Treatment of Voting Papers.

This result is reached thus: The returning officer having sorted each candidate's papers (those with their names marked first) into heaps, he commences with the candidate's who has received most first votes, and taking out first those papers in his page 25 heap on which no second vote is marked (as, of course, this would occur), and adding to them from the candidate's heap, haphazard, till the quota is reached, when he stops counting for candidate A, declares him elected, and puts the balance of his papers aside for further use. This he does with the papers of every candidate who, upon the first counting, proves to have more first votes than the required quota. The balance of A's papers, and those of similar over-quota candidates, are distributed by the officer into the heaps of the other candidates whose names are marked second on the surplus papers of A and the others already elected, and for whom counting has stopped; their names being struck out of the surplus papers, the names marked second come up into first place, and as other candidates by these additions obtain their quotas they in turn are declared elected, their names dropped, and all further surplus papers used in a still higher power. This course is pursued until all the surplus papers belonging to the candidates elected have become exhausted, when, if it so happens, as it may, that all the seats are not filled, the papers belonging to the candidate who has received the lowest number of first votes are lifted; he is declared not elected, his name dropped, and his papers distributed in the same way as the surplus papers of the elected men; and by this process of exhaustion all the seats will be filled, each man elected by the same number of votes, and there will be no waste votes except what, being under the quota, cannot carry the election of a single representative.