ELECTORAL REFORM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15922, 7 May 1912, Page 6

ELECTORAL REFORM.

It will be encouraging to the friends of sane electoral reform to learn that Mr George Eowlds, who will pass through Christchurch to-day on his way to Dunedin, where he will commence his platform campaign on behalf of the United Labour Party, is making proportional representation the first olank in' his lighting platform. Mr Fowlds and the great majority of the members of tho party with which he is now associated realise that until the eleotoral laws are amended along the lines they have suggested it will bo impossible for the mass of tho people to exercise the influence they should in the government of the country. Hitherto all tho efforts of our politicians have Jbeon directed towards securing the representation of majorities and the exclusion of minorities. The single electorates were adopted with this end in view, Mr M'Nab's Absolute Majority Bill was designed to make it more secure and the Second Ballot was frankly intended to complete tho work. But the single electorates and tho Second Ballot have failed in their purpose, perhaps fortunately, and Mr M'Nab's proposal has never been given a chance. Minorities have still been represented, as they should be of course, but in a haphazard fashion that has produced the most unsatisfactory results. The last general election provided the latest example of immediate interest to the people of New Zealand of the inequity of the system with which we have been tinkering during the past fifty or sixty years. The following figures, which were compiled directly after the polls and are subject to slight corrections, show how the system devised by t> .- united wisdom of our politicians woj ' • ed out in the election of Europe.-i'! members to the House of Representatives :

The figures represent the votes polled at the first ballots with those recorded in Gisborne at the election of 1808. there having been no contest there last yenr, and they tako no account of the Maori elections. They show that the Opposition secured ten more seats than it was entitled to while the Independents, including the Labourites and the Socialists, won nine fewer than their voting strength 6hould have given

them. Numerous examples of tho same kind of . misrepresentation, might bo quoted from the parliamentary history of the Mothor Country. In 1886, when tho Unionists roturned from the constituencies with a majority of 104 in onposition to Mr Gladstone's Homo Rule Bill and boasted of having "swept the country," it was found on analysis that tho 387 Unionist members represented only 2,049.137 voters, whilo the 283 ministerial members, favourable to Homo Rule, represented 2,103,954 voters. The position in the present House of Commons is not quite so ball, as the party in power really represents a majority of the electors as well as holds a majority of tho seats, but its majority instead of being 126 would bo only 38 if it had been created by an exact system of proportional representation. An example of tho more equitable results obtained by such a system was provided by tho Tasmanian election of 1909. The two parties in the State were Liberal and Labour and this is how they fared at tho polls :

It will be seen that in a Parliament of only thirty members —the smallness of the number making precision all the more difficult—each party secured within a fraction of its fair share of representation. This is the first result obtained from the single transferable vote, but it is not by any means, as Mr Fowlds will tell his audiences, the only one. The appeal to wider constituencies deprives parliamentary elections of their parochial character, attracts a better type of candidate and relieves men who have made their mark in the country by faithful services from all the minor worries and embarrassments of a contested election. Tho leaders of parties, men like Sir Joseph Ward and Mr Massey, should not havo to trouble about their own seats in the thick of a political campaign, but should be free to help their cause and their supporters in all parts of the country. The advantages of the system are so numerous and so great, indeed, that we should be inclined to set aside a good many of our party predilections for the sake of securing a reform which is of infinitely more importance to tho people of tho dominion than are all the minor questions of policy by which our political leaders are divided.

Seals in proporYotos Seats Hon to Party. polled, won. votes. Government . 194,017 31 f.Q Opposition . 1G5.921 37 27 Independent . 303,310 8 17 463,478 70 76

Seats Party. Votes polled. Seats won. in proportion to votes Liberal Labour . 03.891 . 19.067 IS 12 18.S 11.7