among two candidates, or three candidates, or four, or five, or six, or eight; or he may vote for all twelve, one each. Thus we have secured by this plan the election of the best men from both parties. That is the idea. It will secure the best men for both parties. Political conventions will not be the machinery controlling such elections, not being enabled to force upon the people a compulsory vote to a certain extent of the whole ticket without scratching. This privilege is given here by law; and I think it will work exceedingly well. It is termed by some rather complete representation than 'minority representation.'”

Mr. DAYS said:

"He had known politicians who were considerable skirmishers among themselves, haunting the public houses and such other places where they would be best enabled to make a special fight for themselves, not caring particularly for the interests of the ticket they were upon, or of the men on the ticket with them. By adopting the amendment proposed they would be giving a premium, and a very large premium, in his opinion, for such procedures by that class of politicians. He could not think of any better plan to put money into the purses of those seeking to be bought up.'

The bill was ordered engrossed, ayes, 30; noes, 20. March 30th, 1872, Minority Representation was discussed in the West Virginia Convention.

Mr. FITZHUGH said:

"He believed it to be just and right, and that it embodied in a fuller degree than had been heretofore practised the true theory of Republican government."

Mr. WHEAT said:

"He was something of an 'old fogy' and he believed in the correctness of the old rule that the majority should govern."

Mr. PENDLETON said:

"Its inherent fairness and justice would at once commend themselves to the approval of all who appreciated correctly the end it had in view. He insisted that it was not designed to, and could not set aside, the doctrine that the majority should rule; the majority would still retain its power to control the government in accordance with its will. *** The chief defect in our republican system is the oppression of minorities, and he looked to the success of some plan of proportional representation as the only means of remedying this defect."

Hon. CHAS. J. FAULKNER, ex-United States Minister to France, said:

"He was in favor of the adoption of the principle of proportional representation in the Senate, but not in the House of Delegates. He thought that much less difficulty would result from its adoption in the Senate than

in the other house; that the change could be more readily effected, and that less alteration of the Constitution would be needed in that event. That would be going far enough by way of experiment, and the people could judge of the propriety of extending the principle farther."

The section under debate was then adopted by 41 to 22. Other debates have marked the year 1872, but the general drift in all is about as in the above.

5

CHAPTER III.

THE CUMULATIVE VOTE-ITS HISTORY-PRACTICAL OPERATION-ADOPTION IN ENGLAND, PENNSYLVANIA, WEST VIRGINIA, NEW YORK, AND UTAHI -APPLICATION TO CORPORATE AND ECCLESIASTICAL ELECTIONS-ITS CONSTITUTIONALITY-DEFECTS.

THE Cumulative Vote gives every elector as many votes as there are persons to be chosen in his district, with liberty to bestow all those votes upon one candidate, or distribute them among several, in such proportions as he may see fit. If there are 4 representatives to be elected, he may give 1 vote to each of four candidates, or 1 to each of two candidates, and 2 to another, or 3 votes to one candidate and 1 to another, or, finally, may cast all his 4 votes for one. Where more than one vote is given a candidate, the elector is said to cumulate his votes, and hence the name given the method. Sometimes, also, from the liberty of choice it allows, it is called the Free Vote. The author of the process is Mr. JAMES GARTH MARSHALL, of England, who suggested the idea in a pamphlet letter to Lord John Russell, in 1853.

At that time Lord RUSSELL was endeavoring to provide for some representation of minorities, and Mr. MARSHALL proposed the cumulative vote as a method "more in harmony with longestablished usage" than any which had been proposed to that end. The cumulative vote is, in fact, the present method of voting over again, except that the voter is at liberty to cast his votes as he will. As we now vote, if there are 3 Representatives to be chosen, each elector is allowed 3 votes, but can only cast them in one way, i.e., one vote for each of three candidates. If he desire to vote only for two candidates, one of his three votes must remain uncast; if he "scratches" all but one candidate, then two of his votes are lost. Under the cumulative vote the elector has as many votes as the present system gives him and no more; but then he may cast those votes as he will. He is

not obliged to give them in such and such a way, or not at all. His choice is free. His power is the same as it has always been, but the manner in which he shall use that power is left to his discretion, and not pointed out by law. Owing, perhaps, to this disinthralment of the voter's choice, the cumulative vote has attained more general favor than any other of the methods. which have been proposed or adopted for the attainment of Minority, or Proportional, representation. It has been incorporated into law in England, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and West Virginia, and has received much favorable attention elsewhere in the United States.

In 1867 Mr. Lowe, at present the Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought forward a proposition in Parliament to apply the cumulative vote to some of the elections for that body, and though the method was in that form voted down in the Commons by a vote of 314 to 173, it was in the next Parliament, in 1870, applied to all elections of school boards under the New Education Act (Stat. 33 and 34 Vict., c. 75), section 29 whereof provides that:

"At every such election every voter shall be entitled to a number of votes equal to the number of the members of the School Board to be elected, and may give all such votes to one candidate, or may so distribute them among the candidates as he thinks fit."

In November, 1870, elections were held throughout England under this act, and soon thereafter the Belgian Government requested the British Ministry to furnish it with some information as to the practical working of the new method of voting. Mr. THOMAS HARE was engaged by the Foreign Office for the purpose, and in May, 1871, drew up a paper entitled “ Memorandum on the History, Working, and Results of Cumulative Voting,” for a copy of which document the author of this work is indebted to the kindness of Mr. WALTER MORRISON, M.P. From this Memorandum, and from other sources of information, it sufficiently appears that the cumulative vote did not secure that proportional representation in the English school board elections of 1870, which was its aim. In Birmingham, where there were 15 directors to be elected, and where every voter had consequently 15 votes, 29,183 electors voted, and 435,083 votes were cast.

These votes were divided among 28 candidates in such a manner that the 15 who were elected received an aggregate of 283,850 votes, and the 13 unsuccessful candidates an aggregate of 151,233. Dividing these aggregates by 15 (the number of votes each elector had) to obtain the number of voters represented and unrepresented, it appears that the 15 candidates elected represented 18,889 voters, and that 10,114 voters threw away their votes on the 13 unsuccessful candidates and secured no representation at all. This exhibits even a greater ratio of disfranchisement or non-representation than that alluded to in the first chapter of this work as resulting from the present electoral system. That showed two men out of five non-represented, but this Birmingham election, under the cumulative vote, shows one man in three unrepresented. Another remarkable circumstance is, that while Birmingham is strongly Liberal in politics, 8 of the successful candidates at this election were Conservatives, 1 Independent, and 6 Liberals the Conservative minority securing a majority of the representatives, and the Liberal majority a minority. Further still, 9 of the 13 unsuccessful candidates were Liberals, and the vote for those candidates must have been mainly a Liberal vote. This vote being an unrepresented vote, it follows that the bulk of the voters who failed to obtain any representation belonged to the majority party. These are curious results, and seem to infer that the cumulative method of voting was a decided failure at the Birmingham election, whereas it is only because the cumulative method was not followed that such results obtained. Forgetful of the fact that the very end and aim of cumulative voting is to give every party a representation proportioned to its popular strength, each party sought to obtain more representation than its due. There were some 53,000 registered voters in the city, about thus divided: Liberals, 28,000; Conservatives, 17,000; and Independents, or as they were locally called, “outsiders,” 8,000; and a proportionate division of 15 directors among these parties would have given the Liberals 8 members, the Conservatives 5, and the Independents 2. Instead of being satisfied with this, each party struck for more than its due. The Independents nominated 5 candidates, the Conservatives 8, and the Liberals exceeding either of them in greed, sought to secure every one of the members by