Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, MAY 7, 1928. “GOVERNMENT BY MINORITY.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 134, 7 May 1928, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, MAY 7, 1928. “GOVERNMENT BY MINORITY.”

Majority rule in a democracy seems impossible in these days, apart from a certain violation of tne nxed principle which should be its determining factor. In this country we have long maintained the first past tne post system at both Parliamentary and local elections which have been invariably conducted on that principle, except for a certain amount oi experimentation with the second ballot between the years BJUB and Ibid, in connection with elections to the House of liepreseiitatives, and with proportional representation, as applied to the Christchurch City Council elections for iyi almost equally brief period. Neither system proved satisfactory. The Second Ballot Act was repealed by the late Mr M.assey in 11)13. It has been stated that that gentleman promised to introduce "something to take its place,” and it was concluded, quite erroneously, we believe, that Mr Massey’s inclinations were towards proportional representation, which had not then been tried in connection with any elections in this country, Be that as it may, when Mr E. T. Humphrey, the secretary of the British Proportional llepresentation Society', visited JN’ew Zealand and gave a practical demonstration of the working of the system, Mr Massey. was quite disillusioned. The claim that majority rule is assured under the working of that system is clearly untenable; as, on the two occasions in which elections were conducted on the p.r. principle in New South Wales, Labour Governments were returned to office on the minority vote, added to which the system itself proved so unsatisfactory that both the Labour Party and the Nationalists voted against its continuance. Proportionalists are, to say the least, inconsistent in the claims they make on behalf of the system, for they not only aver that it ensures majority rule, but that it also gives to minorities the representation to which they are eiititled in accordance with their numbers. But, whether applied to small or large electoral divisions, returning three, five, seven or more members, it fails in both respects, the complicated system of cross preferences working so erratically that, in the larger divisions, the votes of minorities cease to become effective except on second or third preferences, while even in the allocation of surplus votes they may go in the wrong direction. Preferential voting, again, has its drawbacks. It is certainly preferable to the second ballot system, which some people desire should be reverted to; but both are objectionable be-

cause they lead to political bargaining's between parties having little in common, except their opposition to a third party—in tiie ease of the second ballot between the first and second elections, and in the other case to compacts made between the parties in advance. But the greatest objection to preferential voting, to our way of thinking, is that it gives to "the minority the right to decide between two parties to which they may be opposed. Where there are three or more parties in the field, and the candidate who heads the poll in the first count does not secure an absolute majority of the votes, polled by all the candidates, the votes of all but the two leading candidates are divided up between the two in the lead. - Thus the minority actually secures an advantage over, and possibly succeeds in defeating the candidate who has polled the largest number of j votes. If majority rule is right, and the principle of absolute equality in voting power is observed, it surely cannot be right that votes, once counted in favour of a candidate, should be reallocated to secure the defeat of another candidate holding the leading position in the poll, as must happen in some cases.