ABSOLUTE MAJORITY BILL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1426, 29 June 1899, Page 33

ABSOLUTE MAJORITY BILL.

There was a good attendance at the Art Gallery, Christchurch, the other evening (says the “Lyttelton Times”), when Mr R. McNab, the member for Mataura, gave an address under the auspices of the Progressive Liberal Association, on tho Absolute Majority Bill. Mr McNab said that there existed in the present electoral laws a system which prevented many of the people of the colony from having any voice whatever in politics. Thousands of them went up year after year to record their votes, yet they had no more effect than if they were denizens of the deep, or inhabitants of, say, Stanley’s Mountains of the Moon. The principles of the Absolute Majirity Bill had been brought under his notice when lie was first returned for Mataura m 1893. It had been very frequently east up at him after the election of 1893 that he had only got in by the votes being split, and there was probably some ruth in it. After the election of 1896 he liad examined the voting in the whole colony, and found tliat in sixteen constituencies the member had been elected with less than a majority of the votes polled. If during the coming session Parliament were to disfranchise onc-fiith of the eleccors there would be a howl of indignation throughout the colony, but the people sat calmly under a system which allowed that state of tilings to exist. It was only ■ very rarely in city elections that the member secured a majority of the votes.. Mr McNab explained how the votes would be counted. under the absolute majority system, which, lie said, had been devised to enable a voter to transfer his vote from those out of the running and record it again in favour of the others. The result of the Absolute Majority Bill would, to his mind, wipe out of existence e man who represented only a secern * of the community. The counting or tbe votes would take longer than under tim present system, but the benefits that would be gained would outweigh that disadvantage. An election was then conducted, supposedly, for the first Premie? of United Australia. The candidates were the Premiers of each of the Australian colonies. On the first counting, the voting was as follows : —Brad don, 12 ; Dickson, 9 • Forrest 11; Kingston, 24; Reid, 71; •lurner, 16. Hie number of voters was thus 143, and seventy-two was the absolute majority. In order to ascertain this Dickson’s papers were recounted, a l, jk was found that of the second votes of his supporters, four had gone to .braddon and two to Turner. This still did not give an absolute majority, and the second votes of r orrest’s supporters were counted. These gave five more to Braddon, five to Kingston and one eacn to Reid and Turner. This gave Reid seventy-two votes, an absolute majority. There were eleven informal votes, the voters having left unerased more than one name.