Proportional representation "P. R.", as it is called for short--is spreading over the world rapidly. Nearly a dozen European nations have adopted it since June, 1918. But the proportional systems in use on the Continent--except for certain elections in Denmark--fall short, in the opinion of British and American students of these matter, in giving the individual voter too little freedom to vote effectively outside of regular party lines. In English-speaking countries, therefore, a different system is favor. This is the "Hare system" of P. R., otherwise called P. R. with the "single transferable vote." This system is already in use for parliamentary elections in several parts of the British dominions and for councils in several hundred English-speaking cities, including Winnipeg, Ashtabula (Ohio), and Sacramento. In November it was adopted, by popular vote, for Cleveland.
Evils of Present System
The Hare system of P. R., to which I shall confine the rest of this short article, has been developed to get rid of three crying evils in our old methods of election representative bodies.
(1) Our commonest method of electing representatives--by wards or single member districts--results in virtually disfranchising, so far as representation goes, all the voters of each district who do not want the winning candidate. The number of voters thus shut out from any voice in the representative body, which levies and spends the taxes of all, is often enormous: in the election of the state Senate of Pennsylvania which was in session in 1920 it amounted to 444,514. The result of the election of 13 Congressmen in Indiana in 1912 was still worse, for less than half of those who voted elected all the Congressmen.
Congressional Elections, Indiana, 1912 Thirteen Districts (2) Another old method of electing representatives, still used in the election of the council or commission in many cities operating under the manager plan of government, is the election of the members at large with each voter allowed to cast as many votes as there are members to be elected. This divides the voters at the polls into winners and losers. Yet obviously, unless we are to throw away all the advantage of representative government, such a division should be made only in the representative body itself after discussion. In making up such a body what is called for is not division of the voters but merely condensation of them into their leaders or spokesmen. This "general ticket" or "block vote" method, which is used in New Jersey to elect blocks of state assemblymen by counties, in 1919 gave 37,386 Democratic voters of Essex Country 12 senators, 37,003 other voters none. Any system of proportional representation--and there are several besides the Hare--gets rid of both these evils by combining the good points of the two old systems and rejecting their bad ones. P. R. simply throws several single-member districts together into one electing several members, but it allows each voter to cast only one vote. This results in giving all the voters in the district an equal share in the election of the several members and in giving each party or united element the number of seats it deserves. Present System Inelastic (3) The third fundamental evil of our old systems of election--and this applies to elections for other officials as well as to those for representatives--is their failure to permit the voter to express his will on the ballot as fully as he pleases so that it can be made effective without regard to how others have voted. Suppose A, B, and C are candidates for one office, and suppose you prefer C, but think he has no chance of being elected. Under our old methods of voting you may not dare to vote for C for fear of "throwing your vote away." Thus thousands even of the Democratic ballots in the Indiana Congressional elections of 1912, though they helped elect somebody, did not help elect men really preferred by the voters who marked them. It is this third weakness of our old methods that is the chief basis, so far as the mechanics of elections are concerned, of the undue power of the "machine" in American politics. The Hare system remedies this weakness. The method is simple: the Hare system permits, though it does not require, the voter to indicate on his ballot which candidates he wants his one vote to count for in case it cannot help elect the candidate marked as first choice, which one he wants it to count for in case in cannot help elect his first choice or his second, etc.; and it provides for the carrying our in the count of the wishes expressed thus. Voters Control Machine This feature of the Hare system makes it possible for the voters of a party to control the party "machine" conveniently and without giving to politics more time than can reasonably be given by men and women who seek nothing in polities for themselves. The Hare system of proportional representation is of special interest of Americans now. We are learning the advantages, from the points of view of efficiency in administration, of having the chief administrator of city chosen by the city council on a professional basis and for an indefinite term, as our school superintendents are chosen by the school committee instead of being elected at the polls. But we are not ready to entrust the selection of the chief administrator the city manager, as he is called to a council elected by the old ward system. And if is certainly not very democratic to entrust it to a council or "commission" elected by the old general-ticket or block-vote method, as is done in many cities. A satisfactory basis for the "manager plan of government" is to be found, therefore, only in a council elected by the Hare system of proportional representation. And it is only in connection with the city manager plan, it is interesting to note, that the Hare system has been adopted by Cleveland, Sacramento, and other smaller American cities.
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