Your vote will be used for one candidate, according to your preference.
The quota is found by dividing the number of votes given by the number of representatives required.
You may vote for six names or fewer by the numbers
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
If your first choice has already secured his quota, or if he cannot obtain it, your vote will be transferred to your next choice, and USED, NOT WASTED.
Some such list of candidates would appear on the ballot paper of every enlarged district.
2. All the change in the duty of the elector is that instead of marking two names with a cross, he markes the candidates he prefers with the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
This is all the elector has to do. He makes as sure that his first choice will get his vote as if he had plumped for him, but without the risk of losing it in case he has not the required number, for in that case it is transferred to his next choice.
3. The rest of the business is for the returning officer and the scrutineers. The quota required for the return of a representative is found by dividing all the votes given in the district by the number of representatives required.
If 12,000 votes are cast in a six-member district the quota is 2,000.
A favorite candidate may receive more than 2,000 first choices, and after the quota is credited to him the surplus votes can be allotted according to second choice in a perfectly scientific way.
After the surplus is disposed of the returning officer declares the candidate who has fewest votes
not elected, and proceeds to distribute his votes according to second choice, or if second choice is already elected by full quota, he passes the vote to third. Then he takes the votes of the man next lowest, and distributes them in the same way. So on, always distributing the votes of the man who has fewest votes till all are thrown out but the number who are needed for the district, who are then declared elected.
Out of 3,824 votes which I collected for the same twelve candidates at various meetings in 1892-3 all over the province there were only two voters unrepresented. One had given a single choice for a candidate who was second lowest on the poll, and the other had picked out the six candidates of various parties who were unsuccessful.
The process is as easy for the voter as the present way, and much more interesting.
It will probably take twice as long for the scrutineers and the returning officers as the present method, but it will secure that the real majority out of doors is the majority in Parliament, and it will give adequate and independent representation to minorites.
Nothing is needed to carry this reform except that the people of South Australia should demand it. If it is made a test question at all polling places at this coming election I believe it would secure a majority in its favor.
Nothing can be said against it. It is absolutely just. It treads on no one's corns. It hurts no one's honest interests. If candidates say they do not understand it, tell them that is is time they did. It is the urgent need of all countries in the world, for it would purify political life, and allow peaceful progress to be made by evolution, rather than by dangerous and disastrous revolution.
Let South Australia and South Australian women lead the way!
