The Washington herald., 1921-03-20

By the judges and the unused ballots are
deposited elsewhere to be destroyed.
But here 10 where the systen dtfsrs from
that In America.
"One must vote the unscrstched tieket Of
one Of the parties. Thus he votes for Q
party and not for Individuals. When the
vote 10 counted Il is the different parties
that have received the given number Of
votes.
There may be ten parties In q given
district that Is entitled to ten members in
the Chamber Of Deputies, for instance. One
party may get 80 per cent Of the vote. II
will get three members. One may get 90
per cent Of the vote. 1t win ret four depu-
ties. One may get 10 per cent Of the vots.
II will get one deputy, and 20 on.
The deputies elected viii b those st the
top Of the lists on the tickets Of the re-
spective parties. Those further down on
the lists remain as alternates, and In case
Of death or disability Of deputies higher up
tb.y get the places. Thus 10 the necessity
for special elections obvisted.
'In q given district a given party might
get more than enough votes to entitls IL 70
two members but not enough for il, to get
three. 1t would appear that the leftover
votes would be wasted. This is not the csss.
These surplus votes are combined with other
surplus votes from ether districts and are
given their proportional representation.
Every fragment from every community in
the end gets party representation. II il q
different representation from that to be
found in the Congress Of the United States
where minority parties. millions strong, may
have NO representation. Thus does II de-
velop that Czecho- -slovskis has established
two new principles with relation to the uss
of the ballot BY its citizens"
THE minister speaks his English very pre-
l. cisely and correctly. Only occasionally
does he pause for q word, ssy Il In French
and then finally ret it in English. he eI-
plsined that he had read English for many
years but, until a year ago, had been with
out experience in speaking il. Since the
government at Prague has been set up there
have been many Englishmen and many
Americans in that city on one mission and
another and DR.. Stepanek has had q good
deal Of conversational practice He admits,
however, that there are certain differences Of
pronunciation between Englishmen and
Americans and even among Americans that
are rather puzzling TO one who knows the
printed rather than the spoken word.
Naturally, we were a bit anxious when
our FIRST election day under the new con-
stitution came around" said the minister.
The polls opened at s in the morning and
the people began to present themselves i'm
mediately. All worked smoothly. Ii being
Sunday, there was no interference with
work. By noon the vote was virtually all
in, although the polls were not supposed to
close until 5 O'Clock. The detail Of pro-
portionins the representation among tn.
parties was worked out in the course Of a
few weeks. Those who had failed to vote
were confronted with the law. The situs-
tion was cleared up from every standpoint
and there were no discourssing results. The
first great compulsory election had been
successfully held. The new e1perimeu,
seemed to be q success. We are pleased
with r-sults."