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Thomas Hare

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Thomas Hare

(28 March 1806 - 6 May 1891)

"A system which forms the electoral body into adverse parties, arrayed under formal names which are themselves exaggerations calculated to excite hostility where none really exists, has … the effect of preventing the expression of the true and individual opinions of the members who compose either party. It lowers the force of thought and conscience… It is not therefore surprising that we hear of the infirmities of representative institutions."


A commentary of present-day politics? The sentiments might touch some chords with today's electoral reformers, but the words were written a century and a half ago. The writer, Thomas Hare, born on 28 March 1806, was the principal founding father of the single transferable vote system.

 

Hare, from a relatively humble farming background, worked his way from a solicitor's clerk to the Bar, but his contributions to democracy date from after 1853 when he joined the then newly established Charity Commission. As an Inspector of Charities, Hare would have had a broad view of the many pressing social issues of the day, but also of the political system's failure to address them. For him, a major problem was in the way the party-political system was debasing politics: maintaining a parliamentary majority "demoralises most of those who compose it … it excludes the action of their higher moral attributes, and brings into operation the lower motives … The same injurious influences, in a measure, operate on the minorities …".

For Hare the answer was a more representative parliament, to be achieved through a change to a voting system that would reward candidates of merit, allow representation to significant minorities and tackling a problem still with us today:

    "in the large constituencies, nearly half of the electors are, for all useful purposes, in the same position as if they were disenfranchised".
Hare's particular contributions to the development of voting systems were the concept of a quota of votes required to ensure election, and the idea that votes could be made transferable by getting voters to rank candidates in order of preference on the ballot paper, allowing votes to move from candidates who had already amassed sufficient votes and from those who could not be successful.

Unfortunately Hare's proposals, although attracting the enthusiasm of John Stuart Mill and others, were not very practicable. He envisaged a situation in which constituencies could be not just geographic areas but also organisations and interest groups, and in which voters would not be restricted to supporting local candidates. Each elector was to receive a list of candidates covering the entire country, probably with several thousand names, from he (this was many decades before women's suffrage) would list in order his preferred candidates.

In Hare's scheme the quota would be calculated by dividing the total votes across the country by the number of seats to be filled (a ratio still referred to as the 'Hare quota'). Surplus votes of candidates reaching the quota in constituencies, as well as papers for unsuccessful candidates, were to be transferred to a national registrar for subsequent allocation according to voters' preferences. Even today with all the benefits of information technology running an election in this way would be a horrendous task, but in the middle of the 19 century it was a non-starter.

However, Hare had devised the essential features of STV. He recognised that changing the voting system was not just about fairness, but about changing politics. His scheme, he predicted, would lead to candidates being elected on merit and not just party ticket; it would ensure representation of minority interests (other than "those impracticable tempers, for whose satisfaction it is neither possible nor desirable to provide") and would encourage voter turnout. He laid the foundations, from which others, including Catherine Spence in Australia and Henry Droop in England, developed the system we know today.

(Quotes are from Hare's 'The Election of Representatives; a Treatise', 1865 edition. A more accessible description of Hare's work and ideas is given in the late Jenifer Hart's excellent 'Proportional Representation: Critics of the British Electoral System, 1820 - 1945', Clarendon Press, 1992.)

This article was originally published in 'Ballot Box', the ERS members' newsletter

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