Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election

by John H. Humphreys

The Gove or Dobbs Method.

The methods of transfer hitherto described all enable the voter to maintain complete power over the disposal his vote. It has, however, been suggested that the candidate for whom the vote is recorded should have the privilege of deciding to whom it should be transferred. The suggestion was first made by Mr. Archibald E. Dobbs, who, in 1872, in a pamphlet entitled General Representation, made the proposal that before the date of the election each candidate should publish a schedule of the names of any of the other candidates to whom he desired his vote to be transferred. This method of transfer by schedule is usually known as the "Gove" method, and was contained in the Bill submitted by Mr. W. H. Gove to the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1891. Section 7 of this Bill reads as follows: "Votes shall be transferred according to the request of the candidate for whom they were originally cast to a person named in the list furnished by said candidate before the date of the election." With this method the elector in recording his vote for any one candidate would have no independent power of indicating to whom the vote should be transferred, and Mr. Dobbs, in a later pamphlet[11] has suggested that the elector should be given the option of accepting the schedule of preferences published by the candidate, or of indicating his own. Mr. Dobbs thus gets rid of the compulsory acceptance of a schedule of preferences, a proposal to which most English-speaking electors would have an instinctive dislike. But even to an optional schedule certain objections remain. The system has lost in simplicity, and the order of the candidates in the particular schedules would be determined in most cases by the party organizations.

The transferability of votes is the connecting link between all these systems; it is the essential feature upon which depends the proportionate representation of the contending parties, and the mode of transfer is properly regarded as a matter upon which different views may be held. As regards the second and third systems of transfer outlined above—which so far are the only ones which have been put into practice—experience confirms the theoretical conclusions of mathematicians that, save in the case of small electorates, both methods yield the same result. The second method was that used by the Proportional Representation Society for the purpose of its model elections, and is now applied in the election of Municipal Councils in Johannesburg and Pretoria. A description of the Model Election of 1908 will serve to illustrate the various processes involved in the sorting and counting of votes.

The model election of 1908.

In this election it was assumed that the voters in a constituency returning five members were asked to make their choice among twelve candidates. These candidates were all well-known political men, and were chosen with an attempt at impartiality from the Liberal, the Unionist, and the Independent Labour parties. As no Irish newspaper was publishing the ballot paper, no Nationalist was included.[12] This ballot paper, a copy of which appears on page 147, was sent, accompanied by a short explanatory article, for publication to, and appeared in, the following newspapers: The Times, The Morning Post, The Spectator, The Nation, The Daily News, The Financial News, The Manchester Guardian, The Yorkshire Post, The Yorkshire Daily Observer, The Western Morning News, The Western Daily Mercury, The Glasgow Herald, The Dundee Advertiser, The Woolwich Pioneer, and The Labour Leader. Readers of the newspapers were asked to cut out the ballot paper, mark it and return it to Caxton Hall by the first post on the morning of Tuesday, 1 December 1908. Ballot papers were also circulated independently among members of the Proportional Representation Society and their friends. About 18,000 papers were returned by newspaper readers, and about 3700 by members of the Society and their friends. In all a constituency of 21,690 electors was formed, a number whose votes were enough, but not too many, for counting in a single evening.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ELECTION, 1908

BALLOT PAPER

PLEASE VOTE

In this Illustrative Election FIVE members are to be elected for a single constituency, such as Leeds. The following TWELVE Candidates are supposed to have been nominated.

Order of
Preference. Names of Candidates