HOUGH cumulative voting and

The United vote, both of which TH

assure some representation to the leading minority party, were introduced for certain public elections, notably in Illinois and Pennsylvania some two generations ago, it was not until 1915 that a thorough-going system of proportional representation was adopted for a public election in the United States. In August of that year Ashtabula, Ohio, adopted the "single transferable vote" or "Hare system" of proportional representation-"P. R." as it is called for short-at the polls, as an amendment to its new city manager charter which had been adopted on November 3, 1914. The vote for the amendment was 588 to 400. The system was applied to the election of seven councilmen at large.

CITIES

Boulder, Colorado, adopted proportional representation for its council on October 30, 1917. The Boulder council has nine members. Three are elected at large every two years for a term of six years. The election of so small a number together did not have the approval of the Proportional Representation League: the leaders of that organization would have preferred the election of all nine together.

P. R. was adopted by Kalamazoo, Michigan, on February 4, 1918, by a vote of 2,403 to 659, for the election at large of its commission of seven

Proportional

representation

was

adopted on February 11, 1921, for the council of West Hartford, Connecticut, by vote of that body itself under authority given it by special act of the legislature. West Hartford is a fine residential suburb of Hartford. The system is applied to the election of fifteen councilmen from four districts, the number elected from the districts being five, one, four, and five. As applied in the Second District, where only one member is elected, the system works out as a preferential majority system. The splitting up of the town thus into districts was not in accordance with the recommendations of the Proportional Representation League, which would have preferred election at large. The first adoption of the system was for one election only. After the first election, however, the council voted on February 6, 1922— to continue its use.

Sacramento, California, adopted the proportional system for its council of nine November 30, 1920. The vote was 7,962 to 1,587. The members are

elected all together at large. The first election was held on May 3, 1921. Soon afterwards action was taken by Mr. James H. Devine, one of the defeated candidates, to have the courts declare the system contrary to the constitution of California. The lower court sustained the system. On October 23, 1922, however, the Appellate Court, to which Mr. Devine appealed, handed down a decision declaring the system unconstitutional. On December 22 the Supreme Court of the state denied the petition for the transfer of the case to its jurisdiction. The members of the council will be allowed to finish out their terms, which end in December, 1923.

The most striking advance of proportional representation in this country since the first election under the system in Ashtabula in 1915, was its adoption by Cleveland on November 8, 1921, in connection with the city manager plan. The vote was 77,888 to 58,204. In Cleveland, the system is to be applied to the election of a council of twenty-five from four districts: from the West Side, 7; from the Central District, 6; from the South Side, 5; and from the East Side, 7. The new election system is part of a very comprehensive amendment to the Cleveland home rule charter, which is to all intents and purposes an entirely new charter. The new plan of government goes into operation January 1, 1924, the first election being held on November 6, 1923.

USED WITH CITY MANAGER PLAN

It is significant that all these cities which have decided to use the proportional system have adopted it in connection with the manager plan of government. In my opinion, for reasons set forth in the latter part of this article, this is in accordance with sound political theory.

THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE

It is important also to note that the system of proportional representation adopted by all these American cities is the "single transferable vote" or "Hare system." Strangely enough, too, no other system than this single transferable vote has been adopted for public elections in any other Englishspeaking country, though rival systems, especially the party list system, have spread with great rapidity in recent years over continental Europe and some other parts of the world.

The chief difference, so far as political effects are concerned, between the single transferable vote and the list system is that the former gives the voter far more freedom than the latter to make his will effective even when he consults only his own real preferences without being restricted by party lines and without regard to any candidate's supposed strength or weakness. It is this greater freedom of the voter under the single transferable vote that makes the system effective not only in giving the right number of seats in the representative body to each section of public opinion but also in freeing the voter from thraldom to political "machines."

The main principles of the single transferable vote are easily explained. The members of the representative body are elected either all together at large, as in the case of the council of a small or medium-sized city, or in districts each of which is large enough to elect several. No matter how many members are being elected in a voter's district, he has but one vote. If a sufficient number of votes-a quota, as it is called-support a candidate, he is elected. If seven are being elected together, the perfect quota would be, of course, one seventh of all who have voted. For practical reasons,

however, a slightly smaller number, namely, barely more than one eighth of all who have voted, is used as the quota. The voter expresses his vote by putting the figure 1 opposite the name of his favorite candidate. He is, however, allowed and encouraged also to express his second and lower choices by the figures 2, 3, etc.—as many or as few such lower choices as he pleases. At the voting precincts only the first choices are counted. The ballots of the entire multi-member district are brought together from the precincts to a central counting place. The count is then completed in accordance with definite rules which work out in causing each ballot to help, if possible, in the election of one candidatein every case the candidate marked as most desired by the voter among those candidates who could possibly be helped to election by it. Thus each member of the body is elected by a quota of voters who are united, considering the actual alignments revealed by the ballots, in the desire to elect the candidate whom in fact they do elect.

The

As a quota of votes is required for the election of each member-I disregard certain exceptions- no party or group can elect more members than it polls quotas of votes. And, on the other hand, any group of voters which polls a quota of votes or more is sure to elect the member or members it deserves.

ILLUSTRATION OF POLITICAL EFFECTS

The political effects of the transferability of the vote, which are quite distinct from the proportional effects mentioned in the preceding paragraph, may be illustrated by a single example. Suppose seven councilmen were being elected together, and suppose each voter had only one vote and it was not transferable. In that case a po

litical party which expected to poll three-sevenths of the total vote (or at least more than three-eighths, which is the same thing in effect), would nominate only three candidates and would read out of the party any of its members who nominated rivals to those three. For to nominate rivals to the three in that case would be to "split the party vote" and expose the party to possible disaster. In the election, therefore, the voters would have to take their choices among the "regular" candidates of the several parties.

Now suppose all the conditions to be the same except that the voter is allowed to indicate on his ballot as many choices as he pleases, and that those who count the ballots are to make effective the highest of his choices that can be made effective. In this case independent members of the party whose managers nominated three candidates (having in the transferable ballot the means of conducting at the election itself a competition within the party for the three places which the party may expect to win), will feel quite free to nominate rivals to the "machine" candidates of the party. Thus the transferable vote means real competition within each party, without any reduction of the party's strength as a whole. It therefore changes the whole face of politics, requiring of political managers not the mere capturing of places on party slates, but genuine leadership. RELATION BETWEEN PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND DIRECT

PRIMARY

The relation between proportional representation with the single transferable vote and the direct primary will now be clear. The direct primary came into existence only because our old system of balloting, permitting the voter as it did to express only one

choice for each office, afforded no opportunity at the final election for free competition within a party for the offices which the party's total vote might enable it to win. A party which in the final election ran more candidates than it could elect, that is, more than were to be elected, courted disaster, for splitting the party vote meant throwing votes away. The resulting necessity of restricting nominations meant, in turn, the virtual control of politics by those who controlled the nominations of the two great parties. The ordinary independent citizen had, it is true, the legal right to vote; but of what practical value was this right if he had nobody to vote for, with any likelihood of electing them, except machine-picked Republicans and machine-picked Democrats? Helpless as they were under such conditions, the voters demanded-what naturally seemed to them the only means of relief-a system of nominating candidates by direct and legally regulated primary elections.

The failure of the direct primary system to give the voters all the relief they sought was not, of course, surprising to those who had studied the effects of the old single-shot vote as compared with those of the transferable vote. Suppose you were sending some distance for fruit and did not know what kinds might be available in the market: if you were restricted to naming a single kind of fruit, your messenger would very likely return empty-handed. In sending for fruit, however, you are not in fact restricted thus: there is nothing to prevent your naming several kinds in the order of your preference, with directions to the messenger that only one your highest choice among the kinds available -is to be brought. But in voting, under the old single-shot system, though there may be several candidates

for a single office, you are restricted to the expression of only one choice. Do away with that restriction and the primary election becomes superfluous. Keep that restriction, and even the troublesome and expensive primary is inadequate to give the voter real freedom. For, after all, the primary does nothing more than carry the same old difficulty one step further back: offering the voters at the primary itself only the same old single-shot ballot, it often presents to him only the same old dilemma between voting for a candidate he really wants and voting for the less objectionable of the two who have some chance of winning. The direct primary system, though naturally advocated as the best remedy for machine domination by leaders of public opinion not familiar with the transferable vote, and though actually helpful in many notable cases in giving the people control of public affairs, was not and is not the true remedy. The true remedy is the transferable vote.

APPLICATION OF TRANSFERABLE VOTE

But how, if the transferable vote was to be used, is it to be applied? It would be possible, of course, to apply it not only to the policy-determining body, as is done in the American cities which have adopted it, but also separately, as a majority system, to every other office now filled at the polls. And that would be preferable, certainly, to the two single-shot elections-the final one and the primary—which we now have. But it would not give the voters complete relief. Even with the transferable vote in their hands, the rank and file of our voters are not in a position to choose wisely among a multitute of candidates for administrative as well as deliberative positions. The one thing they are in a position to do, if provided with the

right sort of ballot, is to choose spokesmen to represent them, in a council or a legislature, in the determination of general policies and the selection and replacement of chief administrators. In the rest of the government they can have their way most surely by holding their spokesmen responsible for making the right decisions. It was therefore quite right, in my opinion, when some of our cities became ready to adopt the transferable vote, for them not to apply it as a majority system to administrative offices but to apply it as a quota or proportional system to the council only, holding that body responsible for all the rest of the government. To have elected a truly representative council and then to have elected other city officials more or less independent of that body would have been only to divide the responsibility and confuse the issues.

SUCCESS OF PLAN

As the number of our cities which have been actually governed under this plan is now five and as several of them have been under the plan from two to six years, it is interesting to inquire how they have gotten along. On this point I cannot claim to be a dispassionate observer. But there seems to be enough evidence, of a wholly unprejudiced character, to warrant us in saying that everywhere the plan has been successful and that in some of the cities its benefits have been very marked. After the first election in Ashtabula, it is true, the new voting system was blamed by some for the bad deadlock of the council in choosing the first city manager, for its final choice of one of its own members, and for the shooting of a man in a barroom fight later by one of the councilmen. But none of these unfortunate occurrences was directly connected with

the method of voting, and the subsequent experience of Ashtabula seems to indicate that that method is generally approved by leading citizens of all elements. This experience, considered from two very different points of view, is covered by the following statements made after the third P. R. election by Mr. P. C. Remick, former President of the Ashtabula Chamber of Commerce, and by Mr. Charles G. Nelson, former President of the Ashtabula Central Labor Union. Mr. Remick: "After watching the results of our three elections under the Hare system, I am pleased with the results. In each case the best of the candidates have been elected." Mr. Nelson: "I believe it is the fairest method of election ever used." The success of the system in Ashtabula is confirmed. strongly also by the city's rejection at the polls in 1920 of a proposal to do away with it, and by its adoption in 1921, in the light of Ashtabula's experience, by the neighboring city of Cleveland,

In Sacramento nearly all elements expressed themselves favorably after the first election in 1921. The Star (May 5th): "On every hand satisfaction is being expressed in no uncertain terms." The Union (May 5th): "The results obtained May 3rd indicate that gangsters, politicians, and advocates of mass voting are completely staggered." The government of Sacramento under the new charter has been, it is reported, highly efficient and successful; and according to a statement made after the close of the first calendar year by Mr. Irvin Engler, Assistant Secretary of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, Commerce, "Working in harmony, thoroughly representative, and giving the manager support in progressive movements, the council has had a conspicuous part in the results attained." On December 23, the day after the