In practice, then, the Hare system discourages compromise among parties, and among sections of parties; and therefore tends to obliterate party lines.  This has already happened in Tasmania, where all experience goes to show that the Hare system is equivalent to compulsory plumping.  In every election the result would have been exactly the same if each elector voted for one candidate only.  The theory that it does not matter how many candidates stand for each party, since votes will be transferred within the party, has been completely disproved.  Votes are actually transferred almost indiscriminately.  The candidates have not been slow to grasp this fact, and at the last election handbills were distributed giving “explicit reasons why the electors should give their No. 1 to Mr. So-and-so, and their No. 2 to any other person they chose."[7] Three out of every four first preferences are found to be effective, but only one out of every five second preferences, and one out of fifty third preferences.  The first preferences, therefore, decide the election.

The actual result is that, in the long run, the Hare system is practically the same as the single untransferable vote.  The whole of the elaborate machinery for recording preferences and transferring votes might just as well be entirely dispensed with.  The “automatic organization” which it was to provide exists only in the calculations of mathematicians.

+A Number of Votes are Wasted.+—­It is claimed for the Hare system that every vote cast is effective, because it counts for some one candidate.  But unless every elector places all the candidates in order of preference some votes are wasted because the preferences become exhausted.

When a paper to be transferred has no further available preferences expressed it is lost.  In order to reduce this waste, a vote is held to be informal in the six-seat electorate at Hobart unless at least three preferences are given.  Notwithstanding this, the number of such votes wasted was 7 per cent, at the first election and 10 per cent, at the second.

The effect of this waste is that some of the candidates are elected with less than the quota.  At the last Hobart election only three out of six members were elected on full quotas, and at Launceston only one out of four.  The result is to favour small, compact minorities, and to lead sections to scheme to get representation on the lowest possible terms.

The Droop quota, being smaller than the Tasmanian quota, would have the effect of electing more members on full quotas, and it is often recommended on that account.  Indeed, Professor Nanson declares:—­“In no circumstances is any candidate elected on less than a quota of votes.  The seats for which a quota has not been obtained are filled one after the other, each by a candidate elected by an absolute majority of the whole of the voters.  For the seats to be filled in this way all candidates as yet unelected