Ashworth and Ashworth PR Applied to Party Government (1900) much on early STV, excerpts and highlights

https://archive.org/details/proportionalrep00ashwgoog

T.R. ASHWORTH (President of the Victorian Division, Australian Free Trade and Liberal Association)

H.P.C. ASHWORTH (Civil Engineer)

We are now threatened with the adoption of the Block Vote for the Federal Senate, and in some of the States for the House of Representatives as well; and it is in the hope of preventing this wrong that the present book is written.

states

p. 139

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 large number of districts.

the so-called cracking and packing

With enlarged or grouped electorates the periodical revision of boundaries would be entirely obviated, because the size of the electorate may be kept constant, and the number of representatives varied. Under such a system all unfairness would disappear, and the gerrymander would be impossible. Representation would automatically follow the movements of population.

p. 29-
Miss Spence. — An active campaign has for some time 
been carried on for the adoption of the Hare system 
in Australia. Miss C. H. Spence, of South Australia, 
was the pioneer reformer, and has laboured in the 
cause by pen and voice for no less than forty years. 
Great credit is undoubtedly due to Miss Spence for the 
clear and simple manner in which she has expounded 
the system, and for the good work she has done in 
exposing the defects of the present methods. Not only 
has she lectured in all parts of Australia, but she has 
made visits to England, where she met Mr. Hare 
and Sir John Lubbock, and also to America. But we 
may admire Miss Spence's courage and devotion to 
principle without agreeing with her conclusions. 

At a meeting held at River House, Chelsea, London, 
in 1894, Miss Spence submitted an analysis of 3,824 
votes recorded at 50 public meetings in South Aus- 
tralia. The audiences were in each case asked to 
select six representatives out of twelve candidates. 
The result of a scrutiny of all the votes combined was 
that the following six " parties " secured one " repre- 
sentative" each — viz., Capital, Labour, Single Tax, 



n. REPRESENTATIVE PRINCIPLE. 31 

Irish Catholic, Prohibition, and Women's Suffrage. 
Miss Spence frankly confesses that these " parties " 
are minorities, but holds that a majority can be formed 
by the union of minorities, and that party responsible 
government can still be carried on. Now, can any 
sensible man or woman imagine a working ministry 
formed by a union of any four of these "parties?" 
Capital would certainly be permanently opposed to 
Labour and to Single Tax, and as for the others, there 
is not a single principle in common. How, then, could 
a union be formed ? The only possible way is by log- 
rolling; they must make a bargain to support one 
another's demands. Such a union could not possibly 
be stable, because the minority is free to offer a better 
bargain to any one of the " parties " to induce it to 
desert. Again, it may be called the rule of the 
majority, but what sort of a majority ? Is it not 
plainly the rule of a majority in the interests of 
minorities ? That is very different to the rule of the 
majority in the interests of all, which free government 
demands. The simple truth is that the " parties " are 
factions, and that the "representatives" are mere 
delegates of those factions. 

But in practice the case would be far worse than we have assumed. There is not the slightest guarantee that the same six factions would be elected in each six-seat electorate. We might have an 
unlimited number of delegates of various religions, 
classes, races, localities, and political organizations on all kinds of single questions. An assembly formed on these lines could hardly be dignified with the name of a representative assembly.