Unionists and three Socialists,; ten Liberals and one Unionist, and 'eight Unionists and three Liberals. Any one of these results would havebeen more unjust and unrepresentative than that given by the existiiig system. If we could assume that the candilates who are talking nonsense about the "democratic" virtue of the Second Ballot Act really gave the matter any thought, we should say that they have become quite confused by the phrases "absolute majority," and "minority representation." Nobody wishes that members shall be representative 'of the minorities in their districts. Everybody who desires healthy politics wishes that every section of public opinion shall have as nearly as possible a proportional representation in the House. Wo do not get proportional representation under the existing system, but, as the figures quoted above will show, we get something more nearly like proportional representation than can be got with the second ballot. : The Pbime Minister knows this quite well. His chief aim was to prevent Labour from securing any independent representation in Parliament at all.