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 enormous difference between Lord Courtney’s proposed system and the existing system in the London Boroughs.  But if the fact is that the names in each case are mere names, there is little effective difference between the working of the two systems until the votes are counted.

If the sole object of an election were to discover and record the exact proportion of the electorate who are prepared to vote for candidates nominated by the several party organisations Lord Courtney’s scheme might be adopted as a whole.  But English experience, and a longer experience in America, has shown that the personality of the candidate nominated is at least as important as his party allegiance, and that a parliament of well-selected members who represent somewhat roughly the opinion of the nation is better than a parliament of ill-selected members who, as far as their party labels are concerned, are, to quote Lord Courtney, ’a distillation, a quintessence, a microcosm, a reflection of the community.’[79]