These plain facts are indisputable.  What is to be thought, then, of the claim made by Professor Nanson that Preferential Voting, with the process of elimination, is the most perfect system known for single-membered electorates.

+The Block Vote.+—­The Block Vote, General Ticket, or scrutin de liste, is in general use when there is more than one seat to be filled.  Each elector has as many votes as there are members to be elected, and the highest on the list, to the number of representatives required, are successful.  Dealing first with elections to a legislative body, the system is eminently unjust to parties.  A rigid control of nominations is necessary in the first place, because any party which splits up its votes spoils its chance.  Each party will therefore nominate only as many candidates as there are seats, and the stronger of two parties, or the strongest of a number of parties, will elect the entire list.  A minority might in the latter case secure all the representation, but the practical effect of the Block Vote is to force the electors to group themselves into two parties only.  It therefore has the same beneficial effect as the single electorate of confining representation to the two main parties.  This is apparently nob recognized by Professor Nanson, who writes, in his pamphlet on the Hare system:—­“Contrast with this the results of the Block system.  With strict party voting, which has been assumed throughout, each of the five parties would put forward seven candidates.  The seven seats would all be secured by Form, with 44 votes out of a total of 125, and the remaining 81, or more than two-thirds of the voters, would be wholly unrepresented.”  Does the Professor really think that the 81 (who, by the way, are less than two-thirds) would be so foolish as not to combine and secure all the seats?

The exclusion of the minority in a single-membered electorate excites only a feeling of hopelessness, but when it fails to secure a single representative in an electorate returning several members, a spirit of rankling injustice is aroused.  The Block Vote has, therefore, never been tolerated for long in large electorates.  In the early history of the United States many of the States adopted it, and sent to Congress a solid delegation of one party or the other.  This proved so unjust, and operated so adversely to the federal spirit in promoting combinations of States, that Congress, in 1842, made the single-membered electorate obligatory on all the States.

In France it was adopted at the election for the Chamber of Deputies in 1885.  The result as regards parties was about as good as with the single electorate system.  The Republicans and Conservative-Monarchists, whose numbers entitled them to 311 and 257 seats respectively, actually secured 366 and 202.  But it was abandoned after a trial at this one election.