CHAPTER XIV

postponed or obscured the need for a machine by complicating the elections, or as H. G. Wells once said with scrupulous accuracy, the selections. For no amount of balloting can obviate the need of creating an issue, be it a measure or a candidate, on which the voters can say Yes, or No. There is, in fact, no such thing as "direct legislation." For what happens where it is supposed to exist? The citizen goes to the polls, receives a ballot on which a number of measures are printed, almost always in abbreviated form, and, if he says anything at all, he says Yes or No. The most brilliant amendment in the world may occur to him. He votes Yes or No on that bill and no other. You have to commit violence against the English language to call that legislation. I do not argue, of course, that there are no benefits, whatever you call the process. I think that for certain kinds of issues there are distinct benefits. But the necessary simplicity of any mass decision is a very important fact in view of the inevitable complexity of the world in which those decisions operate. The most complicated form of voting that anyone proposes is, I suppose, the preferential ballot. Among a number of candidates presented the voter under that system, instead of saying yes to one candidate and no to all the others, states the order of his choice. But even here, immensely more flexible though it is, the action of the mass depends upon the quality of the choices presented. [Footnote: Cf. H. J. Laski, Foundations of Sovereignty, p. 224. "… proportional representation… by leading, as it seems to lead, to the group system… may deprive the electors of their choice of leaders." The group system undoubtedly tends, as Mr. Laski says, to make the selection of the executive more indirect, but there is no doubt also that it tends to produce legislative assemblies in which currents of opinion are more fully represented. Whether that is good or bad cannot be determined a priori. But one can say that successful cooperation and responsibility in a more accurately representative assembly require a higher organization of political intelligence and political habit, than in a rigid two-party house. It is a more complex political form and may therefore work less well.]