In this way the "wasting" of a vote, or the rejection of a candidate for
any reason except that hardly anybody wants him, become practically
impossible. This method of the single transferable vote with very large
constituencies and many members does, in fact, give an entirely valid
electoral result; each vote tells for all it is worth, and the freedom
of the voter is only limited by the number of candidates who put up or
are put up for election. This method, and this method alone, gives
representative government; all others of the hundred and one possible
methods admit of trickery, confusion and falsification. Proportional
Representation is not a faddist proposal, not a perplexing ingenious
complication of a simple business; it is the carefully worked out right
way to do something that hitherto we have been doing in the wrong way.
It is no more an eccentricity than is proper baking in the place of
baking amidst dirt and with unlimited adulteration, or the running of
trains to their destinations instead of running them without notice into
casually selected sidings and branch lines. It is not the substitution
of something for something else of the same nature; it is the
substitution of right for wrong. It is the plain common sense of the
greatest difficulty in contemporary affairs.

I know that a number of people do not, will not, admit this of
Proportional Representation. Perhaps it is because of that hideous
mouthful of words for a thing that would be far more properly named Sane
Voting. This, which is the only correct way, these antagonists regard as
a peculiar way. It has unfamiliar features, and that condemns it in
their eyes. It takes at least ten minutes to understand, and that is too
much for their plain, straightforward souls. "Complicated"--that word of
fear! They are like the man who approved of an electric tram, but said
that he thought it would go better without all that jiggery-pokery of
wires up above. They are like the Western judge in the murder trial who
said that if only they got a man hanged for this abominable crime, he
wouldn't make a pedantic fuss about the question of _which_ man. They
are like the plain, straightforward promoter who became impatient with
maps and planned a railway across Switzerland by drawing a straight line
with a ruler across Jungfrau and Matterhorn and glacier and gorge. Or
else they are like Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., who knows too well
what would happen to him.

Now l