From Sandford Fleming's 1893 book Essays on Rectification of Parliament.
Essay No. 11 by "Equality" (identity unknown)
Part C Chapters 5 to 7 plus Appendix
-------------------
Outline of Contents
CHAPTER V Proportional Representation page 156
A BILL For the Election of Congressional Representatives by Pro-rep page 157
defence of the proposed bill page 162
why should a minority party be excluded when its vote is less than 85 p.c. of quota.
In the first place, exact justice is impossible. ...
Provision made to prevent an elector from losing any of his full number of lawful votes
CHAPTER VI ADVANTAGES OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION page 165
1. Pro-rep recognizes the nature of modern political problems page 165
2. The bill proposed is as simple as any that has been offered for effecting this kind of reform page 166
3. Pro-rep is eminently elastic in its adaptation to changes in population page 166
4. the justice and equality of pro-rep page page 166
5. Pro-rep promises independence of the voters and freedom from rule of the party machine page 167
Broda Count
6. Pro-rep brings into legislative assemblies able and experienced men, the true leaders and representatives of their parties and the people page 173
two features of proportional representation that permit the voters to discriminate between individuals, and to hold them, instead of parties, responsible page 175
We have a sham representation. page 175
7. Pro-rep would purify elections by removing the most potent of inducements for bribery and corruption. page 176
8. Legislatures would become deliberative assemblies instead of arenas for party strife. page 176
Two objections against pro-rep:
it would do away with party responsibility
give a small minority the balance of power, enable them to dictate
legislation.
solutions to clear moral issues could be compromised with benefit to all classes and individuals page 179
Chapter VII Conclusion page 182
Appendix - (relating to page 162) page 183
--------------------------
Chapters V, VI, VII and Appendix
Chapter V. Proportional Representation.
The General Ticket thus shows itself to be crude and barbarous. But it offers an opportunity to introduce with the very slightest of amendments what is destined to prove the most important reform in government since the invention of representation itself. It is an amendment that naturally suggests itself to anyone who examines the results of an election on the general ticket. This reform is simply the apportionment of representatives among the different parties on a general ticket in exact proportion to their popular vote.
Take, for example, the election already cited, for members of the Cleveland school board. (See also page 154)
There are seven members to be elected. Each party nominates seven candidates.
Why should it not naturally occur to distribute the successful candidates between the two parties in such a way that the Republicans with 110,518 votes would obtain four members, and the Democrats with 91,764 votes would obtain three members? This would give each party its fair share of representatives.
The total number of Cleveland votes is 202,286.
This divided by seven gives 28,898 as the number required to elect a single candidate.
The shares of each party would be determined by dividing in turn their total votes by this quotient, with the following results:
Republican Vote 110,518 divided by 28,898 3 remainder of 23,824
Democratic Vote 91,764 divided by 28,898 3 remainder of 5,070
Total 6
There being seven to elect and the Republicans, having the largest remainder above the three full quotas, are entitled to the remaining candidate, giving them four members and the Democrats three.
The individual candidates elected would be discovered by taking those on each ticket whose vote stands the highest, namely, Republicans – Daykin, Ford, House, and Buss; Democrats – Dodge, Goulder and Pollner.
Could anything be fairer or more natural than this? Nothing whatever is left to chance. Equality is assured as exact as mathematics can make it. Each party elected its own most popular candidates. The transition from the form of the present system is scarcely noticeable, but the transition from its essence is profound and far-reaching.
But it must be confessed that a scheme so simple and just as proportional representation requires a multitude of minds and a depth of thought for its perfection. The simplest things in politics as in mechanics are the last to be thought of. Besides there are many details in the election machinery that must be carefully worked out in order to give the greatest freedom to the voters and obviate every possible blunder. In the proposed bill that follows is incorporated the points that seem best and simplest for attaining the desired object. I borrowed them from whatever source they may be found.
The bill is given here in full. Comment upon its several features is reserved until the reader has surveyed it as a whole. But it may be well first to designate the sources from which its distinctive features have been derived. The machinery of nomination and election and the common official ballot are drawn from the secret ballot law of the state of Indiana, probably the best law of its kind in the U.S.. Many of the proportional features correspond with the admirable law for the election of deputies to the Grand Council, which went into effect on the 3rd of September, 1892 in the canton of Geneva. [page 157]
The provision for cumulation of votes is borrowed from a bill drawn up by Dr. L.B. Tuckerman and Mr. Webster, of Cleveland, Ohio, and introduced by Hon. Tom Johnson in the House of Representatives in June 1892. A similar device has also been proposed by Mr. Wesdake, of the English Proportional Representation Society. The details for the application of the cumulative vote, the plan for the exclusion of a minority party having less than 85 percent of a full quota of votes and many other details are the work of the present writer.
The bill is made applicable to the election of representatives for the lower branch of the U.S. Congress.
It will correspond exactly (with the proper modifications as to officials, etc.) to the election of the representatives to the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada. Both these governments being federal governments, it is believed that there should be retained a proper recognition of state and provincial boundaries. Hence a general ticket is not provided for the nation at large, but as many tickets [multi-member districts] as there are states and provinces. The application of the principle to state and municipal legislatures will require minor modifications, which will be noticed later.
A BILL For the Election of Congressional Representatives by Proportional Representation.
Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the U.S. in Congress assembled. That members of the House of Representatives shall be voted for at large on general lists of candidates for their respective states, and that representatives shall be apportioned to different lists in proportion to the votes cast for each list.
Sec. 2. There shall be created in each State a State Board of Election Commissioners, to be composed of the Governor of the State and two qualified electors by him appointed, one from each of the two. political parties that cast the largest number of votes in the State at the last preceding election. Such appointments shall be made at least thirty days prior to the general election for Congressional Representatives, and if prior to that time the chairman of the State Central Committee of either of such parties shall nominate in writing a member of his own party for such appointment the governor of the State shall appoint such nominee. In case of death or inability of any such appointee, the Governor of the State shall notify the chairman of the said Central Committee of such appointee's political party, and such chairman may, within three days thereafter, recommend a successor who shall thereupon be appointed. Provided that if such chairman shall fail to make recommendations of appointment within the time specified, the Governor of the State shall make such appointment of his own selection from such political party.
It shall be the duty of said Board to prepare and distribute ballots and stumps for the election of all Congressmen for whom all the electors of the State are entitled to vote, in compliance with the provisions of this election law. The members of such board shall serve without compensation.
Sec. 3. That lists of candidates to be known in this bill as "tickets," may be nominated by State conventions or by petitions as hereinafter provided, and any number of candidates, not to exceed the number of seats to which such State is entitled in the House of Representatives, may be included in a single ticket.
Sec 4. The said Board of Election Commissioners for each State shall cause to be printed on a single sheet of paper of appropriate size, to be known in this Act as the "ballot,'' tickets nominated by the State conventions of any party that cast one percent, of the total vote of the State at the last preceding general election, the said ticket to be certified as hereinafter specified to the said Board by the presiding officer and secretary of such convention; and also the list of names of candidates when petitioned so to do by electors qualified to vote for such candidates, providing the number of said electors signing such petition amounts to fifty petitioners for each representative to which the State is entitled.
[page 158]
The signatures to such petition need not be appended to one paper, but no petitioner shall be counted, except his residence and post office address be designated. No petitioner can subscribe his name to more than one list of candidates. Each petition must designate one of the petitioners who shall act as attorney for the others. Such petition shall state the name and residence of each of such candidates, that he is legally qualified to hold such office; that the subscribers desire and are legally qualified to vote for such candidates, and may designate a brief name or title of the party or principle that said candidates represent, together with any simple figure or device by which they shall be designated on the ballots.
The certificate of nomination by a convention shall be in writing, and shall contain the name of each person nominated and his residence, and shall designate a title for the party or principle that convention represents, together with any simple figure or device by which its ticket may be designated on the ballots; said certificates shall be signed by the presiding officer and secretary of such convention, who shall add to their signatures their respective places of residence, and acknowledge the same before an officer duly authorized to take acknowledgment of deeds. A certificate of such acknowledgment shall be appended to such instrument.
In case of the death, resignation, or removal of any candidate subsequent to nomination, unless a supplemental certificate or petition of nomination be tiled, the chairman of the State committee or the attorney of the group of petitioners shall fill such vacancy.
In case of a division in any party, and claim by two or more factions to the same party name, or tide, or figure, or device, the Board of Election Commissioners shall give the preference of name to the convention held at the time and place designated in the call of the regularly constituted party authorities, and if the other faction shall present no other party name, title or device, the Board of Election Commissioners shall select a name or title and place the same at the head of the ticket of said faction on the ballot and select some suitable device to designate its candidates. If two or more conventions be called by authorities claimed to be the rightful authorities of the party, the Board of Election Commissioners shall select some suitable devices to distinguish one faction from the other, and print the ballots accordingly – Provided, however, that if any political party entitled to nominate by convention shall in any case fail to do so, the names of all nominees by petition who shall be designated in their petitions as members of and candidates of such party, shall be printed under the device and title of such party on the ballots, as if nominated by convention.
Certificates and petitions of nomination of candidates shall be filed with the governor of the State at least thirty days before the election.
The tickets that shall be presented as above provided for, shall be printed by the Board of Election Commissioners on a single ballot, each ticket being assigned a separate column, and the names of candidates on each ticket shall be printed in the older in which they are assigned by the respective conventions or groups of petitioners.
In all respects otherwise than as provided for in this Act the elections of representatives in the several States shall be conducted in accordance with the State laws enacted and provided for the election of representatives to Congress. But no election shall be valid in which the provision of this Act shall not be fully complied with. (In case of Canada, the elections shall be conducted in accordance with "The Dominion Elections Act," except as amended in harmony with the present Act.)
Sec. 5. If the name of any candidate appears on more than one ticket, he shall select the ticket to which he wishes his votes to be accredited. In case he makes no selection, the governor shall notify the chairman of the committees or the attorneys of the petitioners on whose tickets his name appears, and they shall make a choice. In default of such a choice, the governor shall select by lot one of the tickets in which bis name appears, and the said name shall be struck off from the other tickets.
Sec. 6. Not less than eighteen days before the elevation for representatives, the Governor of the State shall certify to the County Clerk of each County the name and place of residence of each person nominated for representative, as specified in the petitions and certificates of nominations filed with the Governor of the State, and shall designate therein
The device under which the ticket or list of candidates of each party will be printed, and the order in which they will be arranged.
[page 158]
Not less than ten days before the election, the county clerks shall make public notice in all election precincts, by bulletin, giving in full the lists of candidates, their resilience, and the tides and devices prefixed to each ticket as certified to them by the governor.
Sec. 7. The State Board of Election Commissioners shall furnish, at least ten days before the election, to each County Clerk to be distributed by him to the inspectors of the several election precincts, ten ballots for every five voters or fraction thereof in each precinct of his County at the last presidential election. And no ballots shall be received by the judges and inspectors of elections tram electors except official ballots as herein provided.
Sec. 7. Every legal elector shall be entitled to cast one ballot, but he shall be entitled to as many votes upon his ballot as there are representatives to be elected from the State whereof he is a resident. This number shall be known in this Act as his "lawful number of votes." All votes in excess of this number shall be discarded.
Every elector shall be entitled to two kinds of votes, namely: votes for tickets, known in this Act as "ticket votes" and votes for individual candidates, known in this Act as "candidate votes." The elector shall be entitled to a number of ticket votes equal to his lawful number of votes and also to a number of candidate votes equal to his lawful number of votes, and he may divide his votes between tickets and individual candidates as hereinafter specified.
Sec. 8. In order to give his total lawful number of votes to a single ticket, the elector shall affix a mark or stamp immediately to the left of the title and device belonging to the ticket for which he wishes to vote. This shall be known as a "general ticket vote."
In the case of a general ticket vote, the total lawful number of votes shall be accredited to the ticket, unless the elector shall have voted also for individual candidates on the said ticket or on other tickets as hereinafter provided. In that case there shall be deducted from the total lawful number of his general ticket votes all such votes for individual candidates.
Sec. 9. Each elector is entitled to vote for individual candidates, either on the same ticket as that for which he has given his general ticket vote or for candidates on other tickets, and he may distribute his votes or cumulate his votes among the candidates of all the tickets in such manner as he chooses.
To vote for individual candidates he shall affix a mark or stamp immediately to the left of the name of the candidate for whom he wishes to vote. To cumulate on one or more candidates he shall write immediately to the left of the name of each candidate for whom he cumulates, a numerical figure expressing the number of votes that he wishes to have accredited to the particular candidate.
Sec. 10. All votes for individual candidates up to the lawful number of votes shall be counted also as ticket votes, and each ticket shall be accredited, in addition to the general ticket votes herein provided for, also with a number of voles equal to the sum of the candidate votes given to its individual candidates.
Should the sum of elector's votes for individual candidates, as expressed by a mark, stamp or numerical figure, be less than his lawful number of votes, additional votes enough to make a sum equal to his lawful number of votes shall be accredited as general ticket votes to that ticket to which he has given a general ticket vote as provided in Section 8, or, in case he has not given a general ticket vote, to that ticket for whose candidate he has given the largest number of votes. Should his votes for candidates on different tickets be equal in number, provided he has not given a general ticket vote, then his remaining ticket votes shall be equally divided between the tickets for which he voted, and any odd votes shall be accredited to one of the said tickets by lot.
Sec. 11. Should the sum of the votes which the elector allots to individual candidates exceed the total number of his lawful votes, only the highest number shall be counted where the elector has cumulated his votes, until a sum is reached equal to his lawful votes.
Where the elector has given single votes to candidates in excess of his lawful votes, only those votes shall be counted up to the number of lawful votes which are found allotted to candidates on those tickets to which the elector has given the largest number of votes.
[page 160]
Sec. 12. The following ballots are void:
1. Ballots having no mark or stamp or numerical figure against the titles of tickets or the names of candidates.
2. Ballots other than those furnished by the State Board of Election Commissioners.
Sec. 13. At the close of the polls, the judges of elections in the precincts shall determine the following points and make report to the county clerk, who shall transmit the reports of all the precincts in his county to the Secretary of State of each State, and the said Secretary of State shall thereupon canvass The votes and determine for the entire State, the same precincts as were determined for the several precincts by the precinct judges, to wit:
1. The number of valid ballots having a mark, stamp, or numerical figure.
2. The number of void ballots.
3. The total number of valid votes which should be expressed, obtained by multiplying the number of valid ballots that have been voted by the total number of representatives to be elected.
4. The number of tickets and the number of candidates on each ticket.
5. The number of votes given by name to individual candidates.
6. The number of general ticket votes given to the respective tickets, as provided in sections 7, 8, 10, and 12.
In the final addition of votes, the votes given by names to individual candidates, and the votes given to the tickets in general should correspond exactly to the total number of valid votes which should be expressed.
The Secretary of State of each State shall thereupon as provided by law in each State. for general elections, proceed to determine the number of representatives to be accredited to each ticket and the individual candidates who have been elected, as provided in the following sections of this Act.
Sec. 14. The total number of valid ballots that have been cast throughout the State shall be known as the "first quota of representation."
No ticket shall be entitled to representation, the sum of whose votes is less than 85 percent of the first quota of representation. If there are any such tickets, the votes that have been given to them shall be deducted from the total number of votes that have been given to all the tickets, and the quotient obtained by dividing this remainder by the number of representatives to be elected, will give a quotient, which shall be known as the "second quota of representation." In case any lists are excluded from representation as herein provided, the total number of votes obtained severally by the remaining tickets shall each be divided by the second quota of representation. The quotients thus obtained will show the number of representatives to which the respective tickets are entitled.
Where there have been no tickets excluded as herein provided, the first quota of representation shall be used as a divisor instead of the second quota. The number of representatives to be allotted to each ticket shall be determined by dividing the total number of votes obtained by the several tickets by the first quota of representation. The units of the quotients thus obtained will show the number of representatives to which the respective tickets are entitled.
If the sum of such quotients be less than the number of seats to be filled, the ticket having the largest remainder after the division of its total ticket votes by the quota of representation as herein specified, shall be entitled to the first vacancy, the ticket having the next largest remainder, the next vacancy, and so on until all the vacancies are tilled, providing that no representative be allotted a ticket whose total vote is less than 85 percent of the first quota of representation, as herein provided.
[page 161]
Sec. 15. When the number of representatives to be accredited to each ticket is determined as specified in Section 14, the individual candidates of each of the said tickets who have received the largest number of votes shall receive from the Governor of the State certificates of election in the order of the vote received, the candidate receiving the highest number of votes the first certificate, and so on, until the total number of representatives to be accredited to the several tickets has been selected.
If there is a tie between two or more candidates on the same ticket, the older candidate shall receive the certificate of election.
Sec. 16. If a ticket shall have elected more representatives than the number of candidates that it presents, the number of representatives in excess shall be apportioned to other tickets on the same proportional plan as herein specified.
Sec. 17. The names of the candidates not elected on each ticket shall be filed on record by the Secretary of State together with the figures indicating the respective numbers of their votes.
Whenever a vacancy occurs between the elections for Congressional representatives, either through non-acceptance, resignation, incapacity, removal or decease, the candidate who received at the general election the largest number of votes after the last one elected on the ticket in which the vacancy occurs, shall be chosen to fill the vacancy, and shall receive from the Governor of the State a certificate of election for the said unexpired term.
Example.
It is believed that the terms of the bill are sufficiently clear to obviate any detailed explanation of its provisions. But it is quite necessary that the reader be furnished with a practical display of the way in which it would operate if carried into effect. Hence I have subjoined the following sample ballot and a supposed election based upon the same, in a State that is entitled to 15 Congressmen:
Sample Ballot 1:
Vote for a list, or give fifteen votes to individual candidates.
Dem. Rep. Prohi. People's Ind. Rep.
I. Adams 1 Clark Madison Fuller 5 Gray
II. Allen Butler Montgomery Pendelton McDowell
III. Williams 1 Carroll Stark Wilson
IV. Putnam Meigs Patterson
V. Ross Mercer Enloe
VI. Monroe Knox
VII. Lawrence Jackson
VIII. Logan 1 Holmes
IX. Hancock 3 Fairchild
X. Hardin
This ballot gives 12 votes for individual candidates, five being cumulated on Gray and three on Fairchild. It gives also five votes for the Ind. Republican ticket, and ten votes for the Republican ticket, being seven votes for Republican candidates and three [? word missing] for the Republican ticket. [TM: this explanation does not seem to mesh with the numbers in the sample ballot.]
Sample Ballot 2 [showing party totals]
[showing vote totals for Candidate I of each party, Candidates II of each party, and so on up to Candidates X for each party (where slate extends to that), plus General Ticket Vote totals for each party.]
[statistics not in this iteration]
[page 162]
Final Addition of Votes.
Democrat: 2,889,240
Republican: 2,402,720
Prohibition: 334,700
People's 800,431
Independent Republican 449,636
Total 6,776,730
Valid ballots 451,782 [TM: this figure not correct, perhaps]
Ist or full quota of Representation 451,782
Prohibition vote being less than 384,014 — 85 percent of the full quota — is deducted from the total vote, leaving a remainder of 6,442,030.
This divided by 15 gives the 2nd quota of Representation 429,468.
Sample Ballot 3: —
Dem. list having 2,889,240 div. by 429,468 obtains 6 + remainder 312,232 votes.
Rep. list having 2,402,720 div. by 429,468 obtains 5 + remainder 254,980 votes
People's list having 800,431 div. by 429,468 obtains 1 + remainder 370,963 votes
Ind. R. list having 419,636 div. by 429,468 obtains 1 + remainder 20,168 votes
Total 13
There are thirteen full quotas. The remaining two seats are accredited in order to the People's and the Democratic list [having the largest remainders], giving a final result:
Democratic 7 Representatives.
Republican 5 Representatives.
People's 2 Representatives.
Independent R 1 Representatives.
Total 15
The individual candidates elected in the order of their votes on the respective lists are:
Democrat—Logan, Adams, Williams, Hancock, Allen, Hardin, Monroe.
Republican—Clark. Holmes, Buder, Carroll, Jackson.
People's— Fuller, Patterson.
Independent Rep.—Gray.
Vacancies before the next election would be filled as follows:
Democrat, Ross.
Republican, Jackson.
People's. Pendleton,
Independent Rep., McDowell.
[Consideration of the advantages offered by the legal adoption of a bill]
Before entering upon the consideration of the advantages offered by the legal adoption of a bill like the foregoing, there are one or two details that should be cleared up. If proportional representation is advanced as a means of securing justice to all political parties, why should a minority party be excluded when its total vote is less than 85 percent of a full quota. This is not a feature of the Swiss method nor of the Johnson bill, though a complicated plan for effecting the same result has been proposed by the Belgian writer.
M.V. D'Hondt and has been approved by L'Association refurmiste beige pour la representation proportionelle. I have given in an appendix (on page 183) the substance of M. V. D'Hondt's plan, and shall pause here a moment to justify the device I have proposed.
[page 163]
In the first place, exact justice is impossible. A representative is non-fungible. He cannot be divided up like a bushel of wheat and distributed in exact proportion among all his rightful claimants. We must be satisfied with a combination of Justice and expediency. The claims of justice are absolutely secured by that portion of the scheme that gives representatives to all groups of electors in proportion to the full quotas that they can muster. that portion of votes that does not come up to a full quota must be satisfied by a division based mainly on expediency. And it seems that the highest efficiency of government would be secured by preventing too excessive influence to petty minorities.
Moreover, it is not clear that the rule given works any injustice. The comparison is not properly to be made between a party, on the one hand, whose total vote is less than the full quota, and those remainders of other parties, on the other hand, which are less than a full quota. (See page 164 below.)
The just comparison is between the said minority party and the average number of votes required to elect a candidate in the other parties. If a party having less than a full quota is able to elect a candidate by means of a number of votes less than the average number required in other parties there would be injustice. It is believed that on the whole a minimum of 85 percent would prevent such inequalities.
The present district system works serious injustice to all new and diminutive parties. But that is not a good reason for going to the other extreme and giving these parties an influence excessive beyond their numbers. If once they reach the dimensions of a full quota their claim is indefensible. Before they reach that figure they should live by sufferance.
But the question is one of degree. The line should be drawn somewhere. 85 percent may seem too high, and it might be placed even lower, Say 75 percent. In the example given, this would still exclude the Prohibition list, since 75 percent of the first quota is 338,836. But if the limit were not imposed at all, they would gain one representative.
In the sample election given herewith, the apportionment would have been different if the first quota had been employed as in the Swiss laws instead of the second. This is shown in the following, the divisor being 451,782:
Democratic list obtains 6 + remainder 178,558
Republican list obtains 5 + remainder 143,810
Prohibitionist list obtains 0 + remainder 3:J4,700
People's list obtains 1 + remainder 348,649
Ind. Republican list obtains 0 + remainder 449,636
Total 12
The additional three representatives would be apportioned so that the result would be:
Democrat 6 representatives
Republican 5 representatives
Prohibitionist 1 representatives
People's 2 representatives
Ind. Republican 1 representatives
Total 15
If, now, we weigh the influence of the voters of the different parties on the final result according to the Swiss method, we get the following:
To elect one Democrat requires 481,540 votes
To elect one Republican requires 480,544 votes
To elect one Prohibitionist requires 334,700 votes
To elect one People's requires 400,215 votes
To elect one Ind. Republican requires 449,636 votes
[page 164]
In this result more just than the one obtained by the method herein proposed, where
To elect one Democrat requires 412,748 votes
To elect one Republican requires 480,544 votes
To elect one People's requires 400,215 votes
To elect one Ind. Republican requires 419,636 votes
The matter may be stated in another way. Since each elector casts fifteen votes, the actual number of electors who voted for each ticket was as follows:
Democrats 192,616
Republicans 160,181
Prohibitionists 22,313
People's 53,362
Ind. Republicans 29,975
According to the Swiss method, 22,313 Prohibitionists would have been entitled to one representative. If so, then 133,878 Democrats ought to be entitled to six representatives. But there were 192,616 Democrats. Consequently, 58,738 Democrats would be without their proportionate share of representatives, compared with the Prohibitionists.
But it may be said that in depriving the Prohibitionists of a representative and giving the Democrats an additional one, the equality between Democrats and Republicans is disturbed to the disadvantage of the Republicans. This is true, but not to so great an extent as would have been the inequality of Republicans compared with Prohibitionists, had the latter received a representative. It requires 32,036 Republicans to elect a single representative and the Prohibitionists could have elected one with 22,313 electors, whereas under the plan here proposed it requires 26,849 Democrats to equal 32,036 Republicans, a difference in favour of this plan on the score of justice of 21 percent.
The ground for the whole distinction consists in the fact that a remainder in the case of a large party is averaged with several full quotas, so that the average constituency of a representative is but little short of the full quota itself. Whereas in the case of a party whose total vote is less than a full quota the total vote itself becomes the "average" constituency. This, not being averaged with any full quotas, may fall considerably below the averages for other parties. To obviate such inequality the 85 percent exclusion is eminently fair.
Another feature of the bill as distinguished from the Swiss system is the provision made to prevent an elector from losing any one of his full number of lawful votes. So long as his ballot is declared lawful and he is entitled to vote at all, he should be entitled to his full number of votes. Any oversight or misunderstanding on his part should not operate to deprive him of them. It is believed that the rules laid down are sufficiently reasonable to interpret what would have been the wishes of the average elector, should he happen to make actual use of only a part of his lawful votes.
It is this feature of the bill, as will be readily seen, that results in the identity between the total number of ballots cast and the first quota of representation.
The bill as herein given has been adapted to the U.S. Congress, but it is easy to translate it into terms of State legislatures and city councils. For U.S. State legislatures it would prove desirable to adapt the plan to the bicameral system and to make as marked a distinction as possible between the upper and the lower house. State senates could be elected on a general ticket for the State at large, in exactly the same way that the Congressional delegation would be elected. This could very easily be done, as the membership in the senates now varies in number in the different States, from 32 in New York to 50 in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Iowa. Perhaps a senate of 35 would prove the most convenient. This would give the voters of the two great parties 15 to 20 senators to choose.
The lower house should be elected by a combination of the district system and the general ticket, like the national house. The State could be divided into such a number of districts that each district would return from seven to eleven representatives.
[page 165]
The larger the number returned from each district, the smaller, of course, would be any unrepresented remainder. The lower houses in the State legislatures vary widely in membership, ranging from 35 in Wyoming, to 359 in New Hampshire. The latter State might properly be divided into 20 districts.
With this two-fold application of the plan of proportional representation the Senate would stand distinctively for State questions at large, while the House would retain a fair share of local flavor. For municipal councils and boards of aldermen the election should be general, like that for the State senates.
CHAPTER VI. ADVANTAGES OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
In stating the advantages of proportional representation there are two lines of discussion that are necessarily involved, a general and a special.
The general principle of proportional representation involves merely the goal towards that electoral reform should be directed, and the results to be obtained thereby. To reach this goal innumerable plans have been proposed, all having more or less merit.
The special questions involved are those connected with the formulation and choice of a specific plan. This is a question of method, a mechanical problem. But methods are as important in representative democracy as measures.
The two lines of discussion need not be separated. If a practicable and effective method cannot be devised the general principle is a mere dream. I have proposed a method that seems to to embody the best in all other methods that have been put forward, and in presenting its advantages I shall necessarily both compare it with other plans and shall expound the general principles to be attained.
1. Pro-rep recognizes the nature of modern political problems
In the first place, proportional representation recognizes the nature of modern political problems, government is made up of interests and political parties rather than federated localities. Representation is national and not local. This may appear is one of the principal objections to the plan. But a slight thought will show that it has no force. In another place
I have called attention to the fact that the gerrymander has taken nearly all the virtue out of a district that it may ever have possessed. There are few Congressional districts that have a unity of any kind, either economical, political, topographical, geographical or historical.
The county of Huron, in Ohio, has been in five different combinations during the past 12 years. Now now it is in the western part of a district 120 miles long and 20 wide; its Congressional representative lives 60 miles away, and had, previous to the gerrymander of 1890, very little knowledge of, or interest in, the county.
In this, and hundreds of other cases, the candidates in some districts at the other end of the State are better known to the voters of the district than are the candidates in their own district.
On the other hand, the State is a historical and political unit. Its great men belong to no one district. At present only two of them can go to the U.S. Senate, and others are shelved as governors, or are compelled to seek some Presidential appointment. Under proportional representation those who are unavailable for Senators would lead their party delegations in the House.
The same is true regarding State legislatures and provincial parliaments. The State or the Province is a unit in itself. But here it may be plausibly urged that the county should be the unit of representation, that the county retains a political unity that in no way belongs to a Congressional district composed of several counties. However, this cannot be realized without serious inequalities. Some counties have a population ten and twenty times larger than others in the same State. Small counties must be grouped and large ones must be divided. Here is all the opportunity needed for the gerrymander, as is well shown by the constitution of any legislative apportionment in the union.
Yet as far as the Lower House is concerned, it seems desirable to compromise between the State and the County System and to provide for a number of districts each electing some odd number of representatives.
[page 166]
For State senates there seems to be no question that a general State ticket is the best. At present no one can tell just what our State senates do represent. Only nine out of the 52 Indiana senators represent counties, and two of these are from one county. The others represent the most arbitrary combinations of two, three, and four counties each. In other States. The senators are elected on a similar basis. May not the senates be given a distinctive place and character, elected on the broad basis of the State, representing the whole people, and thereby attracting to their halls the recognized leaders of thought and action throughout the commonwealth?
At the same time it would be impossible to do away altogether with local interests in the selection of representatives. A political party with a modicum of sagacity would distribute its nominees either for Congress or for a State senate, as widely as possible over the State. Only in this way could it appeal to the votes of all classes and interests.
Even now we can see how this is done in the nomination of tickets for State officers, from the Governor down to the chief of statistics. This tendency in the election of representatives would be wholesome. Localities would gain in the long run. But State and national interests would not be subordinated to the deplorable log-rolling and local prejudices that now control legislation.
2. The bill proposed is as simple as any that have been offered for effecting a result of this kind.
In fact, there is no complexity whatever so far as the duties of the voters are concerned. There is no loophole left for him to make a mistake. Probably the great majority of voters would choose to vote a straight ticket. In that case they need only to place a mark against the party name of their ticket, or they may place the mark against the name of any candidate on their ticket. This is as simple as any existing plan of election.
Equally simple are the provisions for cumulating and distributing votes among candidates.
If there is any complexity in the scheme it is to be found in the duties of returning officers. But it is the duty of these officers to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with any election law, and their duties here are scarcely more than those connected with the deservedly popular "Australian" secret ballot. They are to keep just two sets of accounts, one for tickets and the other for candidates. The instructions on these points are full and explicit. There is no room for discretion. The only burden imposed upon them will be found in those cases where voters have scattered their votes and have voted either more or less than their lawful number of votes. In other words, the only complexity for returning officers is that involved in the effort to mend the negligence of electors, and to secure to them their full number of votes. This is reduced to a minimum.
And the directions cover all possible contingencies, so that there seems to be no occasion for any mistake on the part of electors or officers.
3. Proportional representation, it will be quickly observed, is eminently elastic in its adaptation to changes in population. There are no district lines that must be changed after every census, but representation adapts itself immediately to every change in population.
4. The justice and equality of pro-rep
It is needless to call attention further to the justice and equality of the measure.
First, every political party is accurately represented in proportion to its popular strength, as exactly as a mathematical calculation can figure it out.
Instead of the flagrantly distorted assemblies which by way of rhetoric and rose-water we call representative, we should have true mirrors of the people. We should accomplish what has never been accomplished, and in the eloquent and oft-repeated words of Mirabeau it could for the first time be said "that a representative body is to the nation what a chart is for the physical configuration of its soil; in all its parts and as a whole, the representative body should at all times present a reduced picture of the people, their opinions, aspirations, and wishes — and that presentation should bear the relative proportion to the original precisely as a map brings before us mountains and dales, rivers and lakes, forests and plains, cities and towns. The finer should not be crushed out by the more massive substance, and the latter not be excluded; the value of each element is dependent upon its importance to the whole and for the whole. The proportions are organic, the scale is national."
Secondly, every individual elector is represented, providing he votes for a ticket that polls 85 percent of a full quota.
There are two ways of looking upon this matter of individual or personal representation. It is held by most advocates of proportional representation that a voter is not represented unless the candidate is elected for whom he actually cast his vote.
[page 167]
For example, says Sir John Lubbock, "To tell the Liberals of Kent and Surrey that they are represented by the Liberal members for Scotland and Wales is just the old and exploded argument that used to maintain that the people of Birmingham were virtually represented by the members for some other borough. The Liberals of Kent are glad, no doubt, that Scotland and Wales send such admirable representatives. It is some consolation, but it is not the same thing to them as if they were directly represented. Perhaps the one thing about which Kentish farmers care most is the subject of extraordinary tithes.
But the farmers of Kent cannot expect the Liberal members from Scotland to help them as regards extraordinary tithes. It is possible that they do not even know what extraordinary tithes are." (Lubbock, Representation, p. 18)
Are The Negroes and Republicans of the Southern states represented by the Republicans from the North?
Stated in this way, the answer must be that they are not. Their votes were thrown away.
So it is with all who have voted for defeated candidates. And this may include more than one-half the population. But they are not wholly unrepresented as they are in the case of a presidential election. More than one-half the electors voted against Mr. Cleveland for president. They are not represented in the policy of the administration. But in Congress they are partially represented. Congressmen do not represent simply their localities. They represent the nation. Mr. McKinley stood for more than the 20,000 Republicans in Ohio who voted for him. He stood for every advocate of protection in the nation. Could they all have done so, they would have voted for him, or at least, for a ticket containing his name.
At the same time voters for defeated candidates have no voice in the selection of the standard bearers of their own party. In this important sense they are unrepresented.
And this is the sense, too, that gives the party machine its control over nominations and elections, as will be shown later. Candidates are not chosen on one issue alone, but on several. It is this tempering and modulation of the representative body so as to correspond to all the phases of opinion and policy throughout the country which proportional representation guarantees.
[Other constitutional restrictions on equality of representation - Senate, etc.]
It is to be observed that there are certain constitutional restrictions on equality of representation that do not properly come within the view of this essay. In the bicameral system the upper house is usually constituted for a very different purpose from that of equal representation. In the U.S. Senate the State of Nevada with a population of 45,000 has as much numerical weight as the State of New York with a population of 6M. We are not now quarrelling with this practice. There is much to be said for it in virtue of the wide area and divergent sectional interests of the United States.
Yet it does not seem that the Senate should have the same weight in legislation as the House of Representatives. It ought to sink to the level of a revisory board like the House of Lords and the Upper Chamber of Canada and the Provinces. This would tend more and more to become its status if the house really represented the people and possessed the ability that would be attracted to such a branch. As it is, the Senate shines not by virtue but by comparison.
For the present, proportional representation has practical significance only in its application to that branch of the legislature that assumes to be truly representative.
Another matter with which we are not directly concerned is the basis of suffrage. We are not enquiring whether it shall be wide or narrow, male or female, old or young, white or black, intimidated or fearless. We take the suffrage for granted, and inquire only whether, such as it is, it is effective; whether with the show of representation there is essential disfranchisement.
5. Proportional representation promises above all, the independence of the voters and freedom from the rule of the party machine. It will not do away with parties. Indeed, parties are inevitable and essential to a free government. At least, it is doubted whether anyone can show how a free government can be possible without them.
In the first place there is a fundamental difference existing in the nature of a progressive society that must divide individuals into two groups or sets of groups, the one based on order or conservatism the other on progress or liberalism. Human interests and temperament determine to which group individuals shall ally themselves. There must be a large class whose interests are in the maintenance of the existing order.
[page 168]
Their fortunes, their position, their influence has come about as a result of the social arrangements that the past has evolved. Another class, equally large, are dissatisfied with their lot. They see inconsistency or injustice in social arrangements. They desire change, reform. Society makes progress through the ebb and flow of these two fundamental groups.
But this natural grouping of free individuals is far different from the iron-bound classification imposed by the modern highly-developed party machine. Individuals, if left to themselves, will be continually forming new groupings as new political questions arise.
But the machine having control of nominations, as has already been shown, maintains itself in power against the natural regroupings of the voters. Freedom [from] the machine, then, means,
first, power on the part of the voters to control the nominations of their party; and,
second, power to defeat obnoxious candidates of their own party without endangering the success of the party.
Both of these advantages are provided for in the proposed bill —
first, by the provision for cumulation of votes, and,
second, by the provisions for independent tickets.
In the first place, let us suppose the nominations have all been made and voters have come to the polls ready to cast their ballots. Suppose there are 15 candidates to be elected, and that tickets have been nominated as in the sample ballot given on page 161.
It is known beforehand very nearly how many candidates each party will elect. The Democrats, for example, are certain to elect not less than six, and perhaps not more than eight. They have accordingly nominated ten candidates. The provision for cumulation now enables any voter to cast his entire fifteen votes for the party of his choice, but at the same time to select among the ten candidates that one who best represents him and to "plump" his fifteen votes for him. The party convention is powerless in the matter. It is compelled to put up nine or ten candidates instead of one. The voter may be so disgusted with some of the nominations that he would willingly stay at home or vote the opposing ticket if there were no further choice for him. This is what he is forced to do in the single-memb
ered district.
But with ten candidates there will likely be one or two at least with whom he is satisfied. For them he can give his entire strength. And if there are a sufficient number of voters like-minded with himself, they can elect those candidates who are least subjected to the machine rule.
I believe that herein will be found a very decided advantage over the Swiss method of proportional election. The Swiss ticket is prepared in exactly the same way as the one here proposed, and voting is conducted in exactly the same way, with the exception of this one feature: cumulation. The Swiss voter is not allowed to cumulate. If he votes a party ticket, it must be a straight ticket. He can give but one vote to each candidate.
He is therefore constrained by the party machine, not as much as under the district system, but more than seems necessary.
According to the true theory of proportional representation, one representative should be elected by every group of voters whose number is equal to the quotient obtained by dividing the total number of votes by the number of representatives to be elected. If 200 voters elect ten representatives, any group of twenty voters should be able to elect one, i.e. each elector should have one two-hundredth part of the total influence.
But the Swiss method, giving electors as many votes as there are representatives, reduces the influence of the elector in his vote for any individual candidate in exactly the inverse ratio. That is, if 200 electors have ten votes each, the total votes will be 2,000 and it will require 200 instead of 20 to elect. If the elector can give only one of his ten votes to any one candidate he has one two-thousandth part of the total influence, i.e., only one tenth the influence he rightly should have.
The simplest plan of cumulative voting is now employed in England in the election of members of the school boards. It is also in operation in Illinois in the election of members of the Lower House of the State Legislature.
There have been more or less valid objections raised to those schemes for cumulative voting that have been heretofore proposed, namely
(1) that they lead to a loss of voting power,
(2) that they increase the power of political machines, and
(3) that they give too much power to the minority.
The present plan differs from all others in such a way that I believe these objections will not hold.
Sir John Lubbock presents conclusively the first objection to this system in the example he gives of the Marylebone election for members of the school board (November, 1870).
[page 169]
There were seven members to elect and the votes were as follows:
Successful Candidates. Unsuccessful Candidates.
Garrett 47,858 Mills 7,927
Huxley 13,494 Powell 7,852
Thorold 12,186 . Whelpton 5,759
Angus 11,472 Waterlow 4,994
Hutchins 9,253 Garvey 4,933
Dixon 9,031 Marshall 4,668
Watson 8,355 Guedella 4,635
Cremer 4,402
Edmunds 3,973
Verey 2,130
Stanford 1,486
Wyld 334
Dunn 258
Brewer 103
Beare 62
Total 165,165
"It will be seen that Miss Garrett received no less than 47,858 votes, while under the circumstances 8,000 would have elected her. Nearly 40,000 votes out of the 48,000 were therefore wasted, and it is obvious that if Miss Garrett's supporters had known their strength, they would have desired to vote so as to secure the return of other candidates sharing their opinions. The Marylebone election was certainly an extreme case, but there have been many others in which the same phenomenon has been repeated." (Lubbock, Representation, page 52)
Out of this fact grows the second objection. If there is danger of wasting votes, the only way in which votes can be properly economized is for the voters to know their strength before election. This they can do only through the party organization. The machine therefore will designate the candidates to be voted for and those of the party voters who do not follow the instructions of the machine will throw their votes away.
These objections seem valid against the simple plan of cumulation.
But it will be readily seen that the bill proposed in this essay does away with these objections by reason of its double provision for ticket votes and candidate votes. The elector cannot possibly throw his votes away, because if too many votes have been cumulated on one candidate, as in the case of Miss Garrett in the Marylebone election, the surplus votes as well as the necessary votes for the candidate go to swell the aggregate of votes for the ticket, and thus help to elect other candidates on the same ticket. In this way, too, as is already shown, the power of the machine is greatly minimized instead of increased.
But suppose the elector finds that his party ticket has been put forward wholly in the interests of the machine. that there is no candidate offered to him whom he deems worthy of election. Under the district system, as has been shown, he must vote for the party machine or else stay at home or cast his vote in such a way as to benefit the opposite party. Proportional representation enables him to "bolt" the party ticket and not bolt the party.
Of course, in order to do this, he must join with other protestants against the machine and nominate a new candidate, and a new ticket. The bill provides readily for a movement of this kind by a petition signed by fifty names for every candidate to be elected from the given State. This would be about 50 signatures for every 30,000 voters in the State.
In the case of the simple ballot on page 161 the petition would require 750 signatures.
The bill now provides that all tickets shall be printed on a single ballot. This is the well recognized principle of the official ballot, introduced into this country from Australia, and now adopted by States representing 4/5 of the population of the country. The bill provides that this ballot shall be extended into the States in so far as congressional elections are concerned. Indeed the highest success of proportional representation could not be obtained were it not for the admirable features of the Australian ballot.
[page 170]
It gives the voter complete independence of choice, enables him to scatter his votes among different tickets, and to easily pick out from a large number of candidates an individual for whom he may wish to cumulate. The system could readily be applied to the voting machine that has just been introduced into elections in New York State and that possesses many features superior over those of the Australian ballot.
The independent voter has therefore before him the ticket nominated by his party organization and another ticket of the same party nominated by petitioners outside that machine. Suppose he votes for the independent ticket. He does not endanger the success of his party ticket as a whole, but only of one candidate out of the entire ticket. And he is not running the risk of throwing his vote away, providing only a single quota of the voters of the State cast their ballot for the independent. Under the district system his vote would be wasted unless the voters for the independent were a majority or a plurality of all the voters in the district.
Returning to the sample ballot on page 161, the Republicans have nominated nine candidates, expecting to elect six or seven. The Independent Republicans have nominated two, expecting to elect one. From the final result it will be seen that the Republicans could under no circumstances have elected more than six candidates, because the Democrats have elected seven and the People's two, out of the fifteen. But the straight Republicans and the Independent Republicans together have elected the six candidates to which the Republicans were entitled. The Independents have in no way endangered the success of their party, but they have succeeded in putting in a Republican who, standing for the party, nevertheless opposed the machine. The party as a whole gains its share of representatives, but the independent wing of the party has also secured its just share.
Had the election been conducted under the district system, the Independent Republicans in order to be elected would have required a majority or plurality of the votes in his district. And in the effort to reach this result, the Democrats would probably have elected their candidate.
But in proportional representation the independent is elected if he polls an average of one-fifteenth of the votes in all the districts, and the Democrats do not gain an iota through the disaffection of the Republicans. The present system, in other words, pens up a minority of independent voters in narrow districts under the whip of their party machine, but proportional representation tears down the fences and enables them to combine throughout the State, without risking the success of the opposing party's machine.
That this feature of proportional representation strikes at the radical evil of present politics, is evidenced by the current literature on all hands. The evil of absenteeism on the part of the intelligent and business classes is everywhere alarming. It can not be too loudly deplored.
In an article favouring compulsory voting, Mr. F.W. Holls says: "The extent to which this duty is shirked is easily ascertained, at least approximately. The interest that centres in a presidential contest is generally sufficient to bring out the fullest vote obtainable without compulsion. A comparison of the total vote in a presidential year with that in an "oft" year shows almost the entire number of shirks.
In the state of New York 300,375 persons who voted in 1880 remained away from the polls in 1881, and 286,278 did so in 1890. In the last mayoralty election in New York city over 35,000 men who had even registered abstained from voting, with the result that the city was once more turned over to an organized gang of plunderers. A more deliberate and extensive betrayal of trust would be difficult to find.
In Massachusetts the total vote of 328,588 in l888 fell to 200,798 in 1890, a difference of 67,7190. In Chicago the figures are even more startling. In the spring election of 1887 less than 72,000 votes out of a possible 138,000 were cast — 66,000 citizens failing in their duty — while in June of the same year, at the judiciary election for the choice of judges for a city of almost a million of souls, the total vote was 44,074, less than one third of the number of qualified voters." (Annals of Amer. Acad. Pol and Soc. Sci., April, 1891)
Prof. A.B. Hart asserts (Political Science Quarterly, vol. vii, page 307) in a careful review of election statistics that the voting population is one-fourth of the total population; in presidential elections five-sixths of this voting strength is cast. In New York, in 1880, the vote was 1,104,605, being 23 percent of the total population and 95 percent of the voters. But in 1891 it was only 259,425. In New York city, in 1888, the vote was 18 percent of the population. in 1890 it was 12 percent and in 1891 it was 13 percent.
[page 171]
The New York Nation of April 13, 1893, says, pertinently:
"The Government of Russia has been described as 'despotism tempered by assassination.'
In like manner the government of large cities in America may be termed 'bummer government tempered by uprisings.' Nevertheless, we believe that both in Chicago and New York the better element is really in a majority. It could, if it chose, retain the government of the municipality permanently in its hands. This is certainly true of New York, for the bummer element here has never yet polled a majority of the registered vote.
Take, by way of illustration, the important election of 1888, at which Tammany got possession of the city. Tammany polled in that year 114,000 out of a total registered vote of 286,000. In 1890 it polled 116,000, or only 2,000 more,. This may be called the natural increase of the Bummer Element. We think it is quite fair to set down as Better Element all voters of every description who do not vote the Tammany ticket.
This Better Element, then, in 1888, registered 172,000 votes; in 1890, after two years' experience of Bummer rule, 129,000 votes. If the full registered vote in either of these two years had been cast against Tammany, Tammany would have been defeated and the Better Element would now be in possession of the city. But, in 1890, after a full trial of the kind of government the new Bummer regime was prepared to furnish, 30,000 of the Better Element stayed away from the polls and allowed Tammany to retain the city.
Why did they stay away? Anyone who could answer this question would explain the failure of popular government in American cities.
Now, if it were possible to go around among these 30,000 and ask them severally why, having registered, they failed to vote, we should in all probability get a perfectly intelligent answer from nine out of every ten of them. Not one would say that he did not vote because he was not "organized;" that if anybody wanted him to vote, he must "organize" him. Nor probably would any of them say that they preferred Bummer Government to Citizens' Government. Some would have said, doubtless, that they did not think the election of Scott would be enough of an improvement on Grant to make it worth their while to go to the polls to bring it about; others, that Scott was 'Grace's man,' and they hated Grace; others, that they would never, under any circumstances, vote for a Democrat; others, that they hated Mugwumps, and that Scott was a Mugwump invention; others, that Scott's nomination was a contrivance for breaking up the Republican party in this city; others, that they wanted to keep Tammany in power as an example of Democratic rule."
But appeals to the voters to go to the polls are of little consequence. What can they accomplish by going?
Says a recent writer: "It is only the fear of wasting their votes on good men who have no chance of winning that deters the people from voting against bad candidates who are forced upon them by the regular machine." (Charles Richardson in American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1892, p. 86)
[Compulsory Voting]
Neither would compulsory voting meet the real difficulty.
To quote the words of Prof. Hart, in the article already referred to, "To compel men to vote against their will is to tighten the control of party managers... Honest voters are indifferent or refuse to vote because they feel their impotence to affect their own party management. Yet they support their party management because experience shows that the men who fight it must make great exertions and sacrifices or be set out of politics; and further because permanent political results can be brought about only through strong and persisting parties. Compulsory voting supplies no new motives, and would not alter those political habits of the American people that are the real evil. Compulsory voting cannot create interest in local affairs, or break up the practice of adhesion to unfit leaders."
Compulsory voting would not stimulate independence. It is but natural that a well known machine Governor of New York should have recommended it to the legislature in one of his annual messages. Professor Giddings has shown that the fringe of mobile voters who change from one party to another, is seldom more than 5 percent of the maximum total vote in a presidential year. He stated "the number of voters liable to be decisively influenced by mere opinion, apart from personal, class or sectional interests, is not more than 2 or 3 percent of the whole." (Political Science Quarterly, Vol. VII, p. 116, 124)
Compulsory voting might possibly change this proportion slightly, but there is little reason to hope for the good results that its advocates claim for it.
[page 172]
That proportional representation would bring out a full vote at every election is not to be asserted. There is no experience from which to draw conclusions. The system has been in practice in Switzerland for only one year. But it certainly removes one of the most potent reasons for staying at home.
In this respect the election of representatives offers advantages over the election of executives, judges, and other single officers, where, of course, there is no question of proportion. These advantages consist, as already shown, in the fact that there are several candidates to be elected on one ballot, and a small number of voters does not hold the balance of power. If the party vote is reduced even so much as a full quota,—i.e. 15 to 20 percent — the party loses only one candidate out of a possible five, ten, or fifteen, and this one candidate is not gained by the opposing party but by the independents of their own party. A similar defection in the district system would usually throw the majority to the other party, since, as is well known, the two great parties are closely divided in the majority of districts. A change of 1.5 percent in twenty-one districts is estimated by Mr. Barry as sufficient to give the control of the Massachusetts senate to the opposite party.
As a result of the freedom that would be given by proportional representation to the rank and file of the party voters, the machine would usually be compelled to consult their wishes in nominating its candidates. At present it knows that, whatever their threats, they will not bolt and thus elect the common enemy. But if they can bolt without committing such direful treason, they will be inclined to do so, and the machine must listen. Candidates will be of larger caliber and better reputation and more in harmony with the opinions of the voters.
Numerous writers have called attention to the importance of the primaries, and have emphasized the duty of citizens to attend their party primaries and conventions. In the view here presented of the probable workings of proportional representation, the primary loses much of its significance. A party nominates candidates to win. Though voters do not attend the caucus, yet the machine has the probable action of these voters in mind when it nominates its candidates. The significance of the primary today is due to the impossibility of acting independently of machine dictation.
Besides, politics is a business. It requires time and strength. The politician does the very least part of his work in the primary. The real work is done beforehand. America has no leisure class who can afford to give themselves to this work. They must leave it to the professionals. The latter are tacit attorneys. They sound their clients, learn their wishes, and act accordingly. If proportional representation should bring forward an abler and purer class of politicians, more in harmony with the best wishes of the people, the latter could leave the primaries to them.
At the same time, primaries and conventions are the sources of power. They must be recognized as such. They must be brought under legal regulation. Perhaps the most serious evil of primaries and conventions and the one that gives the machine entire control is the practice of exclusive majority rule. It is the almost universal rule to elect committees and delegates by a majority vote on the principle of the general ticket, or else to authorize the chairman to appoint them. The true purpose of a primary, as representing all sections of a party is thereby defeated. It is proper that the majority should elect the chairman or nominate single candidates for offices, but why should the majority be alone represented on committees and delegations I Plainly here is the need for a further application of the proportional rule.
[Tuckerman (Broda) plan]
A plan is required that will be simple and quickly worded. Such a plan has been proposed by Dr. L.B. Tuckerman, and is described in the Review of Reviews for November, 1891, as follows:
The Tuckerman plan [AKA Broda Count] provides for weighing the choices of each elector. If there are five offices to be filled, the elector writes on his ballot the names of five candidates in the order of his preference. Then the tellers, in counting the ballots, allot to each name on the ballot a weight of choice corresponding to the position held by that name on the ballot. Thus if the candidates A, B, C, D, E, are written on a single ballot in the order given, candidate A will have five units credited to him, candidate B will have four units, C three units, D two units, and E one unit. After all the. ballots are counted the units opposite the names of the candidates are added up, and the five having the highest number of units are declared elected. Thus only one ballot is required to elect the five officers.
Continuing the example given, suppose the candidates - A, B, C, D, E - are voted for in the order named by each of the fifty-five delegates. The weight of choice would be as follows:
[page 173]
[...] [conclusion of item No. 5, which started on page 167]
6. Proportional representation would bring into legislative assemblies able and experienced men, the true leaders and representatives of their parties and the people. The district system excludes such men.
Social and legal institutions possess certain capacity of natural selection. They furnish the environment in which individuals grow up and develop. As in the physical universe, those individuals survive and prosper who are best fitted to their environment. This does not mean those individuals come forward and acquire power whose natural qualities adapt them best to use the passions, customs and legal regulations of their fellow men.
But society, unlike the physical universe, can change its customs and laws within certain bounds and thereby can change the environment of individuals. New and different qualities now are necessary for survival and power. And this is the essence of human activity controlled by human wisdom to modify the environment and so to develop those qualities and and powers that it deems desirable. This is the rule all the way from raising chickens to organizing governments. If the people desire certain qualities in their law-making they can modify their institutions in such a way as will secure them. The present breed will then wither away and sink away. If they wish to bring forward in their legislature intelligence, experience, ability, probity and sympathy with popular wishes, they should first develop those forms of government and those technical devices that will ensure adequate support, dignity and security to such qualities.
[page 174]
It is claimed that proportional representation would be an improvement of this kind. In the first place, it would secure all the advantages of the English and Canadian practice of non-residency. Representatives could be selected from an entire State without reference to district lines. The area of choice is widened. A party leader need no longer be excluded from Congress because he happens to live in a district where his party is in the minority. Gerrymanders could not be constituted to exclude him as soon as he has become known. All the 'money and influence of a wealthy opposing party would effect nothing when thrown into his district. If his party were in a minority in the State, they certainly would be able to command a quota and he would be their choice. Nothing could exclude him except the dissatisfaction of his own followers. This is true of all parties and groups that can command a quota of the votes.
Organized party minorities and factions could not defeat the nomination and election of such men, because they no longer hold the balance of power. In the district system a change of 1 to 5 percent, of the votes to the opposite party will nearly always defeat a candidate. But 50 percent might bolt under proportional representation and the remaining 50 percent — if they equalled a quota — could still elect the party leader.
Mr. Albert Stickney has found in frequent elections and short terms the root of corrupt politics and machine rule. (See "A True Republic" and other writings.)
Indeed he is right. A representative must give his time to carrying elections. He must placate and harmonize factions. He must properIy distribute the spoils. He cannot afford to break with the machine and the spoilsmen.
But with proportional representation frequent elections would be combined with life-long service, provided the representative retained the confidence of a single quota of the voters. He would not be called upon for a day's thought on the mere matter of carrying the elections. He would succeed himself as naturally as the season return. His only thought would be to know that in his legislative duties he truly represented his supporters. If the machine repudiated him he would but have earned added strength with his people. No faction could defeat him. Only a widespread revolt against his leadership could threaten his service. As long as the mass of the voters had confidence in him they would return him.
Frequent elections, on the other hand, would give the people power quietly to drop the representative who was weak or who had ceased to represent them. They would simply cumulate their votes on their true leaders. Frequent elections under the district system are dangerous to both the good and the bad. Under proportional representation they would endanger only the bad.
The State of Ohio presents a national example of the suicidal crudity of the district system — a State where republicans and democrats have world-famous leaders but cannot send them continuously to Congress where their services are needed. McKinley, Foster, Foraker, are the first choice of the republicans of that State. But they have been gerrymandered into democratic districts, or else local republican factions have made them unavailable in their limited districts.
With proportional representation these men would lead their delegation in the House. Republicanism in Ohio, and the nation would be immeasurably the gainers. Every other State has like examples. Many able men, too, not unknown to politics, would be encouraged to look to such a career were the tenure certain and the service free from machine dictation.
The importance of this feature of proportional representation cannot be overestimated. Every interest or class in the State would not only be fairly represented in numbers, but would be represented by its ablest advocates. Every representative of ability would be continued in the legislature until he had acquired experience adequate to his duties. In this way many of the reforms advocated for legislatures would mend themselves. The representatives would be leaders in reforms of this kind, knowing well by experience the evils to be met and being most interested in curing them. The Speaker of the House would no more be called upon to appoint committees, because the delegates, having a long acquaintance with each other and a national reputation, and knowing their mutual qualifications, could easily elect their own committees. They would naturally do this on some proportional plan, somewhat as the committees of the United States Senate are now appointed, or else by adopting a plan like that already suggested for the use of party primaries and conventions.
[page 175]
The power of the lobby would be immeasurably reduced. The sinister influence of the party machine would be banished, since the leaders of the parties hold seats in the legislative branches and would be responsible to their constituencies instead of to the spoilsmen and lobbyists. Hasty and ill-considered legislation would be cleared from the statute books. Legislation would be simplified and harmonized.
It may be well to emphasize again the way in which this bill would secure the responsibility of legislators directly to the people. The objections will doubtless arise that it would do away with "party responsibility;" that it will reduce the votes of both the leading parties so close that no party will have a majority and therefore no party can go before the people with a party record to be approved or rejected.
But this is an intangible and indiscriminate responsibility. It is like all kinds of multiple or corporate responsibility. There is no particular individual whom the people can select and fasten responsibility upon. And a party, like a corporation, can be held responsible only as its agents are responsible. The growing popularity in the United States of city government by mayors, and the recent transfer of legislative and administrative functions to mayors, are based upon the well-grounded opinion that the responsibility of one man is safer for the purity of city government than the responsibility of boards and councils. When a party is defeated at the polls, both the good and the bad are defeated together. Why should a representative rise above party expediency and create a good reputation for himself individually when he knows that the evil deeds of the other members of his party will drag him down with them?
But there are two features of proportional representation that permit the voters to discriminate directly between individuals, and to hold them instead of parties, responsible.
The first is the fact that parties would not be defeated as a whole but would lose only a very small proportion of their representatives. So close are the votes of parties in most States, that a State returning say fifteen representatives, would return only eight of the majority party and seven of the minority. [Under pro-rep] If the majority party should be defeated, so slight is the change of votes — not more than 1 to 5 percent of the total votes — that usually the party would lose only one of its eight representatives, and the other party would gain one, reversing, of course, the majorities. Under the district system, as has been shown, a reversal of the popular vote of two percent may give catastrophic results. An entire party – the good and the bad together - may go down at once. A very moderate change of popular opinion is exaggerated into an avalanche.
Thus the idea is unduly prominent that the people have become radically opposed to the party as a whole, and the fiction is fostered of "party responsibility." But under proportional representation only a very few of the party candidates would be defeated.
Now, if the voters have power to select these candidates who are to be defeated and to continue the others, shall we not have the essence of individual responsibility?
The second feature of proportional representation gives them this power. Not only do electors give their votes for "tickets," but they may scatter their votes as they please among the individual candidates, and they may even cumulate all on one. Thus bad candidates cannot ride into power on a wave of party prosperity, nor can good candidates be swamped in the ebb of party adversity. Each individual stands on his own merits. It is his own record that can be brought directly before him. and by it he can be summarily judged. And whichever way he is judged, his party is but slightly affected. It always secures its rightful quota.
The argument seems conclusive. The wisdom, ingenuity and directness of the plan are fully demonstrated. Parties are held responsible, not as corporations, but through their agents. The people have the widest of freedom in selecting their agents. If the people can be trusted there is nothing to hinder their choice of the best. And they certainly can be trusted better than can the machines that at present do all the choosing. Proportional representation means far more than equality, it means freedom. It means confidence in the people. It means distrust of oligarchies and professionals.
Democratic government in cities is said by many to be a failure. Pleas have been made for a more limited suffrage. Representative institutions, it is said, are not on trial but they have been condemned.
But has true representation been given even a trial?
We have a sham representation. It gives a show of fairness. But it is crude and essentially unfair.
It is still in its primitive stages.
It is like the steam engine in the time of Fulton. It needs mechanical adjustments and technical improvements.
It does not represent the people. It represents the politicians. With true representation democratic institutions will begin a new era. Able, disinterested and patriotic men will come to the front. The people will be free to grant them their confidence and continued support. And they can be trusted to do it.
7. It may seem startling, and yet it is indisputable, to affirm that proportional representation would purify elections by removing the most potent of inducements for bribery and corruption. It is to the district system that must be charged the alarming growth of corruption in elections. The system is a powerful temptation to bribery. The secret ballot has no doubt made the crime more difficult and dangerous but it has not at all touched the inducements to commit the crime. These inducements consist in the exaggerated influence of the purchasable vote in turning the scale.
The great majority of the districts are close. Elections turn on very narrow margins. Mr. Berry says that a change of 1.5 percent, of the vote in 21 districts of Massachusetts would have turned the State senate over to the opposite party. The results of elections in general may be said to turn on the balance of power held by two or three percent of the voters. Any cause that can influence so small a percentage may be adequate to control elections. [TM: These figures concern the two-party elections in the U.S. But in Canada, under a multi-party system, as well often a small percentage of votes shifts enough seats to change the party in power. In the 2019 federal election a shift of less than one percent of the vote would have seen the election of a Conservative minority government. The shift of only 14 percent of the vote would have created the election of a majority Conservative government.]
I have mentioned already the power held by small and compact factions, like the saloons and the office seekers. The purchasable vote makes up another similarly factional group. The venal voters are amply sufficient in numbers to turn the scale. Prof. J.J. McCook has carefully investigated the proportion of these votes in 21 towns of Connecticut, and he very justly entitles his article, "The Alarming Proportion of Venal Voters" (Forum, September 1892). He finds that the number ranges from 3 to 50 percent of the total voters of the towns in question, and the average for the 21 towns is 16 percent. The average for city and county is about 13 percent.
With such a large percentage [of purchasable votes], it is plain that under the district system elections offer the greatest inducements for bribery. The entire result can be changed by changing a few votes. Considerably more than these few votes are bribable.
With proportional representation, there is no faction nor group that holds the balance of power. A change of 12 percent of the votes affects only 12 percent of the results. And as the changes of this kind would usually be no more than one to three percent, it can be seen how diminutive is the influence of the briber. Successful bribery would endanger only one candidate out of a party's entire delegation. The unbribable voters would not have their just influence in the least reduced by the disaffection of the floaters. Nobody would care therefore to bribe the latter. Their occupation would be gone. While the secret ballot makes bribery difficult, proportional representation makes it fruitless.
8. With all parties fairly represented, with able men, with bribery ineffective, legislatures would become deliberative assemblies instead of arenas for party strife.
The objection against proportional representation has already been noted that it would do away with party responsibility.
Closely connected with this is the other objection that it would give a small minority the balance of power and enable them to dictate legislation. These objections are of apparently great weight. We have frequently noticed the very close popular vote between the parties. Third parties, if given their due weight in legislatures, would often hold the balance.
These objections overlook, in the first place, the questions of fairness and individual responsibility It may prove here, as elsewhere, that justice is the wisest expediency.
But waiving for the moment this reply, let us look a little more deeply into the nature of government itself and see whether we should expect a gain from the more equal division of power in legislative assemblies.
[Pro-rep allows solutions to clear moral issues to be compromised with benefit to all classes and individuals]
Professor Ernest Naville, the earliest advocate and ablest defender of proportional representation in Switzerland, very wisely observes that outside the ranks of party are always to be found groups of independents who care little for the personelle of candidates and party success, but more for principles and measures. In society at large they naturally hold the largest place. They hold the balance of power. [page 177]
If people could meet together in mass-meeting their influence would be felt. But they are not organized. They are not practical politicians. Hence they put forward no candidates of their own, and by force of necessity are compelled to vote for party candidates or to stay away from the polls. They consequently make up the large stay-at-home vote. But if they had their own peculiar representatives they would necessarily bring partisans to terms, would force them to put measures above spoils and would be a balance-wheel of legislation, preventing one party from crushing the minority, and thereby making legislation an ideal compromise conserving the interests of all.
As a matter of fact it will be found that very few of the questions of legislation are party questions. A great many are settled on lines of combination running across parties. The only strictly party questions are those concerned with the spoils and with suffrage legislation, such as "force bills" and gerrymanders, which threaten to deprive one party of its votes. If the capture of spoils were ruled out, and United States senators were elected outside of legislatures there would seldom be deadlocks, no matter how narrow the majorities or how obstinate those holding the balance. The points of agreement among parties on other questions are far more numerous than those of disagreement. Parties differ only on the fringe of policies. Their battles are mock battles. When the outs get in they do not radically reverse the policy of their predecessors, not even to such an extent as a president of one party often reverses that of his predecessor of the same party.
At any given time the masses of the people will not permit radical far-reaching changes. A new party in power must in the main accept what its predecessor has done, and may modify it only in minor points. Take all the important questions of national politics and it will be seen that they are not settled on party lines. The two great parties do not differ more than 20 percent on the tariff question. It is simply a question of a very high tariff or one not quite so high. The country would not endure a return to no-tariff, and the Democratic party will not allow itself to be called a free-trade party.
So with the silver question. Both parties are split in two on this question.
The bill against dealing in futures and options was fought entirely independent of party lines.
The voting of pensions brings emulous majorities from both parties.
River and harbour bills are settled by individual log-rolling, and exchange of favours.
On so many of the vital questions do the representatives in Congress disregard party lines that one is forced to suspect that the fight over the tariff — the only question where party lines are drawn — is only for show to keep the voters in line. Behind the scenes the voter imagines his lately antagonistic Congressmen chuckling together, rubbing their hands and laughing up their sleeves over the success of their "war scare."
The fundamental nature of politics is not party strife or partisan victory, but compromise. There is a blindly accepted aphorism of Bentham's to the effect that the criterion of legislation is the greatest good to the greatest number. Strictly defined this is false.
The true goal is the greatest good to all. Bentham's dictum is the war-cry of party. The just criterion harmonizes and promotes every interest. It is simply and solely compromise. This was the essential idea in Calhoun's distinction between the constitutional and the numerical majority. But with him compromise was to be enforced in a way that was anarchical-nullification.
The true solution is to have it solved within the councils of the sovereign body itself — and then the unity of the sovereign can be maintained along with the promotion of all individual and private interests. The fear of Calhoun would be groundless if legislative bodies were accurately representative. The people themselves differ so little that there is no danger of an intolerant and oppressive majority, providing all are equally represented. Calhoun and all who dread the power of majority are influenced by the exaggerated and distorted constitution of existing legislative assemblies, and the unjust power which the majority thereby usually obtains.
Compromise is expediency. Expediency is nothing more nor less than general principles in process of evolution. The doctrine of compromise rests on the tact of growth. Society is developing out of a primitive barbaric state where human rights were unknown, towards an era where the happiness, honour and dignity of man as such shall be recognizedand obtained for every individual. Abstract principles are the goal towards which we are aiming. One by one the impedimenta of the past are being thrown off in the steady march towards the goal. And this is expediency—compromise. Fanatics and enthusiasts appeal to the "higher law" and demand that all obstructions be overthrown at once. But this is impossible. The impedimenta of social progress are not like coats of mail and trunks and baggage, carried on the shoulder or in a waggon.
[page 178]
They are human beliefs, feelings, passions, necessities. They exist in the very souls of men, and are conditioned by their material resources and opportunities. They can be overthrown only as one generation dies and is succeeded by another with new beliefs and feelings, and with larger resources and a greater command over nature. Compromise is that vital principle of organic unity which connects the past and the future. It is simply life itself — the very essence of growth. No more can the human body separate itself from its past development through childhood, and suddenly leap over the period of youth into that of mature and ripened manhood, than can the social body break from its past.
But the social body makes its growth through modifications of social institutions. It does this both consciously and unconsciously. It lops off here an undesirable growth or an obsolete appendage, and there it starts a new line of movement and growth. The institution of private property, for example, has passed through manifold changes, no one of them appearing to contemporary men as radical or far-reaching, yet in three generations the old institution is radically changed. The family, too, the State, the church, all change and grow. But they are growing towards some higher abstract ideal. They are being gradually modified so as to give wider opportunities for individual upbuilding and to bring out more and more the best and happiest that is in man.
But it must be admitted that compromise involves compounding with evil. This is only because evil is deeply rooted in the past of society and in human nature.
Yet there are two kinds of compromise. There is one kind that contemplates the perpetuation of evil. This is base. It gives the evil a deeper root in society and makes its future dislodgement harder. It is the doctrine of quiescence. It is not true expediency, but dalliance, pusillanimity.
True expediency contemplates the ultimate extinction of hoary evil. It sets the forces to work that in time gather strength and gradually but surely undermine and sap the evil that now is compounded. True expediency is true statesmanship.
It is courage, wisdom and a firm grasp upon ennobling truths.
Does it follow, even, that compromise in its better sense will yield the greatest good to all?
First, it should be remembered that not all progress is good or wise. Legislation is experiment. Each new project must be tried. Only experience will establish it if good, and experience is needed to revise it if bad. Hence to adopt a new thing in its entirety would be as bad as to cling obstinately to all that is old.
Again, in society at large, as has already been said, there are nearly always to be found two general groupings of individuals partaking more or less of the nature of parties, namely the party of order and the party of progress. The one rejoices in and is satisfied with the honourable achievements of the past; the other is anxious for change. The one is composed of those whose prosperity depends upon maintaining things as they are, whose interests are ''vested interests," whose minds and temperament are conservative. The other is composed of unprivileged classes, restless, experimenting, pioneering, minds. But the lines are not fast drawn. On particular questions there will be slight shiftings and regroupings.
These different classes and interests come together in legislative halls. The circumstances of the times compel change of some kind. The Radicals demand extreme measures. The Conservatives are for doing nothing. Neither has a majority. There is a number who hold a medium view. The measures proposed must be examined, debated, amended, until they reach a shape that will commend a majority of the votes. And there is no measure in politics that cannot be thus modified.
[Compromise might have prevented the U.S. Civil War]
Even the question of slavery could have been compounded [arrived at through compromise?]
There are a hundred intermediate measures between immediate emancipation and permanent slavery. Had a law been enacted in the 1850s providing for gradual emancipation, even upon the basis proposed by Abraham Lincoln of a hundred years ago, the civil war might have been avoided. But the district system of representation had excluded the moderate men from a share in the councils of Congress. Especially is it affirmed by the Senate committee that investigated this matter in 1867. It is well known to students of history that the South was not fairly represented in Congress. A very large minority of the people were in favour of the Union, and doubtless they could have been bought to gradual emancipation without rebellion. But this minority was excluded from its State legislatures and from the halls of Congress. The machine politicians precipitated the South into rebellion.
[page 179]
When once the die was cast, the whole people were forced to follow. Would not compromise have been better than so deadly a war? Would not the slave himself have been as well off or better today with gradual emancipation?
Would not the Union have rested on as secure foundation?
If a question presenting such clear moral issues could have compromised with benefit to all classes and individuals, surely the thousand minor questions of politics could find a similarly happy solution. When representatives abandon party lines this is the direction they take.
We have seen in America two very ingenious compromises on the silver question — a question that certainly has aroused bitter conflicts and that seemed clear-cut and incapable of compromise. Party divisions were disregarded, and representatives set about to find a common ground of agreement. With able financiers in Congress and a spirit of compromise no doubt a permanent settlement of this question would be found that would bring the greatest good to every one.
If the proper conditions were provided and the people were equally represented in legislatures and Congress, doubtless every other question could be settled in the same way.
Party lines would continue but not those artificial party lines perpetuated by party machines.
The legislature of Nebraska has just adjourned with the record of having done the best work of any State legislature for many a year. Yet in that legislature there were three parties about equally divided. The legislature spent six weeks out of twelve in a deadlock over a question of spoils — the election of a United States senator. That is a matter that cannot well be compromised, except by electing an unknown man. This the legislature did, and then set about its legitimate business. It passed fairly able laws on important matters, among them a railroad law that was neither confiscatory nor reactionary, but just to all concerned. This was the character of the other laws. There were no deadlocks on legislation, but every measure was a fair compromise. With proportional representation legislation would take on more of this character, since it would be under the guidance of far abler and more experienced legislators.
If compromise seems tame and devoid of the picturesqueness of party struggles, it should be borne in mind that radical reforms are not permanent. There must follow a reaction. Those noble anti-slavery agitators who saw in the proclamation of emancipation the glorious fruition of their work, and were ready then to pass to other questions, and those extremists who gave the new-fledged freeman the liberty of the ballot, may well today look back with chagrin on those exultant measures. The slave is not yet free. He was not ready for the ballot. And the south is a land of smothered anarchy. Surely gradual emancipation and deliberate enfranchisement would not have been slower in final results than have been these spectacular reforms.
"If the process seems intolerably slow," says John Morley, "we may correct our impatience by looking back upon the past. People seldom realize the enormous period of time that each change in men's ideas requires for its full accomplishment. We speak of these changes with a peremptory kind of definiteness, as if they had covered no more than a space of a few years. Thus we talk of the time of the Reformation, as we might talk of the Reform Bill or the Repeal of the Corn Duties. Yet the Reformation is the name for a movement of the mind of northern Europe that went on for three centuries. Then if we turn to that still more momentous set of events, the rise and establishment of Christianity, one might suppose from current speech that we could fix that within a space of half a century or so. Yet it was at least four hundred years before all the foundations of that great superstructure of doctrine and organization were completely laid... The conditions of speech make it indispensable for us to use definite and compendious names for movements that were both tartly and complex. We are forced to name a long series of events as if they were a single event.
But we lose the reality of history, we fail to recognize one of the most striking aspects of human affairs, and above all we miss that most invaluable practical lesson, the lesson of patience, unless we remember that the great changes of history took up long periods of time which, when measured by the little life of a man, are almost colossal, like the vast changes of geology. We know how long it takes before a species of plant or animal disappears in face of a better adapted species. Ideas and customs, beliefs and institutions, have always lingered just as long in the face of their successors, and the competition is not less keen or less prolonged, because it is for one or other inevitably destined to be hopeless." (Morley, On Compromise, page 233-6)
[page 180]
But it must not be supposed, since proportional representation would compel recourse to compromises, that it would stand in the way of reform. Indeed, it would bring forward the time of genuine reform. And this, not by erratic jumps, but like the steady processes of nature. Reform movements would get a hearing while yet in their beginnings.
Legislation would then anticipate and prepare the way for them. The minds of men would get ready for them. They would not come with that suddenness that districts counsel and demoralizes business and all other interests. Under the present system there is a false ignorance of these movements. They are choked and blanketed. They have no spokesman in places of authority until they have become the majority party in various districts. By this time their pent-up fire is raging. A sense of injustice is urging them on. They accumulate wrath, and all the conservative interests of the country are trembling. With a change of party on that tariff question business is almost at a standstill for a year or more. There is a dread of extreme change. Legislation ought to proceed so quietly and advance so naturally that the community would scarcely notice it.
It would do so were these new and progressive interests early represented. Reforms would shew themselves inside the party lines. At present parties tend to build about themselves a crust of tradition. New parties spring suddenly forth and take the place of the old. This is because our party machinery is not elastic. It does not respond to the growing body within. There is a false feeling of security on the part of the managers. In France this is the cause of armed revolution. The party in power sees its large majority in the Chamber of Deputies and goes its way. But the people are ready to burst the shell. There follow catastrophe, disaster, partisanship, reaction.
Proportional representation was defended twenty years ago in the interests of the minority. It was thought to be a promising corrective of popular suffrage. It would protect the rich against confiscation by the mob. This was the idea of John Stuart Mill in his classical work on Representation.
But today it is plain that proportional representation is in the interests of the masses.
John Stuart Mill knew nothing of the lobby. One man of wealth has the influence of 10,000 day labourers. But the lobby is a dangerous machine for legislation. It protects the rich for a while, but stirs those vindictive passions that demand finally indiscriminate spoliation.
Much better for one and all would be fair and open compromise, looking far into the future and working in harmony with social forces. If legislatures were deliberative assemblies they would bring together year by year all these forces and promote continually the greatest good of all.
[Direct Legislation]
Among the many projects for legislative reform that have been brought out by the recognized failure of representative assemblies, perhaps none is more extreme than the demand for so-called Direct Legislation. This is nothing more nor less than an attempt to return to the primitive town meeting on a large scale and to reduce the legislatures to a perfunctory board. The above discussion of the nature of a deliberative assembly will enable us to pass a fair judgment upon the possibilities of Direct Legislation.
To quote the words of an American advocate of Direct Legislation:
"The great trouble with our legislative bodies is that they have ceased to be the representatives of the body of the people. Their acts are not exponents of the will of the majority of the people. The remedy, if there is any practical remedy, is in taking from our legislative assemblies the absolute power of making laws. The people should be the only makers of the laws that are to control them. They should only delegate to their representatives the duty of consideration and advice. No important principle in government should become active in specific law until it has been referred to the people, and has been approved by a majority vote. This is the position taken by the advocates of the reform called the 'Initiative and Referendum.'
In a political sense 'Initiative' has a special meaning and a double function. It signifies the proposal of law by those who have the legal right to do so to the body that may accept or reject the law. In the first exercise of this function, the individual or collective citizen may propose a law, and this proposal will start it on the regular course of enactment. This method would have many and obvious advantages. The sovereign rights and duties of the people would be exercised. The people would originate the laws, would know them and expressly sanction them. Ignorance of the law could no longer be pleaded as an excuse. Inability to secure relief and redress would not be a justification for bloody revolution.
[page 181]
The right of initiative with the people would not prevent the same to be exercised by the representative body originating such propositions as their judgment might suggest. The broad proposition covered by the 'initiative' is that proposed law shall originate in the aroused and concentrated desires of the body of people. The function of the legislature would consist in digesting and assimilating the crude movements of the popular will for deliberation and final action. This final action is the purpose of the 'Referendum.'
['Referendum' can also mean obligatory referendum]
It [can mean] to refer all important laws passed by the legislature to a vote of all the people. In effect it holds in suspense before the scrutiny of the public ail measures of public welfare long enough to discover and discuss their purpose and adaptation." [source not stated]
[The Swiss Direct Legislation is gateway to pro-rep]
Direct Legislation is not without a long trial. It has been adopted by all the Cantons of Switzerland, and by the Swiss Federal Republic. Its results in that country under the most favourable conditions would hardly furnish a criterion for America or other great nations where legislation is infinitely complex and public interests both delicate and massive. It is therefore significant that after a long trial the Swiss Cantons are making a rapid espousal of proportional representation. Two Cantons have already done so, and the question is a live one in others and in the Federal Government. The people in their primary capacity are incapable of giving the necessary deliberation to public measures.
They decide questions not on their merits but on entirely different considerations, the principal one being the question of confidence in the congress that submitted the bill.
A vote against a given bill is not to be taken as a disapproval of the bill, but as a general lack of confidence in the legislature. The Swiss people have rejected through the Referendum more bills than they have ratified. Then a few years later they have turned about and ratified bills that they had previously rejected.
The Referendum has undoubtedly prevented bad legislation, but it has also prevented the good. But the people cannot judge upon such matters. They lack the information and the opportunities of counsel and compromise. They can only express confidence or distrust in individuals. What they need is wise and experienced legislators in whom they can confide, and then leave the decision to them.
Says Albert Teckney "Do we really wish that our legislators should give us only such legislation as we ourselves think best? Do men wish their shoemakers to make such shoes as they themselves would make-, or their lawyer to try their cases as they themselves would try them, or their physician to give them such drugs as they themselves may fancy? What we wish from our public servants is, not such work as we ourselves should do, or as we may think the best, but better work than we know anything about.
On any proper theory of government we select our very best men, to use their own brains, and not ours, in our service. We choose them, or should choose them, because they will be leagues in advance of anything we dream of." (Teckney, A True Republic, p. 240)
However much the powers of legislators may be reduced by the referendum, it nevertheless is necessary to leave great discretion to them. An act of legislation is a growth.
It takes days and months, conferences and committees, reports and debates, arguments and amendments, to complete it ready for enactment. Here is where skilled workmanship tells. Here is the opportunity for the lobby. The people are helpless. They must treat the statute as a whole. They can only answer the categorical yes or no. But legislation is far more than this. Its essence is in the details, the working, the harmonizing with other statutes.
The same reasons that substituted representation for the primary assembly must hold good, though in less degree, against Direct Legislation. "Representation,'' says Hearn, "is not a makeshift, it is a substantive institution. It is essentially distinct from the government of the Agora or the Forum; and as a political instrument is far superior to that polity...
The primary principle on which its value rests is the same principle that regulates the exercise of the royal will. The people require checks and limitations and enlightenment no less than the king. An aggregate assemblage of individuals must be restrained and informed no less than each individual unit of that aggregate. If a monarchic absolutism be liable to infirmities, democratic absolutism is liable to other and no less dangerous infirmities. For the sovereign Many, therefore, as well as for the sovereign One, the law assigns a specific and exclusive form of expression. The object of this form is the same in both cases.
[page 182]
It is designed to secure the well-weighed and deliberate opinion of the utterer...
For popular utterances a suitable organ is found by the aid of the principle of trusteeship. The application of this principle produces several important results. By its means the size of the deliberative body is reduced to reasonable limits. An orderly and comparatively unexcited assembly is substituted for the tumultuous crowds of the market. The selection of a few persons to act on behalf of many others never fails even in circumstances of great excitement to produce a sobering effect.
The responsibility is in such cases less divided and is consequently more acutely felt. The representative feels too that a reason will be required for whatever course he adopts, and that he must give his reason subject to criticism.
Both in their acts and in their forbearance, therefore, a representative assembly is more careful than a. larger and less responsible body would be. Nor is it the least merit of representation that the representative is generally above the average of his constituents. From the very nature of the case, he is selected on account of some superior aptitude, real or supposed. Thus, although the representative reflects and ought to reflect the character of the electors, he reflects that character in its most favourable and not in its less favourable aspects." (Hearn, Government of England, p. 496)
I do not hold that there is no place for the referendum. Some kinds of bills can well be put to popular vote. U.S. States and cities practise this method of legislation successfully in matters of constitutional law, taxation and indebtedness. Here the principle has undoubted merits. It might perhaps be extended to other measures.
But however far it is extended, legislation must also be carried out by a delegate body of some sort. The referendum gains its strongest claim in the frailties of legislatures. If proportional representation should improve these bodies and make them able, representative, and popular, the people would be glad to entrust to them their dearest interests.
CHAPTER VII. Conclusion.
Professor Emil de Laveleye has said that the remedies for partisan abuses in representative government are: Representation of minorities [through pro-rep], secret ballots, civil service reform.
These three reforms are today well under headway. The secret ballot is now well nigh universal in parliamentary countries. Intelligent people are wide awake to the evils of the spoils system. Proportional representation has been adopted in two cantons of Switzerland. In America it has as yet not been fully comprehended. But it fills out the measure of other great reforms.
The three are co-ordinate and complementary.
The secret ballot prepares the way for a simple application of proportional representation. It enables the voter to have before him when he comes to the polls several lists of candidates, representing all parties and interests, it protects him from outside influences, it gives him the widest possible freedom of choice. The secret official ballot therefore, gives the [pro-rep] movement an advantage that it by no means possessed in the period of reconstruction of the Southern States, when it was widely but unsuccessfully advocated.
Again, proportional representation is impossible in the presence of a spoils system. It would result in constant deadlocks. Legislation would be at a standstill. No measure would so powerfully impress upon the people the need of civil service reform. Legislatures in their own defence would take the initiative in this reform instead of waiting to be driven by public opinion.
With these three reforms co-operating, there need be no fear of popular government.
They are not makeshifts or palliatives. They reach the sources of power. A reformed legislature would be the mightiest of engines for handling every other reform. It rightly holds the puree, the very life of government. It controls all other departments. It is nearest the people. It should include the best wisdom, integrity, enterprise of the people.
It should represent the opinions and wishes of the people in the same proportions in which they exist at large. It should be the people themselves in conference. It should be a deliberative body in the highest sense, and not a side-show of puppets — worked by the party machine and the lobby. It should harmonize all social interests. It should give power to the majority, a hearing to the minority, each in the persons of their ablest advocates.
[page 183]
APPENDIX. The Distribution of Seats. [relating to Page 162]
M. Victor de Hondt, of Brussels, Belgium, has devised an ingenious and accurate plan for the assignment of representatives to parties. The plan has been officially adopted by the Belgian Proportional Representation Society and has received wide approval among continental reformers. The rule adopted is simple enough in its Operation. But the reasons for it are so difficult of explanation that it is questionable whether it can be successfully advocated at this stage of the movement. Having adopted the free ticket as advocated in these pages, M. D'Hondt determines the number of seats to be assigned to each party by dividing the respective electoral votes by such a common divisor as will give quotients whose number is equal to the numbers of seats to be filled. This common divisor is obtained by dividing the electoral vote of the parties by 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and taking that quotient that holds in the order of importance the rank corresponding to the number of seats to be filled.
(The complete statement of M. D'Hondt's plan is found in La Representation Proportionelle, Vol. IV, p. 350-374 Brussels, 1885.)
M. D'Hondt gives the following example:
Example.
There are seven deputies to be elected.
Total vote of the Liberal ticket 8,145
Catholic ticket 5,680
Independent ticket 3,725
The common divisor is 2,038. [17,550 (or 16,304) divided by 8 (Droop)]
This is contained 4 times in 8,145
This is contained 2 times in 5,680
This is contained 1 time in 3,725
Giving the Liberals four members, the Catholics two, and the Independents one.
The divisor is discovered by dividing the votes of the parties successively by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 as follows:
Liberals Catholics Independents
Divided by 1 ....... 8145 5680 3725
" 2 ...... 4027 2840 1862
" 3 ........ 2715 1893 1862
" 4 .......... 2038
" 5 ........ 1629
Ranking now these quotients in the order of their importance
Liberal Catholic Independent
1st ................ 8145
2nd .............. 5,680
3rd .............. 4072
4th .............. 3725
5th ............. 2848
6th ............... 2715
7th ............... 2038
8th .............. 1893
There being seven seats to fill, the number 2038 is the seventh in the order of importance and is taken for the common divisor. If there were eight seats the number would be 1893 and so on for any number of seats.
[page 184]
The plan of M. D'Hondt is mathematically accurate. It is superior in some respects to the simple rule of three, which has been adopted in the Swiss legislation. It is advocated in the foregoing pages of this essay. There are contingencies also where the results would be different from those of the simpler operation, especially that it is more likely to exclude small parties from representation. This is certainly an advantage, in the opinion of the present writer, and one that ought to be incorporated in legislation of this kind.
Eventually we may hope that it may be done.
[Necessary to ensure simplicity in any proposed legislation]
But at the present stage of the movement it is above all things necessary to ensure simplicity in any proposed legislation.
The Hare system foundered on the rock of complexity, and reformers must take warning from its fate. Absolute equality is impossible, under any system. The simpler rule is only slightly less accurate than the rule of D'Hondt. Both are infinitely better than single-membered districts.
The present problem is to substitute in the mind of the public the principle of proportional for that of majority representation. When once the principle has been accepted and adopted in legislation, its evident fairness will prevent a return to the old system. And it will prepare the way for minor amendments to secure the highest possible accuracy and justice.
[signed] Equality.
===============
[This is the end of Fleming's Essays on Rectification of Parliament (1893).]
================================================
Comments