Comparative Waste of Votes.

The waste of votes under the proportional system is found by multiplying the "quota," ascertained in the manner here shown, by the exact number of seats to be filled in the contested electorate, and subtracting the result from the total number of votes cast in the whole electorate; the balance will in all cases be found to be less than the quota, and therefore, not being sufficient to secure the election of a member, must be treated as waste. In the case of treating the Colony as a whole as one electorate, the quota 1287×86 (the number of European seats contested)= 110,682, which, subtracted from 111,911 (the number of votes cast in the Colony), leaves 1,229—not a single quota—as waste.

A careful study of these figures will repay the student who is anxious to arrive at a conclusion upon the question whether our present electoral system should be continued as the nearest approach to perfection attainable; or whether the enormous waste of voting power which it here exhibits should not be sufficient to cause a new plan to be devised, which will, in some adequate degree, permit of the people being really represented?

Assuming each of the provincial districts to be under the proposed proportional representation system to form one electoral district, then the gain in the saving from waste of voting power is exactly represented by the difference between the two columns on the right-hand side of the table. If, approaching nearer perfection, each Island Were treated as one electorate, the saving would be still greater—being the difference, in the North, between 1,317 votes, the waste under the proposed system, and 27,400, the waste which under the present system has actually taken place: in the South Island the difference would be as between page 29 1,212 and 32,652. If perfection were aimed at in point of avoidance of waste, then, the whole Colony being one electorate, the saving would be represented by the difference between 1,229 votes, under the proposed system, and 60,052 votes actually wasted last election under our present system of single electorates. If these facts are not sufficient to startle electors into action which will eventuate in a radical reform, then it is difficult, to conceive what would be deemed sufficient to awake them.