VOTING SYSTEMS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16824, 7 April 1915, Page 6

VOTING SYSTEMS.

UNIQUE TRADE UNION EXPERIMENT. NATIONAL TEST OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. , [Fnosi Our Correspondent.] . WELLINGTON, April 6. An important experiment in voting systems is being tried on a national scale by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servauts of New Zealand. Its members, who number nearly nine thousand, distributed over the Dominion railway system, will receive during this month a ballot paper framed to meet the requirements of tho proportional representation method of voting, and they will bo asked to repeat the election which was held in January .for the return of delegates to the society's triennial conference. Tho candidates in that election appear again on the mock ballot paper, but voters, instead of. marking the name of the one candidate in their own department of the service they wished to elect will show by means of figures the order of their preference for the whole of the candidates. Proportional representation has been adopted as the voting system for tho election of Legislative Councillors in the year 1917, but the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants will be the first organisation in New Zealand to make anything like p. national test of this method of securing equitable representation of all sections of the electors. It is intended to ask some well-known exponent of the system, such as Dr M'Nab or Mr P. J. o ; Regan, to superintend the vote counting, and .as there has l>son an nctual election of delegates under the old system a highly interesting comparison is possible when the mock ballot is complete. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants'"Conference considered whether it would adopt proportional representation for its actual elections, but resolved in favour of preferential voting, as this system will enable the society to preserve Miccinl or direct representation upon tlio conference of the locomotive, maintenance, traffic and workshops branches of the railway spit ice.