AN ADDRESS

ON

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION BY THE FREE VOTE.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION, PHILADELPHIA,

TUESDAY EVENING, OCT. 25, 1870.

Gentlemen of the Association :-I desire my remarks to-night to be understood as made in continuation of what was said and written by me on former occasions on the subject of Electoral Reform. In a speech in this city on the 19th of November, 1867, in a speech in the Senate on the 11th of July of the same year, and in a report from the Senate Committee on representative reform, 2d of March, 1869, I discussed the Free Vote in its proposed application to Federal Elections and stated the general arguments in favor of its adoption. I do not propose to go over again the ground covered by those speeches and by that report, but to present additional views, the product of further reflection upon this question of reform, and to mention the steps which have been taken in this State and in other States, looking toward the submitting of the plan of reformed voting to practice.

THE FREE VOTE.

The Free Vote may be applied to elections whenever two or more persons are to be chosen together to the same office for the same term of service, and it consists in allowing the voter to distribute his votes among candidates as he shall think fit, or to concentrate them upon one. It is here assumed that the voter shall have the same number of votes as the number of persons to be chosen, and that the candidates highest in vote shall be declared elected.

ITS EFFECT ON SINGLE ELECTIONS.

It will be observed that the free vote is inapplicable to the election of a single person; it can be applied only where two or more are to be chosen. But it will be a great mistake to assume that it will have no effect upon single elections because it cannot be applied to them in form and directly. Due reflection and a careful examination of the subject will convince any intelligent man-any man well acquainted with the practical workings of our political system that while its direct operation must be confined to plural elections its indirect effects upon single ones will be very great, and very salutary also, whenever it shall come to be established. For the advocates of the new plan assert with confidence and upon fair grounds of reason, that it will secure absolutely to political parties their just representation in all ordinary cases of Presidential, Congressional, Legislative and other elections to which it shall be applied, and will therefore greatly weaken the tendency toward violent and corrupt party action in the elections to which it shall not apply.

The election of Governor in a State is mainly interesting because of the influence which the result will exert upon the next elections in the State for Presidential electors, members of Congress and members of the Legislature; such an election is hotly contested, money is expended upon it and all possible means to control it brought into active play, because elections which are to follow will be powerfully influenced if not determined by the issue of the contest. In like manner and for the same reason other elections of single officers are assailed by evil influences and become degraded and of evil report. In my opinion, our remedy, and a very effectual one, will be to make all our Congressional and Legislative elections plural and then apply to them and to Presidential elections the free vote or some other device by which just representation of the people shall be secured. Then Gubernatorial and other single elections will be purified and improved; they will no longer exert any considerable, much less controlling, influence upon Federal or Legislative elections and will not therefore invite or provoke those corrupt and evil influences by which they are now assailed.

ITS OBJECTS-JUST REPRESENTATION AND PURE ELECTIONS.

Two capital objects are sought to be accomplished by the free vote considered as an instrument of reform: First, the just representation of the people in government, and Second, the purification of popular elections.

How to secure the proportional representation of

political parties or interests in government is certainly a question of high importance, and we have reason to rejoice that it is now receiving earnest attention in our own country and in Europe. We must all agree that the majority vote-as I shall call the old plan to which we have been accustomed-is both insufficient and unjust in the case of many elections to which it is applied, and that in unchecked operation it is positively pernicious and hurtful. Observe, I am not speaking of the majority or plurality rule of elections which in its proper application to returns is a necessity, but of the majority vote, of that instrument of oppression by which government is made unsatisfactory because it is made unjust. The law has said to the citizen, "You shall distribute your votes singly among candidates although by doing so you will lose them all and stand deprived of all voice in the government. You and your neighbor shall be made to struggle constantly, each to deprive the other of his equitable right in the very attempt to maintain his own. And if you shall not choose to vote in this exact manner and to grasp at more than belongs to you, you shall not vote at all; you shall stand aside disfranchised and ignored." No wonder that our people, instructed by experience and scourged by many evils, are beginning to complain of the law and to inquire whether there is not some possible remedy for electoral injustice-some plan of amendment by which all the people can have their votes counted and obtain by them appropriate power and influence in the government.

Yes, there are remedies for this injustice, and one

of them I advocate to-night; a remedy convenient of application and effectual for all our purposes of reform. But it is not proposed in antagonism to other plans of reform, nor as a finality in the art of government. It may stand simply for what it is— a good, useful, workable plan for the improvement of elections and for securing justice to the whole body of our electoral population.

The second great object of reformed voting-the purification of elections-invites to a more elaborate exposition of an existing evil and of the remedial character of the new plan, than my space and time will permit; but I cannot pass it wholly unnoticed. Certainly when you shall cheapen elections by taking away the motive or the main motive for spending money upon them, you will purify them also. They will be cleansed and elevated in character by being made cheap and inexpensive to parties and candidates who are now compelled to expend money upon them profusely as the indispensable condition of success. Now beyond all question the free vote will cheapen elections. It will take away from parties almost entirely two powerful motives which now operate upon them-a greed for unjust representation and a fear of unjust disfranchisement --by the conjoint operation of which desperate and expensive struggles are produced. When a party shall be made secure in its just representation by its own votes it need not buy a majority in the corruption market as a measure of necessary defence. When it cannot by the aid of corrupt votes rob the opposite party and take to itself more than its just