Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election

by John H. Humphreys

M. Sarrien fils (Radical) 5,770 votes
M. Duoarouge (Socialist) 4,367 "
M. Magnien (Conservative) 3,968 "

At the second ballot—

M. Ducarouge (Socialist) 6,841 " Elected
M. Sarrien fils (Radical) 5,339 "
M. Magnien (Conservative) 301 "

It should be explained that the Conservative candidate, although his name still appeared upon the ballot paper, retired before the second election, and it is evident that the votes of many of his supporters were given to the Socialist candidate. In the following April (1909) several further instances occurred. At Uzès a vacancy was caused by the death of a Radical Socialist member who, at the General Election of 1906, had beaten the Duc d'Uzès, a Reactionary, the Socialist candidate on that occasion being at the bottom of the poll. In the bye-election the Socialist was returned at the head of the poll, but so obvious was the fact that the Socialist owed his victory to Conservative support, that he was received in the Chamber by the Radicals with the cry of "M. le duc d'Uzès." Uzès was typical of other elections and, as the Paris correspondent of The Morning Post remarked, "the successes of the Unified Socialists in the recent series of bye-elections are in part to be attributed to the votes of the Reactionaries, who voted for the Unified candidates as being enemies of the Republic." This abuse of the purpose of second ballots—an abuse engendered by the failure of the minority to obtain direct representation—destroys the last semblance of sincerity in the representation of a constituency, and must hasten the abolition of the second ballots in France in the same way as combinations of a similar nature rendered imperative the introduction of a more rational system of election in Belgium.

The foregoing facts are sufficient to show that a system of second ballots does not necessarily result in the formation of a legislative chamber fully representative of the electorate. In Germany the largest party has had its representation ruthlessly cut down by the operation of the second ballots. Indeed, were it not for the overwhelming predominance of this party in certain areas it might not have obtained any representation whatever. In Belgium the effect of the second ballots was to deprive the middle party, the Liberals, of their fair share of representation. In 1896, owing to the coalitions of Socialists and Catholics at the polls, the Liberals had only eleven representatives in the popular chamber. All their leaders had been driven from Parliament, their electoral associations had become completely disorganized save in some large towns, and in many constituencies they had ceased to take part in elections. Yet the results of the very first elections (1900) after the establishment of proportional representation, showed that the Liberals were the second largest party in the State, and that it was a party which still responded to the needs and still gave voice to the views of large numbers of citizens.

The bargainings at the second ballots in France.]

The system of second ballots not only deprives large sections of the electorate of representation, but the very coalitions which produce this result bring parliamentary institutions into still further disrepute. These coalitions are condemned in unequivocal terms by Continental writers and statesmen of widely differing schools of thought. The scathing language of M. Jaures has already been quoted, and we find his views endorsed by politicians of the type of M. Deschanel, an ex-President of the Chamber of Deputies, who declared that these coalitions entirely falsify the character of the popular verdict. Again, M. Yves Guyot, an ex-Minister, asserts that "the second ballots give rise to detestable bargainings which obliterate all political sense in the electors." M. Raymond Poincare, a Senator and a former Minister, condemns the system of second ballots in equally forcible language. "It will be of no use," he says, "to replace one kind of constituency by another if we do not, at the same time, suppress the gamble of the majority system and the jobbery of the second ballots." These expressions of opinion on the part of individual French politicians could be multiplied, but it will be sufficient to add to them the more formal and official declaration of the Commission du Suffrage Universel, a Parliamentary Committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies. In the Report issued by this Committee in 1907, it is declared that "the abolition of the second ballots with the bargainings to which they give rise will not be the least of the advantages of the new system [proportional representation]."

The "Kuh-Handel" in Germany.

It would appear that the German second ballots are also characterized by this same evil of bargaining. Karl Blind, writing in The Nineteenth Century, March 1907, stated that "in this last election the oddest combinations have taken place for the ballots in the various parts of the Empire and within different States. There was no uniformity of action as to coming to a compromise between Conservative and Liberal, or Liberal and Social Democrat, or Centre and any other party, as against some supposed common enemy who was to be ousted from his insufficient majority by a subsequent alliance between otherwise discordant groups, or who wanted to have his insufficient majority increased to an absolute one by the addition of the vote of one of the defeated candidates whose friends finally choose the 'lesser evil'….

"To some extent these necessary, but sometimes rather sordid, transactions are made all the more difficult through the very existence of separate States with 'Home Rule' legislatures of their own. Political development has in them gone so far in a centrifugal sense that the nation has been sadly split up and the public mind too much divided into merely local concerns and issues….