A City and Suburban Example.

As an illustration of what injustice single electorates may work upon communities having an identity of interests, the contested seats in the city and suburbs of Auckland may be cited, though possibly worse injury may have been inflicted in other similar districts in the Colony. Had the system—so much, and properly, advocated—of grouping city and suburban districts into one been in vogue last election, by the votes cast in the natural group of Auckland West, North, Ponsonby, Newton, and Parnell, it appears the candidates elected for these five seats would have been in a minority of the whole by 202 votes; the numbers being: For successful candidates in the five seats, 3,369 votes; unsuccessful, 3,571—so that in this group, and probably other similar ones, the minority of the voters voting have carried all the seats under a system misnomered the "Representation of Majorities." In the Provincial District of Hawke's Bay the same thing occurs, the elected men being in a minority of 16.

From the foregoing the fact is established that in the North Island, out of 51,516 voters who exercised their votes no less than 24,115 failed in any way to obtain representation: nearly half of the whole were disfranchised or put to the trouble of voting for the sake of being beaten—for no representation is allowed them.