There would be an easy remedy for this, should it be necessary to
resort to it, namely, to impose a limit to the number of secondary
or contingent votes. No voter is likely to have an independent
preference, grounded on knowledge, for 658, or even for 100
candidates. There would be little objection to his being limited to
twenty, fifty, or whatever might be the number in the selection of
whom there was some probability that his own choice would be
exercised-that he would vote as an individual, and not as one of the
mere rank and file of a party. But even without this restriction,
the evil would be likely to cure itself as soon as the system came
to be well understood. To counteract it would become a paramount
object with all the knots and cliques whose influence is so much
deprecated. From these, each in itself a small minority, the word
would go forth, "Vote for your special candidates only; or at least
put their names foremost, so as to give them the full chance which
your numerical strength warrants, of obtaining the quota by means of
first votes, or without descending low in the scale." And those voters
who did not belong to any clique would profit by the lesson.
The minor groups would have precisely the amount of power which they
ought to have. The influence they could exercise would be exactly that
which their number of voters entitled them to; not a particle more;
while to ensure even that, they would have a motive to put up, as
representatives of their special objects, candidates whose other
recommendations would enable them to obtain the suffrages of voters
not of the sect or clique.
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