The Timaru Herald THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908. ELECTORAL SYSTEMS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 13737, 29 October 1908, Page 4

The Timaru Herald THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1908. ELECTORAL SYSTEMS.

Sir William Steward told the. electors at Waimate on Tuesday night that the absolute -majority scheme which the Hon. Mr-.McNab used'to advocate, when a private member, would be preferable to the second "ballot.-' provided that electors would mark the papers properly, but he spoke as if he were quite certain that a large proportion of the elector* would not do "so. He did not i-ay that they could no', do so. and to say that they could not. would have been no compl'ment to the education system of New Zealand, which has now been in force quite long enough to. have enabled the electors, with the exception of a yen- small minority of old identities, to read sufficiently well to understand the directions, and to writo sufficiently well to be able to put a few figures on a piece of paper.. Sir William, however, did not say that the electors could not mark the papers properly, but. that they would not do uo. ThV, appears like a reflection upon the average intelligence-of the elector-', but tlu-te may hj? another explanation of it. This objection may assume that an excess'of astuteness might induce electors to say to themselves that their candidate would have a good .chance' of election on the first votes, but would Iw likely-t0.105e..-if some other happened to score all the second votes, and would therefore refra : n from marking more than one. If Sir William Steward's description of the method of marking proposed was correct (we cannot lay our hands on Mr MeXab's Bill just now! the directions tr. the elector were calculated to reduce very much the .probabilities of a r-atitJiac-iory Use he'ng made of the ta-heme, if I tried. The e|,-olor was. he said, to score otti all the names but one. ami then mark the scored out names in the or-dt-r of preference. That is to say. the elector was to select the candidate' to !>. preL-ned, aii<l strike out lh.- nam.i, of all the rest, as if I hey were no good at all; and then he mr.it- immediately recall the opinion expressed in that way. and make fresh selections among them. * Ob,v fittsly, the natural and proper method of marking would be to number all iho names in-order of preference; ami if this were the mreciion given the elector who Mould be conftt.-e.l by it must be such a dunderhead that hi<; failure to record his opinion of the. candidates might' well be ignored. It x> -admitted that the second ballot is an experiment. The Legislature, when experimenting, might as wellvery much Iwtter indeed -have made the, double experiment, by pass'ng Mr McNab's Bill, with a proviso that if the ballot papers wviv not marked sufficiently to enable the returning officer to make out a satisfactory election in a where (he contingent vot«» was required, the second ballot i.hould be taken. That would have te-ted the wilPiigiw-ss and the ability of the electors u> estimate the relative merits of the candidate*, and have provided an incentive to them to set-nt* an efliei-nf maTking of the papers.