Therefore the Commissioner recommended the establishment of an Electoral and Administrative Review Commission, the powers of which would include a prompt review of the "zonal" electoral system (a.k.a. the "gerrymander"), and a more general review of the then Elections Act (Qld) as it stood at the time. When the Parliament established the Commission it duly included those powers in the Act (now repealed, so apparently not available on the Web). The new Commission made the review of the electoral system one of its first tasks in 1990 - the Issues Paper on the topic was its first (90/I1).
This submission, written by Tom Round on behalf of the PRSA (Queensland Branch) was in response to that Issues Paper. In view of the facts that -
we have reproduced it here in the hope that it will influence other readers. Minor corrections have been made to typographical errors, and minor alterations to the layout, but this is still very much the paper that very nearly persuaded EARC to implement PR in Queensland.
John Pyke, hyperlinker
The Senate system bears a close resemblance to Hare-Clark in the way it counts the votes cast. However the rules for casting votes are quite different. When proportional representation was adopted for the Senate in 1948, Parliament required (quite unnecessarily) that a valid vote had to show preferences for every candidate. This made Senate voting very complex and the informal vote rate relatively high, as there were usually three or four dozen Senate candidates in a State. Also, each party has the right to specify the order in which its candidates are listed on the ballot-paper and this has always meant that the seats won by each party go to its highest-ranked candidates only. By contrast, under Hare-Clark the order of candidates within each party is not dictated by the party; it may be alphabetical, or drawn by lot, or (ideally) rotated by printing different versions of the ballot-paper ("Robson rotation").
Since 1984 the Senate system has been even more "stage-managed" by the addition of voting "above the line" - putting the number 1 in a square representing a party, with the consequence that all the preferences are deemed to be in the order registered by the party. Since the rules also, unnecessarily and undemocratically, require a voter who votes below the line to number every square if the vote is to be counted at all, of course most people take the easy way out and only number one square above the line, and let their favoured (or least-hated) party make the detailed choice for them. From 1948 to 1983 it would have been extremely difficult for a candidate ranked (say) number 3 or number 4 on his/her party's ticket to be elected ahead of the number 1 or number 2 candidate. Since 1984 it has gone from difficult to virtually impossible. All the upper Houses elected by proportional representation (New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia) have pretty much the same features, mitigated only by NSW's rule that 15 preferences are sufficient for a valid vote. This is not Hare-Clark; it is corrupted Hare-Clark.
Readers may also note that the author criticises the proportional representation systems used in some European nations such as Belgium. In those countries, the parliament (or one house of it) is elected by the whole nation or by large regions voting as one electoral district. In those circumstances, giving the voters a choice between individual candidates would produce ballot-papers bigger than the "table-cloth" seen recently in New South Wales - so those nations use party-list systems, again reducing voter choice.
This submission, then, is not in favour of just anything that can plausibly be called "proportional representation"; it is arguing for a particular, and particularly democratic, form of proportional representation - the Hare-Clark system.
JP and TR, Jan 2000
[Main text, part 1]
2. THE PROBLEM
3. Is first-past-the-post voting the solution?
4. Are equal electorates the solution?
5. Unfairness to minorities
6. Unfairness to the majority
7. Wasted votes
8. A majority after preferences?
9. No majority even after preferences
10. Is the West German system the solution?
11. Inadequacies of party-list systems
12. Australian "quasi-list" systems
[Part 2]
13. PARTICULAR NEED FOR HARE-CLARK IN QUEENSLAND
14. The three-party system
15. No Upper House
[Part 3]
16. USUAL OBJECTIONS
17. LARGER ELECTORATES
18. Multi-member electorates
19. Redistributions
20. Regional balance
21. Limited choice of candidate
22. Women and ethnic minorities
[Part 4]
23. UNSTABLE GOVERNMENT
24. Minor parties
25. Coalitions
26. Compromise policies?
27. Blackmail and balance of power
28. Swinging voters
29. An end to power without responsibility
30. "Permanent government of the grey centre"
[Part 5]
31. Destructive competition within parties
32. Why not join a political party?
33. Does Hare-Clark disadvantage Ministers?
34. Distraction from the basic choice of government?
35. Undesirable campaigning?
36. Superficial campaigning?
37. Finance and resources?
38. Discrimination against ideological candidates?
39. Centralised preselection?
40. Check on corruption?
41. Complexity
[Part 6]
42. HOW HARE-CLARK FITS THE [EARC ISSUES PAPER] CRITERIA
43. Fairness
44. Minority interests
45. Women
46. Aborigines and migrants
47. Local communities
48. Integration
49. Accessibility and accountability
50. Voter participation
51. Stability
52. Effective Parliament
53. Effective parties
54. Legitimacy
55. Speed
56. Simplicity
57. Responsiveness
APPENDIX I: An elaboration of the Hare-Clark system
1. Number of MPs per electorate
2. Optional-preferential voting
3. Rotation of candidates' positions 56
4. No "party-box" ticket-voting
5. Filling of casual vacancies by recount
6. Party labels shown
7. Equal numbers of voters per MLA
APPENDIX II: Flow-chart illustrating the quota-preferential system
[APPENDIX III: Suggested plan of multiple-member electorates - now somewhat out-dated, as explained in Appendix I, section 1, and not included in this html version]
APPENDIX IV: Diagram of decrease in "wasted" votes as number of members per electorate increases
In particular, we recommend that such a system should be modelled on the Hare-Clark [2] system in Tasmania, by incorporating the following features:
(a) five, seven, or nine MLAs per electorate:
(b) marking of preferences to be fully optional, at each voter's discretion:
(c) candidates' positions in each party group to be equally rotated as the ballot- papers are printed:
(d) candidates' party labels to be shown on the ballot-paper:
(e) casual vacancies to be filled by recounting the votes that elected the original MLA, to determine which runner-up is next preferred by those voters (a by-election to be held only if such recount fails); [3]
(f) no "party-box" ticket-voting option:
(g) the number of voters per MLA to be equal (within a margin of plus or minus 10%) in every zone and every electorate throughout the State.
The reasons for these features are set out in detail in Appendix I. The Hare-Clark system we have recommended -
(a) will ensure broadly proportional results, without reducing the accountability of MPs to their electorates or encouraging the growth of splinter parties:
(b) will allow each voter a wide choice of candidates and every constituent a wide choice of representatives:
(c) will ensure that every electorate and every region of the State has MPs on both the government and the opposition benches.
[To next part (The Problem with the Existing Electoral System)]
2. Named after Thomas Hare, English lawyer, and Andrew Inglis Clark, Tasmanian Attorney-General. [Back to text]
3. That is: if (a) none of the original runner-up candidates are still available, or none re-nominate; (b) the runner-up next preferred receives, after preferences, less than 50% of the votes recounted; or (c) the vacating member, or his/her party leader, requests a by-election. [Back to text]