Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election Part 3

Moderate majority over Progressive and Labour 70,478 49 12

_The London County Council elections_.

A swing of the pendulum which, measured in votes, would have transferred a majority of twelve into a minority of seventeen, had the effect of changing a majority of 49 into a minority of 41. This alternate exaggeration of the prevailing tendencies in munic.i.p.al politics gives rise to a false impression of the real opinions of the elector. The citizens of London are not so unstable as the composition of their Council, but it is the more violent displacement which forms the basis of comment in the press and of munic.i.p.al action. These elections, too, like the Parliamentary elections, showed with what ease the minority throughout large areas may be deprived of representation. Six adjoining suburban boroughs--Brixton, Norwood, Dulwich, Lewisham, Greenwich, Woolwich--were, before the election of 1907, represented by twelve Progressives. At that election they returned twelve Moderates; indeed on that occasion the outer western and southern boroughs, in one continuous line from Hampstead to Fulham, from Wandsworth to Woolwich, returned Moderates and Moderates only.

_The election of aldermen of the L.C.C._

The London County Council elections of 1910 gave the Munic.i.p.al Reform party a majority of two councillors over the Progressive and Labour parties. The transfer of a single vote in Central Finsbury would have been sufficient to have produced an exact balance. It was the duty of the new Council to elect the aldermen, the block vote being used. The majority of two was sufficient to enable the Munic.i.p.al Reformers to carry the election of every one of the ten candidates nominated by them, thus depriving the minority of any voice in the election of aldermen.

The object for which aldermen were inst.i.tuted was entirely set at naught, and this the method of election alone made possible. The privilege of selecting aldermen was used by the party in power, not for the purpose of strengthening the Council by the addition of representative men, but for the purpose of strengthening the party position.[15] The privilege has been abused in a similar way by the English provincial boroughs. In these boroughs, prior to the Election of Aldermen Act, 1910, aldermen as well as councillors took part in the election of aldermen. In some cases a party having once obtained a predominant position has, by making full use of its power to elect aldermen in sympathy with itself, succeeded in perpetuating its predominance, although defeated at the polls. The minority of the councillors, with the a.s.sistance of the non-retiring aldermen, has not only elected further aldermen from members of the same party, but has controlled the policy of the Council. The Act referred to merely prevents aldermen in munic.i.p.al councils from voting in the election of other aldermen, but does not go to the root of the evil. An alteration in the method of election is required.

[Sidenote 1: _The election of Representative Peers of Scotland_.]

A further example of the use of the block vote may be taken from the election of Scottish Representative Peers. At the commencement of each Parliament the Scottish Peers meet in Holyrood Palace for the purpose of electing sixteen of their number to represent the peerage of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Unionist Peers are in a majority, and the block vote enables them to choose sixteen Unionist Peers. At the election of January 1910 Lord Torphichen, a Unionist Peer, who had voted against his party on the Finance Bill of the previous year, failed to secure re-election. Lord Torphichen was elected in the following December, but the incident shows how complete is the power conferred upon the majority by this method of election; not only political opponents but dissenting members of the same party can be excluded from representation.

_The Australian Senate_.

The block vote is used also in the election of members of the Australian Senate. Each State elects six senators, half of whom retire every three years. Each State is polled as a separate const.i.tuency, and each elector has three votes. At the election of 1910 the Labour Party polled the highest number of votes in each of the States, and thus succeeded in returning eighteen senators, all other parties obtaining none. The figures here given for the elections in Victoria and New South Wales show that in Victoria the successful candidates were not even supported by a majority of electors, and that in both States the excess of the successful over their leading opponents was so small that a slight turn over would have completely altered the result of the elections:--

ELECTION of AUSTRALIAN SENATORS, 1910

_Victoria._

Successful. Unsuccessful.

Findley (Lab.)....217,673 Best (Fusionist) ....... 213,976 Barker (Lab.).....216,199 Trenwith (Fusionist).... 211,058 Blakey (Lab.).....215,117 M'Cay (Fusionist) ...... 195,477 Goldstein (Independent) 53,583 Ronald (Independent) ... 18,380

648,889 692,474

_New South Wales._

Successful. Unsuccessful.

A.M'Dougall(Lab.) ..., 249,212 J.P. Gray (Fusionist)... 220,569 A. Gardiner (Lab.) ... 247,047 E. Pulsford (Fusionist). 214,889 A. Rae (Lab.)..........239,307 J. C. Neild (Fusionist). 212,150 J. Norton (Independ.)... 50,893 R. Mackenzie (Independ.) 13,608 J.O. Maroney (Independ.) 9,660 T. h.o.a.re (Independ.).... 8,432

735,566 730,201

_London Borough Councils_

The London Borough Council elections yield results equally unsatisfactory. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords which, in 1907, examined the Munic.i.p.al Representation Bill introduced by Lord Courtney of Penwith, sums up these results in the following paragraphs:--

"If the different wards are similar in character, the majority, even if little more than one-half, may secure all the seats. For instance, in one borough the Progressives, with 19,430 votes, obtained all the 30 seats, and the Munic.i.p.al Reformers, though they polled 11,416 votes, did not obtain even one; while, on the contrary, in four other boroughs the Progressives did not secure any representation. "On the other hand, the system does not in all cases secure power to the majority. If the wards are dissimilar and the majority too much condensed in certain districts, the minority may secure a majority of seats, as in the case of one borough where 46,000 votes secured 30 seats, while 54,000 votes only obtained 24.

"The system leads to violent fluctuations. If the two great parties are nearly evenly divided, it is obvious that a comparatively small change may create a revolution in the representation. In Lewisham, at the 1903 election, the Progressives had 34 seats and the Moderates only 6; in 1905, on the other hand, the Munic.i.p.al Reformers obtained all the 42 seats, and the Progressives failed to secure even one."[16]

One example will suffice to ill.u.s.trate the findings of this Committee.

Here are the results of two wards in the Borough of Battersea:--

BATTERSEA BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTION, 1906

Ward Votes Obtained.

Munic.i.p.al Reform Progressive Candidates. Candidates.

Shaftesbury 786 905 } (six seats) 777 902 } 769 899 }all 753 895 }successful.

753 891 } 741 852 } ----- ----- Totals 4,579 5,344

St. John's 747 } 217 (three seats) 691 }all 197 686 }successful. 191 ----- ----- Totals 2,124 605

Totals for both wards 6,703 5,949

These tables disclose some curious anomalies. Each elector in the Shaftesbury ward has six votes--the ward being ent.i.tled to six Councillors--whereas each elector in the St. John's ward, which is only ent.i.tled to three Councillors, has but three votes. The additional representation is allotted to the Shaftesbury ward because of its larger electorate, but the only electors to reap any advantage from this fact are the Progressives. The presence in the ward of a large number of citizens who are Munic.i.p.al Reformers has merely had the effect of increasing the amount of representation obtained by their opponents.

Further, the number of Munic.i.p.al Reformers in the Shaftesbury ward exceeded the number of Munic.i.p.al Reformers in the St. John's ward; in the former they obtained no representation, in the latter they obtained three seats. The two wards taken together showed a net majority in votes of 754 for the Munic.i.p.al Reformers who, however, only secured three seats out of nine. Taking the Borough as a whole the Munic.i.p.al Reformers obtained 24 representatives with 53,910 votes, whereas the Progressives obtained 30 representatives with 46,274 votes.

_Provincial Munic.i.p.al Councils_.

Nor are the results of the Provincial Borough elections more satisfactory. These boroughs are usually divided into wards returning three or six members each. One-third of the councillors retire each year, and each ward is called upon to elect one or two councillors, as the case may be. The figures for the Munic.i.p.al elections held in November 1908, at Manchester, Bradford, and Leeds disclose a similar discrepancy between the votes polled and the seats obtained. [_See table below_.]

BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTIONS, 1908

Parties Votes Seats Seats in Polled. Obtained. proportion to Votes.

_Manchester_.

Conservative 25,724 14 10 Independent 11,107 3 4 Liberal 14,474 7 6 Labour and Socialist 15,963 2 6

_Bradford_.

Conservative 12,809 10 6 Liberal 12,106 6 5 Socialist-Labour 11,388 0 5 Independent 1,709 1 1

_Leeds_.

Conservative 18,145 8 5 Liberal 19,507 3 5 Socialist-Labour 9,615 1 2 Independent 3,046 1 1

_Summary.]

The examples given in this chapter may be briefly summarised. The same defects are disclosed in Parliamentary, County Council and Munic.i.p.al (both metropolitan and provincial) elections. These defects may be cla.s.sified under three heads: (1) often a gross exaggeration of the strength of the victorious party; (2) sometimes a complete disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the minority; and (3) at other times a failure of a majority of citizens to obtain their due share of representation. In addition, running through all the results, there is an element of instability due to the fact that a slight change in public opinion may produce an altogether disproportionate effect, the violence of the swing of the pendulum arising more from the electoral method than from the fickleness of the electorate. These defects all spring from the same root cause--that the representation of any const.i.tuency is awarded to the majority of the electors in that const.i.tuency irrespective of the size of the majority; that the votes of the minority count for nothing.

The result of a General Election is thus often dependent not upon the relative strengths of political forces, but upon the chance way in which those forces are distributed, and in a considerable measure may be influenced by the way in which the boundaries of const.i.tuencies are drawn. Such a system invites and encourages gerrymandering, both in its original and modern forms, but this detestable practice can be made of no avail and the results of elections rendered trustworthy if we so reform present methods as to give due weight to the strength of each political party irrespective of the way in which that strength may be distributed.

[Footnote 1: Reply to Deputation, House of Commons, 10 November 1908.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Corbett's a.n.a.lyses were accepted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as "representing the truth as nearly as circ.u.mstances will permit."--Report, p. 31.]

[Footnote 3: There is a marked difference between the electoral conditions of Great Britain and Ireland, but as the Government of the day depends for support upon a majority of the representatives of all parts of the kingdom, the figures here given are those for the United Kingdom.]

[Footnote 4: Mr. Gladstone, in introducing the Redistribution of Seats Bill, 1 December 1884, said: "The recommendations of this system (one-member districts) I think are these--that it is very economical, it is very simple, and it goes a very long way towards that which many gentlemen have much at heart, viz., what is roughly termed representation of minorities."--Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 294, p. 379.]

[Footnote 5: Other examples are given in Appendix V. The representation of minorities varies very considerably in amount, and, as shown in the Appendix, depends not upon their size but upon the way in which they are distributed over the electoral area.]

[Footnote 6: The basis of calculation, as explained by Mr. Rooke Corbett, is as follows: "It seems to me reasonable to suppose that those changes of public opinion which affected the contested const.i.tuencies affected the uncontested const.i.tuencies also, and therefore, in estimating the number of voters in an uncontested const.i.tuency, I have a.s.sumed that the strength of each party varied from one election to another in the same ratio as in the contested const.i.tuencies in the same county."--P. R. Pamphlet, No. 14. _Recent Electoral Statistics_, p. 5.]

[Footnote 7: These figures are taken from an article by Robert B.