small districts, but with as near as possible an equal number of voters in each, 62 the Scrutin de Liste alone, 271 the Scrutin de Liste with the R. P., and 29 electoral reform without any indication of its character.
In his report to the Chamber, M. Arthur Groussier, speaking in the name of the Universal Suffrage Commission, to which the Government and other electoral reform bills were referred, and which elaborated the present bill, urges Parliament to adopt the Scrutin de Liste with the R. P., because of the 8,517,143 voters who participated in the last general elections, 4,442,800 pronounced unmistakably in favour of that method of consulting universal suffrage, whereas only 1,652,522 clearly opposed it. Before quitting power, M. Briand was constrained by the overwhelming majority in the Parliamentary Commission favourable to the just representation of political minorities to make certain concessions. The Prime
Minister nevertheless sought to reinforce the majority by adopting the number of persons inscribed on the electoral roll, and not that of those who record their votes, as the total to be divided by the number of seats to be filled. And not content with that, he demanded that the seats remaining over after the first division be allotted to those candidates who should have polled the largest number of votes after those to whom seats would have been already allotted. It was, indeed, a disguised means of giving the majority the advantage of all the votes of the abstainers. Thus, supposing a department having the right to elect five deputies, and of there being 200,000 persons on the electoral roll, of whom 50 per cent, or 100,000, went to the poll, the figures with three competing lists — the Government partisans, the Conservative opposition, and the Socialists — might well be as follows: —
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GOVERNMENT PARTIS AN NV QTS Lisr. LisT. LIsT.
M. Durs:- 1 . . Io000 Marqpisde Lo oo Mo et e M. Brion . . . 1lwin Coe e de B 1,000 MoFauares . L S M. Esna.r . . 1o Mode = Lo M, Pebean L i) M Zola . . . 105w Proe e W 3000 Mo Vadtlant o 300 M. Tucher ., 9.0 M. ode N 3,000) M Dveant L 2am0
Tor b L L 6000 Toral BRI Toril L 2w
The electoral quotient would, by M. Briand's method, be found by dividing 200,000, the number of persons on the electoral roll, by 5, the number of deputies to be elected — 200,000 divided by 5 gives 40,000. Consequently only one seat would be allotted by the division of the totals of the three lists representing respectively 60,000, 20,000, and 20,000 votes, and that seat would be given to M. Durand,
