Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election

by John H. Humphreys

GENERAL ELECTION, 1900

Parties. Votes Seats Seats in
Obtained. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.

Unionists 2,548,736 402 343
Home Rulers 2,391,319 268 327

Majorities 157,417 134 16
GENERAL ELECTION, 1906

Parties. Votes Seats Seats in
Obtained. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Ministerialists 3,395,811 513 387
Unionists 2,494,794 157 283

Majorities 901,017 356 104

It will be seen that in the General Election of 1900 the Unionists obtained a majority of 134, but that if parties had been represented in proportion to their polling strength this majority would have been 16, whilst the majority of 356 obtained at the General Election of 1906 by the Ministerialists (in which term, for the purposes of comparison, all members of the Liberal, Labour and Nationalist parties are included) would, under similar conditions, have been a majority of 104 only. The very important change in public opinion disclosed by the polls at the second of these elections was not nearly sufficient to justify the enormous displacement that took place in the relative party strengths within the House of Commons. The extent of the possible displacement in representation may be more fully realised from a consideration of the figures for Great Britain, for the representation of Ireland, where parliamentary conditions have become stereotyped, is but little affected at any election. An increase in the Liberal vote from 2,073,116 to 3,093,978—an increase of 50 per cent.—resulted in a change in the number of representatives from 186 to 428, an increase of 130 per cent., whilst a decrease in the Conservative vote from 2,402,740 to 2,350,086—a decline of little more than 2 per cent.—resulted in a reduction in representation from 381 to 139 members, a decline of 63 per cent. The displacement was even more pronounced in London, where the number of Liberal members rose from 8 to 40, and the number of Conservative members fell from 52 to 20. The violence of these changes was attributed to a similar change on the part of the electors, but it was much more largely due to an electoral method that exaggerates any changes in public opinion beyond all reason.

If, however, the results—not of two but of the eight General Elections, 1885-1910—are considered it will be seen that the current belief, that the single-member system invariably yields a large majority, rests on a very precarious foundation. The General Election of 1892, for example, gave to the Liberals (inclusive of the Nationalists) a majority of 44 only. In England (which, excluding Wales and Monmouth, returns 461 members) the Conservatives in 1895 and 1900 had majorities of 233 and 213; in 1906 the Liberals had a majority of 207; but in the elections of January and December 1910, the Conservatives had on each occasion a majority of 17 only. If Wales and Monmouth are included, it will be found that in the 1910 elections the Liberal majorities were 13 and 11 respectively. Single-member constituencies do not therefore guarantee large majorities. It can with greater truth be said that they guarantee wrong majorities, for, as the following table shows, there is no constant relation between the size of the majority in votes and the size of the majority in seats:—

General Election. Majority in Seats. Majority in Votes.

1885 Liberal 158 Liberal 564,391 1886 Conservative 104 Liberal 54,817 1892 Liberal 44 Liberal 190,974 1895 Conservative 150 Conservative 117,473 1900 Conservative 134 Conservative 157,417 1906 Liberal 356 Liberal 901,017 1910 (Jan.) Liberal 124 Liberal 495,683 1910 (Dec.) Liberal 126 Liberal 355,945

The majority of 44 seats which the Liberals obtained in 1892 represented a majority of 190,974 votes, whereas a much smaller Conservative majority at the polls, viz., 117,473, yielded in 1895 a majority in seats of 150. The overwhelming victory of 1895 represented the very slender majority of 117,473 votes in a total of 4,841,769, whilst at the next election, 1900, when the Conservatives increased their majority at the polls, their majority in the House of Commons was reduced. The Liberal majority in votes in the election of December 1910 was smaller than in that of the preceding January, but not the majority in seats. In 1886, the Conservatives obtained the large majority of 104 without having any majority in votes, and, if England is taken alone, it will be found that in January 1910 the Liberals had a majority of 29,877 in votes, and that in December the Conservatives had a majority of 31,744, whereas on each occasion the Conservatives obtained a majority of 17 seats.

The disfranchisement of minorities.

Politicians, to whom the one great saving merit of the single-member system is that it yields an exaggerated majority to the victors, would, if pressed, find it very difficult to defend the results referred to in the preceding paragraphs, and would be even more at a loss if asked to state to what extent they considered that national opinion should be falsified. The most ardent defenders of the system would hardly deny the right of the minority to some representation, and it is worthy of note that one of the reasons advanced by Mr. Gladstone in support of his decision to adopt it was that such a system tended to secure representation for minorities.[4] Yet, as prophesied in the debates of 1885, the minorities in the South and West of Ireland have since that date been permanently disfranchised; in the eight Parliaments, 1885-1911, they have been entirely without representation. This continued injustice is in itself sufficient to show how baseless was Mr. Gladstone's assumption that the system of single member constituencies would secure representation for minorities. This example, however, does not stand alone. In the General Election of 1906 the Unionists of Wales contested 17 constituencies, and although at the polls they numbered 52,637, they failed to secure a member; their 91,620 Liberal opponents secured the whole of the representation allotted to those constituencies. In addition the Liberals obtained the thirteen seats which the Unionists did not challenge. The minority throughout Wales, numbering 36 per cent, of the electors, had no spokesman in the House of Commons. This result shows how completely a system of single-member constituencies fails to protect minorities, and an analysis of the votes cast in Scotland in 1910, both in January and December, reveals the fact that the Unionist minority only escaped by the narrowest of margins the fate which befel the Welsh Unionists in 1906. The figures speak for themselves:—

SCOTLAND (Boroughs and Counties, January 1910)

Parties. Votes. Seats Seats in
Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Liberal 352,334 59 38
Labour and Socialist 35,997 2 4
Unionist 255,589 9 28

Totals 643,920 70 70

Every Scottish Unionist member of Parliament represented on an average 28,400 voters, whilst a Liberal member represented less than 6000 voters. The figures repay still further examination. One of the Unionist seats—the Camlachie division of Glasgow—was only captured as the result of a split in the Ministerialist ranks. The other eight seats were won by majorities ranging from 41 to 874, amounting in the aggregate to 3156. If therefore in these constituencies some 1600 Unionist voters had changed sides, the Unionist party, though numbering more than a quarter of a million, or 40 per cent. of the electorate, might have failed to secure any representation at all. With the single-member system more than a quarter of a million of Scottish Unionists only obtained representation as it were by accident. In the same election the Liberals in the counties of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, numbering 134,677, found themselves without a representative.[5]

The underrepresentation of majorities.

The failure of existing electoral methods to provide representation for minorities not only unduly emphasizes racial and other differences between different parts of the same country, as in Ireland, but often leads to a complete falsification of public opinion. The results in Birmingham and Manchester in the election of 1906 may serve as a text. As a result of that election these two towns were represented in Parliament as being absolutely opposed to one another—a heightened contrast which was a pure caricature of the difference disclosed by the polls. Manchester (including Salford) returned nine Ministerialists; they were elected by the votes of 51,721 citizens, whilst the votes of their 33,907 political opponents counted for nothing. Manchester was solid for Liberalism. Birmingham (with Aston Manor) was represented by eight Unionist members elected by 51,658 citizens, but here again the polls disclosed a dissentient minority of 22,938. The total number of votes in Manchester was 85,628, and in Birmingham 74,596. Manchester (with Salford) has one more member than Birmingham (with Aston Manor), because of the larger population and electorate of the former area. The Ministerialists of Manchester and Salford were equal in number to the Unionists in Birmingham, and it is interesting to observe that the former obtained additional representation because their opponents were more numerous than were the opponents of the Unionists in Birmingham.

The combined results of these two districts disclose the crowning weakness of a system of single-member constituencies. Taken together the Unionists numbered 85,565, the Ministerialists 74,659, and if the net Unionist majority of 10,906 had been spread over the whole of the two areas it would have yielded in each constituency the very respectable majority of 640. If their voting power had been evenly diffused the Unionists might have won the whole of the seventeen seats, whereas they were, as a result of the election, in a minority of one. This possible inversion of the true opinion of the electorate may perhaps be more clearly understood from another example taken from the same election,—the results of the polls in the county divisions of Warwickshire.

WARWICKSHIRE (ELECTION, 1906)

Electoral Conservative Liberal Conservative Liberal
Division Votes. Votes. Majority. Majority.
Tamworth 7,561 4,842 2,719 —
Nuneaton 5,849 7,677 — 1,828
Rugby 4,907 5,181 — 274
Stratford-on-Avon 4,173 4,321 — 148
—————————————————————-
22,490 22,021 469

The Conservatives, who were in a majority of 469, obtained one-fourth of the representation allotted to the county. Similar examples can be given from nearly every election. Thus the figures for the five divisions of Sheffield in the election of December 1910 were as follows:—

SHEFFIELD (ELECTION, DECEMBER 1910)

Electoral Ministerial Unionist Ministerial Unionist
Division Votes. Votes. Majority. Majority.
Attercliffe 6,532 5,354 1,178 —
Brightside 5,766 3,902 1,864 —
Central 3,271 3,455 — 184
Eccleshall 5,849 6,039 — 190
Hallam 5,593 5,788 — 195
—————————————————————-
27,011 24,538 2,473

It will be seen that the Ministerial majority in each of the Attercliffe and Brightside divisions was larger than the aggregate of the Unionist majorities in the other three divisions; yet the Unionists obtained three seats out of five.

In the same election the result of the contested seats in London (including Croydon and West Ham) was as follows:—

Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained.
Unionist . . . . . . 268,127 29
Ministerialist . . . . 243,722 31

The Unionists were in a majority of 24,405, but only obtained a minority of the seats. Had their majority been uniformly distributed throughout London there would have been an average majority for the Unionists of 400 in every constituency, and in that case the press would have said that London was solidly Unionist.

It may be contended that the foregoing are isolated cases, but innumerable examples can be culled from electoral statistics showing how a system of single-member constituencies may fail to secure for majorities the influence and power which are rightly theirs. In the General Election of 1895 the contested elections yielded the following results:—

GENERAL ELECTION, 1895 (Contested Constituencies)

Parties. Votes. Seats.
Unionists . . . . . . 1,785,372 282
Home Rulers . . . . 1,823,809 202

These figures show that in a contest extending over no less than 484 constituencies the Unionists, who were in a minority of 38,437, obtained a majority of 80 seats. In this election, if an allowance is made for uncontested constituencies, it will be found that the Unionists were in a majority, but in the General Election of 1886 the figures for the whole of the United Kingdom (including an allowance for uncontested seats made on the same basis[6]) were as follows:—

GENERAL ELECTION, 1886 (All Constituencies)

Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained.
Home Rulers . . . . 2,103,954 283
Unionists . . . . . . 2,049,137 387

This election was regarded as a crushing defeat for Mr. Gladstone. He found himself in the House of Commons in a minority of 104, but his supporters in the country were in a majority. The results of the General Election of 1874—although the system of single-member constituencies had not then been made general—are equally instructive. The figures are as follows:—

GENERAL ELECTION, 1874

Parties. Votes Seats Seats in
Obtained. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Conservative . . . . . . 1,222,000 356 300
Liberal and Home Rulers . 1,436,000 296 352

From this it appears that in 1874, while the Liberals in the United Kingdom, in the aggregate, had a majority of 214,000 votes, the Conservatives had a majority of 60 in the members elected, whereas with a rational system of representation the Liberals should have had a majority of 52.[7]

Such anomalous results are not confined to this country; they are but examples of that inversion of national opinion which marks at all stages the history of elections based on the majority system. Speaking of the United States, Professor Commons says that "as a result of the district system the national House of Representatives is scarcely a representative body. In the fifty-first Congress, which enacted the McKinley Tariff Law, the majority of the representatives were elected by a minority of the voters." In the fifty-third Congress, elected in 1892, the Democrats, with 47.2 per cent, of the vote, obtained 59.8 per cent, of the representatives.

The stupendous Republican victory of 1894 was equally unjustified; the Republican majority of 134 should have been a minority of 7, as against all other parties.[8] Similarly in New South Wales the supporters of Mr. Reid's government, who secured a majority of the seats at the election of 1898, were in a minority of 15,000. The figures of the New York Aldermanic election of 1906 show an equally striking contrast between the actual results of the election and the probable results under a proportional system:—

A "game of dice."

Parties. Seats Seats in
Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Republican 41 18
Democrat 26 27
Municipal Ownership
Candidates 6 25
Socialist — 2

It is unnecessary to proceed with the recital of the anomalous results of existing electoral methods. It has been abundantly shown that a General Election often issues in a gross exaggeration of prevailing opinion; that such exaggeration may at one time involve a complete suppression of the minority, whilst at another time a majority may fail to obtain its fair share of representation. M. Poincaré may well liken an election to a game of dice (he speaks of les coups de dé du système majoritaire,) for no one who has followed the course of elections could have failed to have observed how largely the final results have depended upon chance. This, indeed, was the most striking characteristic of the General Elections of 1910. In the January election there were 144 constituencies in which the successful member was returned by a majority of less than 500. Of these constituencies 69 seats were held by the Ministerialists and 75 by the Unionists. The majorities were in some cases as low as 8, 10, and 14. The aggregate of the majorities in the Ministerialist constituencies amounted to 16,931, and had some 8500 Liberals in these constituencies changed sides, the Ministerialist majority of 124 might have been annihilated. On the other hand, the Unionists held 75 seats by an aggregate majority of 17,389, and had fortune favoured the Ministeralists in these constituencies their majority would have been no less than 274. Such is the stability of the foundation on which the House of Commons rests; such the method to which we trust when it is necessary to consult the nation on grave national issues.

The importance of boundaries.

All these anomalies can be traced to the same cause—that with a single-member system the whole of the representation of a constituency must necessarily be to the majority of the electors, whether that majority be large or small. It directly follows that the results of elections often depend not so much upon the actual strength of political parties, as upon the manner in which that strength is distributed over the country. If that strength is evenly distributed, then the minority may be crushed in every constituency; if unevenly distributed any result is possible. In the latter case the result may be considerably influenced by the manner in which the constituencies are arranged. A slight change in the line of the boundaries of a constituency might easily make a difference of 50 votes, whilst "to carry the dividing line from North to South, instead of from East to West, would, in many localities, completely alter the character of the representation." [9] An example will make this statement clear. Take a town with 13,000 Liberal and 12,000 Conservative electors and divide it into five districts of 5000 electors each. If there is a section of the town in which the Liberals largely preponderate—and it often happens that the strength of one or other of the parties is concentrated in a particular area—the net result of the election in five districts will depend upon the way in which the boundary lines are drawn. The possible results of two different distributions may be shown in an extreme form thus:—

Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 4,000 1,000 Lib. victory. 2nd. 2,400 2,600 Cons. " 3rd. 2,300 2,700 " " 4th. 2,200 2,800 " " 5th. 2,100 2,900 " " ——— ——— 13,000 12,000

Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. victory. 2st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 3st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 4th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 5th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " ——— ——— 13,000 12,000

The gerrymander.

With one set of boundaries the area in which the Liberals largely preponderate might be enclosed in one constituency. The Liberals might obtain a majority of 3000 in this constituency but lose the other four seats. If, however, the boundary lines were so arranged that each constituency included a portion of this excessively Liberal area, the Liberals might obtain the whole of the five seats. In both cases the result of the election would fail to give a true presentation of the real opinions of the town. The influence of boundaries in determining the results of an election has been clearly realized in the United States for more than a century. Professor Commons states that whenever the periodical rearrangement of constituencies takes place the boundaries are "gerrymandered." "Every apportionment Act," says he, "that has been passed in this or any other country has involved inequality; and it would be absurd to ask a political party to pass such an Act, and give the advantage of the inequality to the opposite party. Consequently, every apportionment Act involves more or less of the gerrymander. The gerrymander is simply such a thoughtful construction of districts as will economize the votes of the party in power by giving it small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a small number of districts…. Many of the worst gerrymanders have been so well designed that they come close within all constitutional requirements." [10] Although the National Congress has stated that the district for congressional elections must be a compact and contiguous territory, the law is everywhere disregarded.

The word "gerrymander" has found its way into English journalism. It was used by Liberals in their criticism of Mr. Balfour's abortive redistribution scheme of 1905, and has been equally used by Unionists in 1909 in their criticism of Mr. Harcourt's London Elections Bill. On neither occasion was the word used in its original meaning, and, although its history is to be found in most works on electoral methods, the story may, perhaps, be repeated with advantage:—

"The term Gerrymander dates from the year 1811, when Elbridge Gerry was Governor of Massachusetts, and the Democratic, or, as it was then termed, the Republican party, obtained a temporary ascendency in the State. In order to secure themselves in the possession of the Government, the party in power passed the famous law of 11 February 1812, providing for a new division of the State into senatorial districts, so contrived that in as many districts as possible the Federalists should be outnumbered by their opponents. To effect this all natural and customary lines were disregarded, and some parts of the State, particularly the counties of Worcester and Essex, presented similar examples of political geography. It is said that Gilbert Stuart, seeing in the office of the Columbian Centinel an outline of the Essex outer district, nearly encircling the rest of the country, added with his pencil a beak to Salisbury, and claws to Salem and Marblehead, exclaiming, 'There, that will do for a salamander!' 'Salamander!' said Mr. Russell, the editor: 'I call it a Gerrymander!' The mot obtained vogue, and a rude cut of the figure published in the Centinel and in the Salem Gazette, with the natural history of the monster duly set forth, served to fix the word in the political vocabulary of the country. So efficient was the law that at the elections of 1812, 50,164 Democratic voters elected twenty-nine senators against eleven elected by 51,766 Federalists; and Essex county, which, when voting as a single district had sent five Federalists to the Senate, was now represented in that body by three Democrats and two Federalists." [11]

Mr. Balfour's scheme did not involve a political rearrangement of boundaries, and the word "gerrymandering" was thus incorrectly employed in relation to it, but so long as we retain a system of single-member constituencies a Redistribution Bill will always invite suspicion because of the possibilities of influencing the arrangement of constituencies which such a measure affords. Instructions are usually given to boundary commissioners to attach due consideration "to community or diversity of interests, means of communication, physical features, existing electoral boundaries, sparsity or density of population;" [12] but although such instructions are at once reasonable and just, they would not prevent, and indeed might be used to facilitate, a gerrymander in the American sense of the term were such a proceeding determined upon. It is quite conceivable that a mining district in which one party had a very large majority might be surrounded by an area in which the political conditions were more balanced, but in which the opposite party had a small majority. If that mining area was, in accordance with the wording of these instructions, treated as one constituency because of its community of interests and the surrounding area divided into three or more districts, the minority would in all probability obtain a majority of seats.

The modern gerrymander

The new constituencies required by the South Africa Act of 1909 have been arranged with the utmost care,[13] but had the delegates to the South African National Convention adhered to their original proposal to abandon single-member constituencies, they would have secured for South Africa, among other invaluable benefits, complete security from the gerrymander, any possibility of which begets suspicion and reacts in a disastrous way upon political warfare. The gerrymander is nothing more or less than a fraudulent practice. But the United States is not the only country in which such practices take place. Their counter-part in Canada was described by Sir John Macdonald as "hiving the grits," and even in England, without any change of boundaries, practices have arisen within the last few years which have had their birth in the same motives that produced the American gerrymander. In boroughs which are divided into more than one constituency there is a considerable number of voters who have qualifications in more than one division. A man may vote in any division in which he has a qualification, but in not more than one. He may make his choice. In Edinburgh for many years, on both sides of politics, there has been a constant transfer of voters from one register to another in the hopes of strengthening the party's position in one or other division. It was even alleged that the precise moment of a vacancy in West Edinburgh (May 1909) was determined by the desire to ascertain the strength of the Unionist party in that division, to discover how many Unionist votes should be transferred for the purpose of improving Unionist prospects or of defeating the designs of their opponents. This allegation may be wholly unfounded, but the single-member system encourages such a proceeding, and the statement at least indicates how the voting power of a division may be manipulated. The mere possibility of such an action arouses the suspicion that it has taken place. Similar practices have, it is stated, been pursued in Bristol. Votes have been transferred from one division, where one of the parties was in a hopeless minority, for the purpose of strengthening its position in other divisions. An examination of the figures of the election in Birmingham in 1906 shows that in one division, Birmingham East, the Unionists narrowly escaped defeat. They won by a majority of 585 only. In the other divisions the Unionists won by very large majorities. Must not the possibility of transferring surplus votes in strong constituencies to strengthen the position in weak constituencies prove an irresistible temptation to the agents responsible for the success of the party? They are entitled to make use of all the advantages at their disposal. In this way a new and more subtle form of the "gerrymander" has arisen in England, and if we are to redeem English political warfare from proceedings which approximate very closely to sharp practices, we must so amend our electoral system as to give due weight to the votes not only of the majority but of the minority as well.

The Block Vote

The analysis of the results of majority systems would not be complete without some reference to the use of the "block" vote in the London County Council, the London Borough Council, and other elections. In the London County Council elections each constituency returns two members, and each elector can give one vote to each of two candidates. The Metropolitan boroughs are divided into wards returning from three to nine members, each elector giving one vote apiece to candidates up to the number to be returned. [14] Both in the London County and London Borough elections the majority, as in a single-member constituency, can obtain the whole of the representation. All the defects which arise from parliamentary elections again appear, and often in a more accentuated form. The figures of the two London County elections, 1904, 1907, disclose a catastrophic change in representation similar to that which characterized the General Election of 1906:—

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION, 1904

Seats in
Parties. Votes. Seats proportion
Obtained. to Votes.

Progressive and Labour 357,557 83 64
Moderate 287,079 34 52
Independent 12,940 1 2

Progressive majority over
Moderates 70,478 49 12

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION, 1907
Seats in
Parties. Votes. Seats proportion
Obtained. to Votes.

Moderate 526,700 79 67
Progressive and Labour 395,749 38 50
Independent 6,189 1 1

Moderate majority over
Progressive and Labour 130,951 41 17

The London County Council elections.

A swing of the pendulum which, measured in votes, would have transferred a majority of twelve into a minority of seventeen, had the effect of changing a majority of 49 into a minority of 41. This alternate exaggeration of the prevailing tendencies in municipal politics gives rise to a false impression of the real opinions of the elector. The citizens of London are not so unstable as the composition of their Council, but it is the more violent displacement which forms the basis of comment in the press and of municipal action. These elections, too, like the Parliamentary elections, showed with what ease the minority throughout large areas may be deprived of representation. Six adjoining suburban boroughs—Brixton, Norwood, Dulwich, Lewisham, Greenwich, Woolwich—were, before the election of 1907, represented by twelve Progressives. At that election they returned twelve Moderates; indeed on that occasion the outer western and southern boroughs, in one continuous line from Hampstead to Fulham, from Wandsworth to Woolwich, returned Moderates and Moderates only.

The election of aldermen of the L.C.C.

The London County Council elections of 1910 gave the Municipal Reform party a majority of two councillors over the Progressive and Labour parties. The transfer of a single vote in Central Finsbury would have been sufficient to have produced an exact balance. It was the duty of the new Council to elect the aldermen, the block vote being used. The majority of two was sufficient to enable the Municipal Reformers to carry the election of every one of the ten candidates nominated by them, thus depriving the minority of any voice in the election of aldermen. The object for which aldermen were instituted was entirely set at naught, and this the method of election alone made possible. The privilege of selecting aldermen was used by the party in power, not for the purpose of strengthening the Council by the addition of representative men, but for the purpose of strengthening the party position.[15] The privilege has been abused in a similar way by the English provincial boroughs. In these boroughs, prior to the Election of Aldermen Act, 1910, aldermen as well as councillors took part in the election of aldermen. In some cases a party having once obtained a predominant position has, by making full use of its power to elect aldermen in sympathy with itself, succeeded in perpetuating its predominance, although defeated at the polls. The minority of the councillors, with the assistance of the non-retiring aldermen, has not only elected further aldermen from members of the same party, but has controlled the policy of the Council. The Act referred to merely prevents aldermen in municipal councils from voting in the election of other aldermen, but does not go to the root of the evil. An alteration in the method of election is required.

[Sidenote 1: The election of Representative Peers of Scotland.]

A further example of the use of the block vote may be taken from the election of Scottish Representative Peers. At the commencement of each Parliament the Scottish Peers meet in Holyrood Palace for the purpose of electing sixteen of their number to represent the peerage of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Unionist Peers are in a majority, and the block vote enables them to choose sixteen Unionist Peers. At the election of January 1910 Lord Torphichen, a Unionist Peer, who had voted against his party on the Finance Bill of the previous year, failed to secure re-election. Lord Torphichen was elected in the following December, but the incident shows how complete is the power conferred upon the majority by this method of election; not only political opponents but dissenting members of the same party can be excluded from representation.

The Australian Senate.

The block vote is used also in the election of members of the Australian Senate. Each State elects six senators, half of whom retire every three years. Each State is polled as a separate constituency, and each elector has three votes. At the election of 1910 the Labour Party polled the highest number of votes in each of the States, and thus succeeded in returning eighteen senators, all other parties obtaining none. The figures here given for the elections in Victoria and New South Wales show that in Victoria the successful candidates were not even supported by a majority of electors, and that in both States the excess of the successful over their leading opponents was so small that a slight turn over would have completely altered the result of the elections:—

ELECTION of AUSTRALIAN SENATORS, 1910

Victoria.

Successful. Unsuccessful.

Findley (Lab.)….217,673 Best (Fusionist) ……. 213,976
Barker (Lab.)…..216,199 Trenwith (Fusionist)…. 211,058
Blakey (Lab.)…..215,117 M'Cay (Fusionist) …… 195,477
Goldstein (Independent) 53,583
Ronald (Independent) … 18,380

648,889 692,474

New South Wales.

Successful. Unsuccessful.

A.M'Dougall(Lab.) …, 249,212 J.P. Gray (Fusionist)… 220,569
A. Gardiner (Lab.) … 247,047 E. Pulsford (Fusionist). 214,889
A. Rae (Lab.)……….239,307 J. C. Neild (Fusionist). 212,150
J. Norton (Independ.)… 50,893
R. Mackenzie (Independ.) 13,608
J.O. Maroney (Independ.) 9,660
T. Hoare (Independ.)…. 8,432

735,566 730,201

London Borough Councils

The London Borough Council elections yield results equally unsatisfactory. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords which, in 1907, examined the Municipal Representation Bill introduced by Lord Courtney of Penwith, sums up these results in the following paragraphs:—

"If the different wards are similar in character, the majority, even if little more than one-half, may secure all the seats. For instance, in one borough the Progressives, with 19,430 votes, obtained all the 30 seats, and the Municipal Reformers, though they polled 11,416 votes, did not obtain even one; while, on the contrary, in four other boroughs the Progressives did not secure any representation. "On the other hand, the system does not in all cases secure power to the majority. If the wards are dissimilar and the majority too much condensed in certain districts, the minority may secure a majority of seats, as in the case of one borough where 46,000 votes secured 30 seats, while 54,000 votes only obtained 24.

"The system leads to violent fluctuations. If the two great parties are nearly evenly divided, it is obvious that a comparatively small change may create a revolution in the representation. In Lewisham, at the 1903 election, the Progressives had 34 seats and the Moderates only 6; in 1905, on the other hand, the Municipal Reformers obtained all the 42 seats, and the Progressives failed to secure even one."[16]

One example will suffice to illustrate the findings of this Committee.
Here are the results of two wards in the Borough of Battersea:—

BATTERSEA BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTION, 1906

Ward Votes Obtained.
Municipal Reform Progressive
Candidates. Candidates.

Shaftesbury 786 905 }
(six seats) 777 902 }
769 899 }all
753 895 }successful.
753 891 }
741 852 }
——- ——-
Totals 4,579 5,344

St. John's 747 } 217
(three seats) 691 }all 197
686 }successful. 191
——- ——-
Totals 2,124 605

Totals for both wards 6,703 5,949

These tables disclose some curious anomalies. Each elector in the Shaftesbury ward has six votes—the ward being entitled to six Councillors—whereas each elector in the St. John's ward, which is only entitled to three Councillors, has but three votes. The additional representation is allotted to the Shaftesbury ward because of its larger electorate, but the only electors to reap any advantage from this fact are the Progressives. The presence in the ward of a large number of citizens who are Municipal Reformers has merely had the effect of increasing the amount of representation obtained by their opponents. Further, the number of Municipal Reformers in the Shaftesbury ward exceeded the number of Municipal Reformers in the St. John's ward; in the former they obtained no representation, in the latter they obtained three seats. The two wards taken together showed a net majority in votes of 754 for the Municipal Reformers who, however, only secured three seats out of nine. Taking the Borough as a whole the Municipal Reformers obtained 24 representatives with 53,910 votes, whereas the Progressives obtained 30 representatives with 46,274 votes.

Provincial Municipal Councils.

Nor are the results of the Provincial Borough elections more satisfactory. These boroughs are usually divided into wards returning three or six members each. One-third of the councillors retire each year, and each ward is called upon to elect one or two councillors, as the case may be. The figures for the Municipal elections held in November 1908, at Manchester, Bradford, and Leeds disclose a similar discrepancy between the votes polled and the seats obtained. [See table below.]

BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTIONS, 1908

Parties Votes Seats Seats in
Polled. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.

Manchester.
Conservative 25,724 14 10
Independent 11,107 3 4
Liberal 14,474 7 6
Labour and Socialist 15,963 2 6

Bradford.
Conservative 12,809 10 6
Liberal 12,106 6 5
Socialist-Labour 11,388 0 5
Independent 1,709 1 1

Leeds.
Conservative 18,145 8 5
Liberal 19,507 3 5
Socialist-Labour 9,615 1 2
Independent 3,046 1 1

Summary.

The examples given in this chapter may be briefly summarised. The same defects are disclosed in Parliamentary, County Council and Municipal (both metropolitan and provincial) elections. These defects may be classified under three heads: (1) often a gross exaggeration of the strength of the victorious party; (2) sometimes a complete disfranchisement of the minority; and (3) at other times a failure of a majority of citizens to obtain their due share of representation. In addition, running through all the results, there is an element of instability due to the fact that a slight change in public opinion may produce an altogether disproportionate effect, the violence of the swing of the pendulum arising more from the electoral method than from the fickleness of the electorate. These defects all spring from the same root cause—that the representation of any constituency is awarded to the majority of the electors in that constituency irrespective of the size of the majority; that the votes of the minority count for nothing. The result of a General Election is thus often dependent not upon the relative strengths of political forces, but upon the chance way in which those forces are distributed, and in a considerable measure may be influenced by the way in which the boundaries of constituencies are drawn. Such a system invites and encourages gerrymandering, both in its original and modern forms, but this detestable practice can be made of no avail and the results of elections rendered trustworthy if we so reform present methods as to give due weight to the strength of each political party irrespective of the way in which that strength may be distributed.

[Footnote 1: Reply to Deputation, House of Commons, 10 November 1908.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Corbett's analyses were accepted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as "representing the truth as nearly as circumstances will permit."—Report, p. 31.]

[Footnote 3: There is a marked difference between the electoral conditions of Great Britain and Ireland, but as the Government of the day depends for support upon a majority of the representatives of all parts of the kingdom, the figures here given are those for the United Kingdom.]

[Footnote 4: Mr. Gladstone, in introducing the Redistribution of Seats Bill, 1 December 1884, said: "The recommendations of this system (one-member districts) I think are these—that it is very economical, it is very simple, and it goes a very long way towards that which many gentlemen have much at heart, viz., what is roughly termed representation of minorities."—Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 294, p. 379.]

[Footnote 5: Other examples are given in Appendix V. The representation of minorities varies very considerably in amount, and, as shown in the Appendix, depends not upon their size but upon the way in which they are distributed over the electoral area.]

[Footnote 6: The basis of calculation, as explained by Mr. Rooke Corbett, is as follows: "It seems to me reasonable to suppose that those changes of public opinion which affected the contested constituencies affected the uncontested constituencies also, and therefore, in estimating the number of voters in an uncontested constituency, I have assumed that the strength of each party varied from one election to another in the same ratio as in the contested constituencies in the same county."—P. R. Pamphlet, No. 14. Recent Electoral Statistics, p. 5.]

[Footnote 7: These figures are taken from an article by Robert B.
Hayward in The Nineteenth Century, February 1884, p. 295.]

[Footnote 8: Proportional Representation, by Professor Commons, p. 52 et seq. For further examples in the United States the reader should consult Chapter III. of Professor Commons' book.]

[Footnote 9: Preferential Voting, by the Right Hon. J. Parker Smith. p. 8.]

[Footnote 10: Proportional Representation, p. 50.]

[Footnote 11: The Machinery of Politics, W. R. Warn, 1872.]

[Footnote 12: Such instructions are contained in Clause 40 of the South
African Act, signed by the South African National Convention at
Bloemfontein, 11 May 1909.]

[Footnote 13: See Report of Delimitation Commission.]

[Footnote 14: This electoral method is known by various names. In Australia it is called the block vote, in the United States the general ticket, on the Continent the scrutin de liste.]

[Footnote 15: The action was defended on the ground that the Municipal
Reform party had obtained a majority of 39,653 votes at the polls.]

[Footnote 16: Report on Municipal Representation Bill (H.L.), 1907 (132), p. vi.]