Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: plan would be the same, and can be illustrated by taking the typical example of a state house of representatives. Let the State for the purpose of electing members of the lower house be divided into districts of such a number that each district would elect five representatives, this being the most convenient number. Then each elector would vote for five representatives in the order of his choice, with the result above shown in the election of committees. If there were three parties in the field, it is probable that the third party wonld elect members from different districts, by means of this cumulative voting, and the state legislature would be in fact an exact mirror of public opinion. Among the other advantages of the general adoption of this plan might be mentioned the following:?- It would prevent one-man rule such as that exercised by the Speaker of the House of Represc-ntatives. Committees could be elected on a general ticket at a single balloting. Minorities would have no excuse for bolting conventions, since they would have their ablest men on the committees. Committees would be truly representative. This would also prevent many of the opportunities for ring rule in politics. Electors of a minority or third party, besides securing their own first choice, could throw some weight in the scale between the candidates of the other parties. In the case of private corporations this plan would seem to offer the means of avoiding some of the most flagrant abuses. It furnishes a very simple device for cumulative voting for directors and officers. Finally, the freedom from machine rule, and the possibility of selecting the ablest men of the community without recourse to bargains, is one of the first necessities for the reform of our politics. Cumulative voting and min…
