In the Report of Mr. Lytton, Her Majesty's Secretary of Legation at Copenhagen, on the Election of Representatives for the Rigsraad (Reports of Secretaries of Embassy, &c. No. 7, presented by command to both Houses of Parliament, 1864, Parl. Paper), an objection is stated to have been made to the Danish Electoral Law, that it affords no guarantee for the representation of majorities and minorities in just and adequate proportion, in proof of which the following problem had been triumphantly put forward. If, it was said, three members were to be elected by 600 voters, and there are five candidates, A, B, C, D, and E, for whom votes are given as follows:—
For
A
299 votes.
B
D
For
A
200 votes.
C
B
For
A
101 votes.
C
E
The quotient of the 600 votes, divided by 3, being 200, it follows that A, who has 299 votes, will be elected, and 99, the surplus, then appropriated to B, whose name stands next on all those papers. A's name being next cancelled on the 200 papers in which he is coupled with C and B, those 200 votes are then appropriated to G, whose name stands next on all those papers, and G, having attained the quota, is thereupon elected. Both the names of A and C, the elected members, are next cancelled on the 101 papers on which C and E appear, and those 101 votes are given to E, who is then elected under the 24th section of the Danish Electoral Law, as he would be under Clause XXV. of the law proposed in this treatise. It is objected that this result is unjust because B, who was second in the
