paper marked with the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc.,
according to the decision of his party association, and will copy the
numbers onto the unmarked official paper. The essential fact, that is to
say, on which party tactics would depend under Lord Courtney's scheme is
not that the votes would finally be added up in this way or in that, but
that the voter would be required to arrange in order more names than
there is time during the election to turn for him into real persons.

Lord Courtney, in speaking on the second reading of his Municipal
Representation Bill in the House of Lords,[78] contrasted his proposed
system with that used in the London Borough Council elections, according
to which a number of seats are assigned to each ward and the voter may
give one vote each, without indication of preference, to that number of
candidates. It is true that the electoral machinery for the London
Boroughs is the worst to be found anywhere in the world outside of
America. I have before me my party ballot-card instructing me how to
vote at the last Council election in my present borough. There were six
seats to be filled in my ward and fifteen candidates. I voted as I was
told by my party organisation giving one vote each to six names, not one
of which I remembered to have seen before. If there had been one seat to
be filled, and, say, three candidates, I should have found out enough
about one candidate at least to give a more or less independent vote;
and the local party committees would have known that I and others would
do so. Bach party would then have circulated a portrait and a printed
account of their candidate and of his principles, and would have had a
strong motive for choosing a thoroughly reputable person. But I could
not give the time necessary for forming a real opinion on fifteen
candidates, who volunteered no information about themselves. I
therefore, and probably twenty-nine out of every thirty of those who
voted in the borough, voted a 'straight ticket.' If for any reason the
party committee put, to use an Americanism, a 'yellow dog' among the
list of names, I voted for the yellow dog.

[78] April 30, 1907.

Under Lord Courtney's system I should have had to vote on the same
ticket, with the same amount of knowledge, but should have copied down
different marks from my party card. On the assumption, that is to say,
that every name on a long ballot paper represents an individual known to
every voter there would be an eno