PROPORTIONAL TION, as its name suggests, is the result ob tained when the members of legislative bodies are so chosen that each party or faction in the voting population is represented by a number of delegates proportionate to its numerical voting strength.
Proportional representation gained respecta bility as a reform in England and the United States largely as the result of the able expo sition of its principles made by Mr. Thomas Hare in 1859 and John Stuart Mill in 1862. Since its underlying principle, as will be later pointed out, is destructive of the two-party sys tem which forms the framework of the present English and American political structures, it is natural that it should have received scant recognition or approval from party leaders. It has been put into practice in the United States only in those rare instances in which the prin ciple of non-partisanship has found expression, —instances thus far confined in the main to cities in which the new forms of commission or city manager organization have been adopted. The socialist party indorses its application in State and National governments, and one or two non-political organizations are conducting campaigns of education in its behalf.
Method of The nature and working of proportional representation may best be made clear by an examination of the two leading methods which have been devised to give it effect.
(a) The single transferable vote.—This system is applicable to an election in which sev eral representatives are to be chosen from a large constituency. Suppose six vacancies are to be filled by an electorate of 60,000 voters. Under the usual bi-party system each party would nominate six candidates and the party which cast the majority, or even the plurality in case more than two parties had tickets in the field, would elect all six representatives. It might be, therefore, that 31,000 voters would elect all the representatives and the other 29, 000 would go unrepresented. By the use of the single transferable vote each voter would vote not for six candidates hut for one. Any candidate, therefore, who received 10,000, or one-sixth of the total vote cast, would be elected. In this way any group in the commu nity which had this much voting strength could secure the election of one representative. With no other provisions for expressing a preference between candidates this system would, of course, tend to give the same representation to all groups of voters alike provided they could each cast a vote of 10,000. A voter might, therefore.
find himself wasting his vote by casting it either for a man who had already received more than enough votes to elect him or for a man who did not receive enough to elect him. To avoid this difficulty the single vote is made transfer able by allowing the voter to indicate his second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth choices or as many of them as he cares to indicate. If the man for whom he has expressed his first choice does not need his vote, or cannot be elected even with the aid of it, then his second choice vote is added to the total first-choice votes of the man for whom it is expressed, and so on. In this way, by counting as many of the later choices as are necessary to secure the election of six men each group in the electorate is able to elect approximately its proportionate share of the whole number of representatives. In other words, 40,000 of the 60,000 could by ex pressing their first four choices elect four men.
This system was roughly the one advocated by Hare and bears his name. It has been modi fied in many ways especially in the matter of the counting of the votes and the procedure in the elimination of the weak candidates. A good many detailed problems arise in connection with its application which cannot be mentioned here.
(b) The List System.— This system gives the voter a chance to express a preference not only for an individual candidate but also for a party or group. The names of candidates are put on the ballot in lists or blocks so that those of similar views are grouped together. The voter, as in the first system described, has but one vote to cast and he casts it for one candi date on one of the lists. This vote counts one in determining how many candidates the ad herents of that list are to elect and it also counts one toward the election of a single candidate on that list. The proportion of the total vote which is cast for a single list determines the number of representatives which are chosen from that list; and when that number has been determined the highest candidates on the list are chosen. Thus a man may vote for a man who is defeated yet at the same time further the election of another candidate from the same list or party.