MINORITY AND PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. Under prevailing election methods the views of large numbers of voters are not represented by men of their choosing. Minority parties get a voice in legis lative assemblies only by the haphazard pre ponderance of their members in a few localities. In every voting district that group of electors which is in the minority has no direct repre sentation, and sometimes for a generation its members will go to the polls in vain. Though Norway, in its Constitution of 1814, appears to have been the first country to make an attempt to change this, the subject did not attract gen eral attention till toward the middle of the century. In 1844 Thomas Gilpin published in Philadelphia a pamphlet that led a long train of literature, and in 1857 appeared the first of several books by Thomas Hare, in whose idea of •personal representation' J. S. Mill thought he discovered °the greatest improvement of which the system of representative government is capable.' Since then many plans to accom plish the same end have been suggested. All presuppose that more than one place is to be filled at a time, as a board of aldermen to be elected on a general list, or several representa tives from one district. The simplest plan is the single-vote system, where each elector has hut one vote and the candidates receiving the largest number of votes are declared elected. It has been used in Philadelphia by the Repub lican party in the election of ward executive committees, and by the Democratic party in choosing inspectors of election. It is the method justified by the theory that no voter is entitled to be represented in any representative body by more than a single representative and would seem admirably adapted to the conduct of the internal affairs of parties. On the other hand, where the supremacy of party views is the issue, it is manifestly objectionable, as with out an impracticable degree of party machin ery and discipline, the majority party, if it has nominated as many candidates as there are places to be filled, may so scatter its votes that less than half of them will be elected, and in any event cannot allot its votes so as to ensure a result proportionate to its preponderance. Systems based on the °limited theory meet this objection to some extent. Under them each voter may vote only for some fixed num ber of candidates less than the number to be elected. In operation this secures representa
tion to the minority party second in rank, but with no relation to its numerical importance and smaller minority parties get no represen tation at all. With the next group of systems, those known as °cumulative,* arithmetical complications grow. The first practical test of the idea came in 1870, when it was adopted as the method of electing English school boards, and in the same year it was put into the concti onion of Illinois by the proviso that °each voter may cast as many votes for one candidate as there are representatives to be elected, or may distribute the same or equal parts thereof among the candidates as he shall see fit.' To each legislative district were allotted three members, so that a voter could cast his three votes for one, a vote and a half for each of two or one vote for each of three. The chief objection comes from the chance and tempta tion for members of the majority to (plump,' that is, cast all three votes for one man; some times this permits the minority to elect two men, when the bulk of the majority vote is concentrated on one popular candidate; there fore, it invites to contests between party col leagues instead of political antagonists, breeds jealousies and disrupts organizations. These evils have been more conspicuous in the choice of English school boards, for the more men to be elected the greater the dangers from `plumping.' Apparently the projectors of the minority representation plan in Illinois ex pected that the two great parties would con tinue to nominate three candidates in each dis trict, but the politicians soon discerned the folly of nominating candidates for certain de feat, and each party nominated only two candi dates for the three positions to be filled; hence all the nominees except one were practically certain of election. Furthermore, in districts strongly Republican, the Republicans would nominate only two candidates and the Demo crats one and the reverse would occur in strongly Democratic districts, with the result that the voter had no choice whatever and a party nomination became equivalent to an elec tion. Public opinion in Illinois has long called for the abolition of this system, but owing to the difficulty of securing constitutional amend ments the efforts have been unavailing.