The Short Ballot.—Throughout the United States the number of elective offices steadily increased during the nineteenth century. The result was that ballots gradually became longer until in some cases the voters found themselves confronted with sheets of paper containing a hundred names or even more. It proved exceedingly difficult to use proper discrimination among so many names and hence there arose an agitation for simplifying the ballot by reducing the number of positions to be filled by election. In a democratic government all officials who have authority to decide questions of general policy—the President, senators, representatives, governors, assemblymen, mayors, councilors, and the like—ought to be chosen by popular vote. But there are many other officials, such as state auditors, county clerks, and superintendents of schools, whose duties are chiefly administrative. These officials carry out a policy which is laid down for them by law, and it is contended that they should not be elected but appointed. If all such officials were made appointive, the size of the ballot would be considerably reduced, and the voters could concentrate their attention upon a smaller number of names.
A ballot is not an effective instrument of popular government unless it is simple enough for the average voter to use intelligently. When a ballot is so long, so complicated, and so unwieldy that the voter is tempted by sheer exhaustion into voting a straight party ticket, then the party leaders, and not the people, are really choosing the officers of government. The movement for a “short ballot” aims to make government more truly democratic, not less so.
Defects of the ordinary ballot.
The Preferential Ballot.—Another defect of the ordinary ballot is that it allows the voter to indicate only a single choice for each office. If there are five candidates for the office of mayor, let us say, the voter may mark his ballot for one of them only. He is not permitted to indicate who would be his second choice, or his third choice among the five. Whichever candidate gets the largest number of first choices among the voters is the winner, although he may be the choice of a small minority. To prevent this likelihood of election by a minority when there are several candidates in the field for a single office a system of “preferential voting” is sometimes used.
How the preferential system works.
Where the preferential ballot is in use, as it is in several American cities, the voters are asked to indicate, in columns provided for this purpose, not only their first but their second and third choices and even their further choices among the various candidates. The names of those candidates whom the voter does not want to support are left unmarked. When preferential ballots are counted, any candidate who has a clear majority of first choices is declared elected. But if no candidate obtains a majority of first choices, the second choices are added to the first choices and if the two totals combined give what would be a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate who received them is declared elected. In like manner the third choices are resorted to if necessary.[[46]] The candidate elected by the preferential system is practically always the choice of a majority among the voters, not the first choice of a majority always, but one whom a majority have indicated their willingness to support. The chief practical objection to the preferential ballot is that many voters do not take the trouble to mark their second and third choices.
The problem of minority representation.
Proportional Representation.[[47]]—Preferential voting should be distinguished from proportional representation, which is a plan of choosing legislative bodies in such a way that all considerable groups of voters will be represented in proportion to their own numbers. Whenever several representatives are elected on the same ballot it usually happens that one political party secures them all. So many voters adhere to the “straight ticket” that the entire party slate wins. The minority party, even though it may comprise nearly half the voters, in such cases obtains no representation at all. This, of course, does not give us a true system of representative government; hence various plans have been put forward for securing to “each considerable party or group of opinion” a representation corresponding to its numerical strength among the voters. The best known among these is the Hare Plan, which has been used in several foreign countries and, during recent years, in a few American cities.[[48]]
The Hare plan explained.
This system of proportional representation is somewhat complicated but may be concisely described as follows: First, the names of all candidates are printed alphabetically on the ballot and the voter indicates his choices by marking the figure 1 after the name of his first choice, the figure 2 after the name of his second choice, and so on. Then, when the polls are closed, the election officers compute the number of votes needed to elect a candidate and this is called “the quota”. This they do by dividing into the total number of votes cast the number of places to be filled, plus one, and then adding one to the quotient. For example, let us suppose that 10,000 votes have been cast and that there are seven candidates to be elected. Ten thousand divided by eight (seven plus one) is 1250 and any candidate who receives 1251 first-choice votes is declared elected. If such candidate, however, has more votes than enough to fill his quota, the surplus votes are distributed in accordance with the indicated second-choices among candidates whose quotas have not been filled. If enough candidates are not elected by this process, the candidate with the smallest number of first choices is then dropped and his votes are distributed in the same way. This process of elimination and distribution goes on until enough candidates have filled their quotas or until the successive eliminations have left no more than enough to fill the vacant positions. This plan is not a model of simplicity, of course, but it is not so difficult to understand as one might at first glance imagine, nor in its actual workings does it present any serious complications. What the voter has to do is simple enough. In so far as there are any difficulties they arise in connection with counting the ballots, not in marking them. The plan is workable and the attainment of proportional representation in all our legislative bodies would be a great gain.