CONTENTS. PAGE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. I. THE PURPOSE OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. Proportional representation is a plan or system of choosing representative bodies so that all considerable groups of voters will be represented in proportion to their numbers.1 Popular voting, which is the very basis of our government, is a process by which two distinct objects should be carried out: first, to make decisions between policies or between candidates for administrative offices; second, to select a body fit to make decisions on behalf of all voters, that is, to make up a deliberative or representative body.2 II. THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. The principle of proportional representation is that each political party or "each considerable party or group of opinion" shall be entitled in all representative bodies to a number of representatives proportionate to the number of its voting members. Thus a party casting forty per cent. of the total vote in a State election would be entitled to four-tenths of the seats in the State legislature. "This proposal is advocated on the ground that a truly representative body should represent as nearly as possible the whole electorate and not merely the greatest number voting for one candidate in each of the several representative districts, as is the case under the established system of plurality representation." 3 III. DEVELOPMENT OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. In one form or another proportional representation is in use in Belgium, Sweden, Finland; in nine of the cantons of Switzerland; in some of the States of the German Empire; in Den 1 On the distinction between proportional representation and preferential voting see Bulletin No. 27, p. 5. Hoag, C. G. Effective Voting, 63d Congress, 2d Session, Senate Doc. 359. mark (incorporated in the Constitution in 1885, for the election. of seventeen members of the Rigsdag); in Tasmania, in Australia (since 1896) and in South Africa. In 1912-13 the system was adopted for the election of the Irish Senate in the Irish Home Rule Act as passed by the Parliament of Great Britain. The proposal to elect representatives by some system of proportional representation... has been discussed in America ever since the publication shortly before the Civil War of J. S. Mill's influential essay on Representative Government. Various systems have been experimented with, notably cumulative voting, adopted for the election of the members of the lower house of the Legislature in Illinois in 1870, and limited voting, employed in the election of delegates to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1873. Interest in proportional representation declined in the seventies, but revived two decades later.1 IV. MINORITY REPRESENTATION. The provision for minority representation in the election of members of the State House of Representatives was introduced in the Illinois Constitutional Convention of 1870. The purpose of this measure was to destroy the sectional feeling that then prevailed in the State. The real problem of the constitution-makers in Illinois in 1870 was to overcome the tendency of the majority party in the State to have a majority in each district, and so shut out the minority from the lower branch of the Legislature. It was therefore provided that each district should elect three members and that each voter should have three votes which he might distribute at will, one to each of three candidates, or which he might cumulate upon one or two candidates. By allowing the voter to cumulate three votes for one candidate it was possible for any party or faction embracing more than one-third of the electorate to secure one representative. The Constitution of Illinois (Art. IV., sects. 7 and 8) provides: The House of Representatives shall consist of three times the number of the members of the Senate, and the term of office shall be two years. Three representatives shall be elected in each senatorial district and at the general election in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-two, and every two years thereafter. In all elections of represent 1 Holcombe, 456. |