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Proportional Representation
Society of Australia Inc. |
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| Introduction | PARLIAMENTARY | MUNICIPAL | PARLIAMENTARY | MUNICIPAL | |
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South Australia |
South Australia |
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New
South Wales |
New South Wales |
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Tasmania | Tasmania |  |
Western Australia |
Western Australia |
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Victoria | Victoria |  |
Queensland | Queensland |
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Australian
Capital Territory |
Australian Capital Territory |
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Northern
Territory |
Northern Territory |
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Territory
of Norfolk Island |
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| PARLIAMENTARY | MUNICIPAL | PARLIAMENTARY | MUNICIPAL | ||
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United
Kingdom |
United Kingdom |
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Malta | |
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New
Zealand |
New Zealand |
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Republic
of Ireland |
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Papua New Guinea |
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United
States of America |
United States of America |
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Canada | References | |||
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The
Growth and Success of Single
Transferable Vote
Proportional Representation |
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INTRODUCTION:
The proportional
representation
movement in Where
there was plurality
counting with more than one
vacancy per
electoral district, plumping (not
voting for all vacancies),
allowed, in a haphazard way, some
minority voice, as it still does
in some electorates of the world's
oldest continuously operating
legislative assembly, the House
of Keys on the Isle
of Man. Plumping
was, however, often arbitrarily
prohibited in Australian electoral
systems, and it was not allowed at
pre-1919
Senate elections.
Hoag and Hallett's classic 1926 |
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In Australia, PR-STV is sometimes termed quota-preferential proportional representation, to distinguish it from Australia's use of STV with majority-preferential counting, in both single-member districts, and also multi-member districts as unfortunately used for the Senate from 1919-46, and for a few years after the Liberal Party Government of Victoria revived it in the early 1990s for municipal elections until it was abolished there in 2003. It
was the PRSGB&I
that was the first society in the
world to promote the earliest
forms of the single
transferable vote system of
proportional representation
allowing direct
election of
individual candidates, which does
not take place under the inferior
proportional systems known as
party list systems, which have
become the predominant electoral
systems for lower houses in
continental Europe. The first two
words in its title changed to 'Electoral
Reform' in 1958,
ostensibly to clarify its purpose
of promoting PR-STV, and not
continental Europe's much inferior
indirect party list form of
proportional representation. The
Society published its history 'The
Best System' [1], in
1984. Its distinguished presidents
have included the fourth and the
fifth Earls Grey (see its
1922 Council), and in the
1980s the Hon. Dr Garret
FitzGerald while Prime Minister of
Eire. Its
president was, until his death in
October 2004, Professor
the Earl Russell, a
great-grandson of the former Whig
Prime Minister, Lord John Russell,
whose 1832 Reform Bill
set the foundation
for representation
of the general
public in the House of
Commons and, by example, in other
parliaments in the then British
Empire. The shameful conduct of The
UK Parliament had more
multi-member constituencies than
single-member ones as late as 1880
(London was a four-member
constituency). The number of
multi-member constituencies was greatly
reduced in 1885.
Some were university
constituencies, for
which proportional representation
applied from 1918. A crude modicum of
proportionality had been
achievable in the large number of
non-university constituencies - in
which PR-STV
never applied - by voters plumping;
that is, by not voting for two
candidates, but only one, in a
2-member constitutency. Winston
Churchill MP spoke in favour of PR-STV - which
is a system of direct
election - in a Commons
debate on 02 June 1931on a
bill that sought instead to amend
the Representation of the
People Act by replacing plurality
voting with the alternative
vote, still in
single-member constituencies,
but he wrote, quite consistently,
about his misgivings
in 1943 about some of the effects
of the indirect party
list form of PR, with a
large district
magnitude, that had been
instituted for most of continental
Europe's legislatures by then. He
first became an MP in 1900 as a Conservative, in Oldham
, which was one of the 23 two-member
constituencies
still existing then. The other MP
for Oldham then was a
Liberal.
The
Proportional Representation
Society of Great Britain and
Ireland (later the Electoral
Reform Society) and its
members influenced the founding of
Australian proportional
representation societies and
helped them by sending its Secretary,
John Humphreys, to Tasmania
during World War I
where his evidence [1] to
a Select Committee of Tasmania's
Parliament helped defeat a
proposed change from the Hare-Clark system
of PR-STV
(quota-preferential
proportional representation)
to a party list system, and also
led to Tasmania's Electoral
Amendment Act 1917 (7 Geo. V
No. 65), whose Section
7 prescribed countback
- the filling of casual vacancies
in the House of Assembly by the
Electoral Office by re-examination
of the ballot-papers that formed
the vacating member's quota. It
ensures that all MPs are directly
elected. In
1948 the assistance
of the Proportional
Representation Society of Great
Britain and Ireland was
acknowledged by The
UK's ERS and STV
Action work for, as does
the PRSA, proportional
representation using the single
transferable vote, PR-STV.
PR-STV now applies in Northern Ireland for
its Assembly and for when it held
elections to the European
Parliament, although
regrettably, despite strong opposition in
the House of Lords, the final years of
elections in the rest of the
United Kingdom to the European
Parliament used a closed party list
system. In the mid-1980s, the
In 2011, an unsuccessful referendum to change the House of Commons electoral system from a Plurality Vote system to an Alternative Vote system was held as an outcome of the 2010 UK General Election. |
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United
Kingdom - Local
Government:
From the first establishment of
local government in England,
when William the Conqueror
granted a charter to the City of London in
1075, until the
passage of the Municipal
Corporations Act 1835,
which introduced widespread
election by ratepayers, English
municipal councils were not
elected by the citizens, but
were self-perpetuating
oligarchies with vacancies
filled by the Council itself. PR-STV
(quota-preferential PR) is still
not used for local
government elections in
England, but is now used in
Northern Ireland and Scotland,
and also in the Republic
of Ireland. Recent Welsh
legislation has allowed councils
to choose PR-STV as an
alternative to the multiple
plurality system still used for
councils in England. |
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the sections below, see the table
here that lists instigators of
electoral advances and setbacks in
Australia. |
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Miss Catherine Spence was the
first female candidate at a
public election in the then
British Empire when she stood
unsuccessfully at the 1897
election (under the
unfair first-past-the-post
multiple vote) for the 1897Australasian
Federal Convention. The Constitution
Amendment Act 1894
of the Parliament of the Colony
of South Australia - which gave
South Australian women the right
to vote and stand for that
Parliament, after it had been
reserved for the signification
of Her Majesty's pleasure
thereon, received Royal
Assent from Queen Victoria
on 21 March 1895, but the right
to vote for the UK House of
Commons was not gained by
any women until King George V
gave Royal Assent to the Representation
of the People Act 1918,
on 6 February 1918. There
is a statue
in Light Square in Adelaide,
unveiled on 10th March 1986 by
Queen Elizabeth II, that
commemorates Miss
Spence. The PRSA
later launched its reprint of her
booklet there. She is remembered
by her Autobiography,
and was depicted on the Australian
$5
banknote issued for
the Centenary of Federation, in
2001. Another influential member
of the Effective Voting League was
its Honorary Secretary, Mrs
Jeanne Forster Young O.B.E,
who stood as an independent
candidate at the 1937
Senate election,
winning 6.5% of the first
preference vote, but that gave her
no hope of election under the
since-discredited multiple
majority-preferential
electoral system
then in force.
South Australia - Local Government:
Catherine Spence recorded, in
Chapter III of her
Autobiography, her witnessing,
by an early form of PR in 1840,
Adelaide City
Council's first election,
as her father was the Town
Clerk. It was the world's first public
election conducted by PR,
and Until 1984, South Australian
municipal elections operated
under a plurality
(first-past-the-post)
electoral system, which had long
been discontinued for State and
Federal elections. Sections 121
and 122 of South Australia's Local
Government Act Amendment Act
(No. 3) 1984 replaced that
system with a system - which
each Council had to choose -
from either PR-STV, or a
crude system peculiar to South
Australia commonly called "bottoms
up". Before PR-STV was
made the only system, most
Councils had chosen to utilize
it rather than the less fair
"bottoms up" alternative. The PRSA's
SA Branch successfully helped
convince the Olsen
Liberal Government, before
it succeeded in having the Local Government
(Elections) Act 1999
enacted, to have that Act
make proportional representation
using the single transferable
vote (PR-STV)
the only electoral system to be
used in elections for local
government in South Australia,
by discontinuing the
idiosyncratic "bottoms up"system,
which fortunately appears to
have never been used for public
elections outside South
Australia. Regrettably,
municipalities can still be
divided into single-councillor
wards, as in Unlike
arrangements in New South Wales,
there is unfortunately no
prohibition of different wards
in a given municipality having
different numbers of
councillors. Stalemate wards,
which have an even number
of councillors per ward, are
permitted. As in Casual vacancies are filled by-election polls (not countback). The same unweighted inclusive Gregory transfer method used for transferring votes, by averaging, as is used in Senate scrutinies, applies. With partial optional preferential voting applying, voters must mark, for a valid vote, as many preferences as there are vacancies - it is optional after that number. General elections are held every four years, with polls being conducted by postal ballot. For South
Australian municipal elections:
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TASMANIA -
PARLIAMENT:
Tasmania's Attorney-General
in the 1890s, Hon. Andrew
Inglis
Clark, who sat on
the four-member committee of the 1891
National Australasian
Convention (see P.
247 of debates) that,
on the Queensland
Government Paddle Steamer,
S.S. Lucinda,
cruising on the Hawkesbury River,
NSW, drafted a Bill to
Constitute the Commonwealth of
Australia, which was
adopted by that Convention. He
spoke about proportional
representation (PR) then. He
did not stand for election to the
1897
Australasian Federal
Conference, but a
Tasmanian delegate, Matthew Clarke
MHA, spoke there (see P. 304 on 30
March 1897)
in favour of a Hare
system, like Tasmania's Hare-Clark
electoral system
for both houses of the proposed
new Commonwealth Parliament.
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Tasmanian
proportionalists
were members of Tasmania’s former
Municipal
Reform Group, which
was informally associated with the
PRSA before the PRSA adopted its
first constitution, in 1982.
Tasmanian PRSA members joined with
Victorian members in 2000.
In 2006 they formed Proportional
Representation Society of
Australia (Victoria-Tasmania)
Inc. It was renamed
Proportional Representation
Society of Australia Inc. in
December 2023. Start of
Hare-Clark:
Andrew
Clark, as
Tasmania's Attorney-General,
achieved passage of The
Electoral
Act 1896
(60 Vic, No. 49) for PR-STV
elections, with Hare-Clark's Single
Transferable Vote, with
partial optional marking of
preferences, for the Hobart and
the Launceston electoral districts
for each of the two Houses of the
Parliament of Tasmania for
a trial period.
That led to The
Electoral Act 1907 (7
Edw. VII No. 6), under which
Tasmania
became
Countback:
Hare-Clark, improved by requiring
direct
election by countback
in 1918, for the filling of casual
vacancies, after the evidence
given by John Humphreys in
successfully opposing a retrograde
Labor
Party proposal to replace
Hare-Clark with a party
list system, (see
"UNITED KINGDOM" section
above), is
Australia's longest-established
electoral system. The first result
of a countback
in Hare-Clark impressed the Maltese-born Sir Gerald (later Lord) Strickland while he was the Governor of Tasmania from 1904-09, so that when he became Prime Minister of Malta from 1927-32 he had a prior acquaintance with its successful operation in Tasmania, and could continue to support its already well-established use for the election of Malta's MPs. Recognizing that Number of Vacancies to Fill Should be an Odd Number: In 1958, a Tasmanian political scientist, Dr George Howatt, wrote his classic PR-STV paper "Democratic Representation under the Hare-Clark System - The Need for Seven-Member Electorates", which the Government tabled in the House of Assembly in support of its Bill that succeeded in correcting the flaw in Tasmania's original Hare-Clark system of having an even number of seats per electorate, rather than an uneven number, to ensure a majority outcome in any electorate where a party gained a majority vote, by changing the number of MHAs per electorate from the original even number, six, to the recommended uneven number, seven. Avoiding
Regimentation of Voters:
Dr Howatt's
1979 report, similarly tabled, "Voting - By Party
Direction or Free Choice"
was another PR-STV classic.
Fortunately, Partial
Optional Preferential Voting:
Unlike the Senate
system, where full (or
almost full) marking of
preferences was required, from
1934 until its discontinuance in
2016, for a ballot to be formal,
Tasmania's Hare-Clark system has
never required voters to mark more
preferences than the number of
vacancies, although ballot paper
instructions encourage them to
mark as many as they feel able to.
As Dame
Enid Lyons pointed out
in the 1948 debates on PR-STV
for the Senate, that has not
resulted in a high or unacceptable
incidence
of exhausted votes.
The minimum number of consecutive
preferences, beginning with a
unique first preference, had been
three before Section 18 of
Tasmania's Electoral
Act 1973 increased it
to seven, which was the number of
vacancies to be filled per
division by then, but the number
was reduced to five by Section 21
of Tasmania's Parliamentary
Reform Act 1998, to
match that Act's reduction of the
number of MHA's per division to
five. With the later restoration
of seven MHA's per division, seven
preferences are again required to
be marked. Tasmania
has wisely avoided adopting
the Group Voting Tickets
that:
The
combination of the mainland's use
of how-to-vote
cards, the conjoint election
of both houses in the relevant
mainland bicameral parliaments,
and that continuing GVT
system, has had adverse effects.
It has managed to still persuade a
large majority of voters for
Victoria's Legislative Council -
which is the only legislative
chamber in the world for which
that discredited GVT system still
persists - to take the relatively
easy course of abandoning
individual consideration of the
relative merits of a party's
candidates. Those voters instead
still accept the preference order
for their chosen party's
candidates, and all other
candidates, as decided beforehand
by their party - which is
generally not made very evident to
voters - and do that by just
marking a single above-the-line
box. Robson Rotation:
A key part of Tasmania's Electoral
Act 2004, Robson
Rotation, is
specified in Sections 97
and 98
and Schedule
3. It requires
ballot-papers to be printed in different batches,
of equal size, so that candidates'
names have an equal incidence of
appearance in prescribed positions
down the columns. Applying also to
polls in all municipal elections,
and the single-member Upper
House electorates, it disarms
organized 'tickets', and
neutralizes the unintended effects
of 'donkey
voting'. A former
Tasmanian MHA, the late Hon.
Neil Robson AM, who
was a PRSA
Honorary Life Member,
was its initiator
by means of his successful private
member's bill, which resulted in
the Electoral
Amendment Act 1979.
The excellent 1992 Tasmanian book
"Hare-Clark in Prior to the 1976 Assembly election, the order of candidates' surnames in party columns on the ballot-paper was alphabetical. Tasmania's high incidence of election, and re-election, of MPs with surnames like Abbott, Adams, Agnew, Amos, Anderson, Batt etc. had started to remind some Tasmanians of the Australian Labor Party's notorious four A's ploy in the 1937 Senate election in NSW, which led to the Menzies Coalition Government retaliating, in 1940, by introducing the present listing of Senate candidates' names by mutual consent (effectively by party decision). Tasmania's first change from an alphabetical list of candidates' names in the party columns was fortunately not to adopt that party machine concession, but instead the Electoral Act 1973 made the order set by lot, but that was in force for the 1976 and 1979 elections only, as circumstances happily resulted in the adoption of Robson Rotation in 1979. Unlike
the mainland States, where
electors in State lower house
elections had only one candidate
from each party to choose from,
the existence of multi-member
electorates, with casual vacancies
filled by countback
since 1918, meant that parties
normally stood more candidates
than the number of seats they
expected to win, thus giving
Tasmania's voters a wide choice of
candidates within each party. How-to-vote cards,
which list a party's candidates in
a particular recommended order for
voters to copy onto their ballot
papers,and are handed out by party
supporters to electors outside
polling booths, had never been
used in Tasmanian Assembly
elections. Attempts to introduce
them were nullified by the
introduction of Robson Rotation.
Tasmanian law has since made their
use near polling booths an
offence. Constitutional
Entrenchment by Referendum
should apply:
Tasmania's Constitution Act 1934
does not prescribe a method for
counting votes, or require a
referendum or special majority to
alter it, or the electoral system;
or even to abolish either House,
except for alterations
to the term of the House of
Assembly. Hare-Clark, although
very popular, could be abolished
by ordinary legislation. The
number of members in each house of
the Parliament has varied over the
years. The number of members in
each of the five House of Assembly
electoral districts was increased
from six to seven following the
1958 Howatt Report above.
A 1984
Report reviewed that
increase and considered that it
had been appropriate. The Morling
Board of Inquiry in 1994
agreed with that view, but in 1998 an ALP
private member's bill was passed
that reduced the size of the
Legislative Council from 19 to 15,
and the size of the House of
Assembly from 35 to 25, which
increased the quota for election
as an MHA from 12.5% to 16.7%.
PRSA and many Tasmanians opposed
that reduction
in size, which has come to
be seen as a mistake, as is
evidenced by a 2012 House of
Assembly resolution
that supported a return to a
35-member House. |
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For
Tasmanian State and municipal
polls, partial optional
preferential
voting applies. As a result of
requests from MHAs that had been
municipal councillors,
ballot-papers for election of
councillors have, since 2002,
been required to be printed
using Robson Rotation
by Section 288(2) of the
Act, which refers
to a prescribed order, and that
appears in Schedule 1
of the Local Government
(General) Regulations 2005. PRSAV-T Inc. made a 2-page
submission to Tasmania's
2019 Local Government
Legislation Review, largely on
supporting the status quo
regarding Tasmania's exemplary method of electing Mayors.
For Tasmanian municipal elections:
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VICTORIA -
PARLIAMENT:
As named on
an early letterhead, the Vice-President of
the Proportional Representation
League of Victoria, from the
late 1800s, was Professor
Edward Nanson,
who
was the Professor of Mathematics
at the University of Melbourne
from 1875 to 1922, and a
significant advocate - at the time of
Australia's federation -
for the
Single Transferable
Vote (PR-STV). Also
named there is the President
of the League, Sir James Barrett, who was
Vice-chancellor of the
University of Melbourne from
1931-34 and Chancellor from
1935-39. Professor
Nanson
convinced the University of
Melbourne to adopt
proportional representation
with PR-STV for polls for
its Senate, of which he was
a member.
Single Transferable Vote
proportional representation was
used for that Senate - later
renamed the Committee
of Convocation - until it was replaced
in 2011 by an Alumni
Council, where Clause 3(d) of Regulation
3.1.R1 regressed by requiring
its elected members to be
elected using the crude and
unfair plurality
system. |
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The
League's successor, in 1943, was the Proportional
Representation Society of
Victoria, which
campaigned then
for PR for Senate elections.
The PRSV became the PRSA's
Victorian Branch in 1981,
and was renamed
Proportional Representation
Society of Australia
(Victoria-Tasmania) in 2000,
and incorporated as Proportional
Representation Society of
Australia
(Victoria-Tasmania) Inc. in 2006. It was renamed
Proportional Representation
Society of Australia Inc. in
December 2023. PRSAV-T Inc. had successfully helped promote proportional representation for elections for Victoria's Legislative Council, Victoria's municipal councils, the Council of the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Diocesan Council of the Anglican Archdiocese of Melbourne by its Synod, the Board of the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), the ALP Victorian Branch and other bodies. It has had less involvement in Tasmania because Tasmania's longstanding use of PR for its Lower House has led to widespread understanding of its value there, and most of Australia's PR advances have been instigated there. See details here of some of PRSAV-T Inc's present and former members, and here for some AGM Guest Speakers. 150
Years of Winner-take-all
Periodic Upper House Polls
Ended in 2006:
The
count for that first general
election used a multiple,
or bloc,
first-past-the-post method,
with subsequent
elections being the
filling of single vacancies by a
first-past-the-post (plurality)
method until that was changed to a
preferential method in 1921. Efforts
for Hare-Clark in Victoria's Constitution Commission: The PRSA's then Victoria-Tasmania Branch made a submission to the Constitution Commission of Victoria set up to report on the above Bill. In 2001, the PRSAV-T brought Hon. Neil Robson, a former Tasmanian minister administering Tasmania's Electoral Act, and also the instigator of Tasmania's excellent Robson Rotation system, to Melbourne for a meeting the three Commissioners agreed to have with him, and for a public meeting. Section 11 of the Commission's Final Report foreshadowed future benefit in instituting Robson Rotation for Legislative Council elections, and also for dispensing with above-the-line voting. In 2002 the Bracks ALP Government constructively transferred legislative detail on its electoral systems from the obscurely-named The Constitution Act Amendment Act 1958 to the new Electoral Act 2002. Institution
of PR for the Legislative
Council:
Proclamation of the Royal Assent
to the Constitution
(Parliamentary Reform) Act
2003, which
enabled alteration of Victoria's
Constitution Act 1975
and its Electoral Act 2002
to require quota-preferential
proportional representation
elections for the Legislative
Council, appeared in Special
Government Gazette S57 of 8th
April 2003. Section 36 of the Constitution (Parliamentary Reform) Act 2003, operated to insert, on that day, a Section 93A into the Electoral Act 2002, which reversed the retrograde trend mentioned above, and to cause Victoria's rule on below-the-line voting to differ markedly from the Senate below-the-line rule, by deeming a ballot-paper to be valid provided that the number of preferences indicated is at least equal to the number of candidates to be elected. Likewise, Section 42 of that Constitution (Parliamentary Reform) Act 2003, on that day, operated to insert Schedules 1A and 1B into the Electoral Act 2002, which provides for the new form of ballot-paper and introduces, in its Section 74(3B)(b), a novel aspect to the Legislative Council ballot-papers that was specifically recommended by the Constitution Commission above, viz. the printing - to the right of each candidate's name on the ballot-paper - after the name of that candidate's party (if any), the name of the suburb or locality at which that candidate is enrolled. Three major changes made by the Constitution (Parliamentary Reform) Act 2003 were: · the insertion of a Section 114A into Victoria's Electoral Act 2002, which provided for Single Transferable Vote proportional representation counting for Legislative Council polls, · changes to Section 27 of Victoria's Constitution Act 1975 to provide for 8 electoral regions each electing 5 MLCs, and · changes to Section 28 of Victoria's Constitution Act 1975 to provide for the dissolution of the Legislative Council at the same time as the Legislative Assembly. Most
importantly, changes to Section
18 of Victoria's Constitution Act 1975
entrenched the above Sections 27 and
28 (in Subdivision 1 of
Division 5 of Part II of that
Act) by requiring any
alteration to them, or other
sections in that Subdivision, or
to Section 18
itself, to be approved by a
referendum before they can take
effect. This was the first time a
requirement for a referendum
appeared in The
PRSAV-T Inc. wrote to all MLAs and
MLCs advocating countback,
the Robson
Rotation, and the
omission of the unfortunate Group Voting Tickets
provision, but those aspects did
not form part of the Act. The
Minister that introduced the Act
into the Upper House, the Hon.
John Lenders MLC,
had met a deputation from the
PRSAV-T to discuss those aspects,
and the Upper House Opposition
Leader acknowledged the PRSAV-T's
advocacy to him in his
speech (Hansard Page 437)
in the House. The first
Legislative Council casual
vacancy, that of Evan Thornley,
who had been directly elected by a
quota of votes in Victoria's
Southern Metropolitan Region, was
filled in 2009 by a Joint
Sitting of Victoria's
Parliament, using the undemocratic
party
appointment method, by a
person nominated by the Australian
Labor Party's National
Executive. Other PRSAV-T Inc. Work: Evidence of PRSA permission to incorporate the Rules for conducting elections by the Single Transferable Vote method of proportional representation from the Society's PR Manual in Schedule 1 of the Health Services (Community Health Centre Elections ) Regulations 2001 appeared as Endnote 1 to those regulations, until those PRSA rules were superseded by a reference to the proportional representation rules in Victoria's Local Government Act 1989. PRSAV-T Inc, and its successor, PRSA Inc, maintained a vote-counting service for organizations, which particularly assists those that conduct proportional representation polls. |
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When the ALP Government introduced the consolidated Local Government Act 1989, it continued the traditional 3-year term for all councillors, but added the option of triennial general elections to the only option that had previously existed in Victoria, which was periodic elections, where the longest-serving third of the councillors retired annually. Unfortunately, owing to amendment by the Coalition in the Legislative Council, that PR-STV option of the ALP Government was omitted, so where a municipality used the general election model - with all three seats in each ward being filled as a group - they were filled by the winner-take-all multiple majority-preferential method that had previously been used only by the few municipalities that had chosen not to be divided into the 3-councillor wards, which were the only wards allowed then. That method had been discredited and superseded for Senate elections in 1948 by single transferable vote proportional representation. That method was also used in some municipal elections in both New South Wales and the Northern Territory, but it has not applied in either of those places since 2012.
Victorian Liberal MPs
have been slower to
support PR-STV
than their counterparts in
other States and the ACT, but
in 1995 the Kennett
Liberal Government amended the Local
Government Act 1989 to
prescribe PR-STV
(proportional
representation using the
single transferable vote)
election at large for 5 of the
9 seats on Melbourne
City Council, which were
filled in 1996. PR-STV
in the City of
The Kennett Coalition
Government amended
The
PRSAV-T wrote to all of
Victoria's Councils
in August 2003 advocating
Hare-Clark features for
the PR-STV
system that is now mandatory for
all multi-vacancy polls, in
place of the previous winner-take-all
multiple
majority-preferential
method.
By the Local Government
(Democratic Reform) Act 2003,
whose relevant sections came
into effect on 10 December
2003, the Bracks
Labor
Government amended the Local Government
Act 1989
resulting in its Section 42.
That section invokes Schedule 3,
Clause 11B of which provides -
for any poll where more than one
councillor is to be elected for
a ward or electorate - that
proportional representation
using the single transferable
vote (PR-STV) shall apply, thus
fortunately discontinuing that
previous multiple
majority-preferential method
(identical to the 1919-46 Senate
system),
which had lingered until its
last use at the March 2003
municipal elections, for the 21 municipalities
then still encumbered with it.
See the example of the 2000 Strathbogie Shire elections in the last year in which that now discredited multiple majority-preferential method was used there, where the candidate with the second highest number of first preference votes was not one of the five candidates elected, but where the candidate with the fewest first preference votes - who would have lost his deposit for failing to obtain at least 4% of first preference votes had he not been elected - was the last candidate elected from the nine standing. By the 2003 elections, Strathbogie Shire had been reconfigured to consist of seven single-councillor wards, but by the 2005 elections two of those wards had been joined to form a sole two-councillor ward, which gave some local indication of the benefits of PR-STV. At the electoral representation review of Strathbogie Shire in 2011, the former Deputy Premier and Nationals leader when the now-abolished former system had been left as the only alternative to a single-councillor ward system made a submission advocating proportional representation in a single undivided electoral district for the Shire, and criticizing the single-councillor ward system.
Countback provisions arise from Section 37A of the Local Government Act 1989, which invokes Schedule 3A, under which countback is to be used to fill casual vacancies following PR polls. Unlike the Tasmanian Electoral Commission website, that for the Victorian Electoral Commission regrettably failed to give more than first preference and final total votes for general elections until the 2012 polls, but since PRSAV-T Inc. asked for the July 2011 countback for Melbourne City Council to be detailed on its website, the VEC remedied that oversight and now gives hyperlinks to both its general election and its countback distribution reports. Single-councillor wards, which can only give winner-take-all results, had not applied in any Australian jurisdiction, except Queensland, until they became an option in Victoria near the end of the 20th Century. After Victoria had appointed commissioners replacing elected councillors in the last decade of that century, those commissioners were required to propose the arrangement of electoral districts for the re-introduction of elected councillors. As winner-take-all electoral systems were all that was available prior to proportional representation becoming an option for any council, most councils' commissioners recommended single-councillor wards as the lesser of two evils, so they briefly became the predominant pattern. until after proportional representation using the single transferable vote (PR-STV) became the only system for use in multi-councillor electoral districts in 2003.
That novelty of single-councillor wards soon palled when their faults became evident, so their brief predominance was soon replaced by that of multi-councillor electoral districts once the greater benefits of proportional representation using the single transferable vote (PR-STV) became better known. The Local Government (Democratic Reform) Act 2003 amended the Local Government Act 1989 to provide that their use in a given municipality is now an option, although the adoption of that option is decided by ad hoc and rather opaque periodic Representation Reviews conducted by the Victorian Electoral Commission under Sections 219A-219G of that 1989 principal Act, which require formal ratification by the Minister for Local Government before they can take effect, but a system like the NSW Constitutional Referendums would be much sounder. The Act regrettably was so loose that its provision for the structure of councils did not require elementary conditions:
The
PRSAV-T Inc. has made submissions
to most of the above reviews. Of
A PRSAV-T
submission, concerned about the
'dummy candidates' problem
peculiar to Victorian municipal
elections since postal voting
was introduced late last
century, supported
a draft of what were Victoria's
Local Government
(Electoral) Regulations
2005 which
- had it been adopted - would
have discontinued the
circulation, with postal
ballot-papers, of indications
of candidates' preferences.
Unfortunately, that circulation
was not discontinued, so a
distinctive weakness of
Victorian municipal electoral
arrangements continued to be the
provisions in Regulation
38, which
Returning Officers had to
implement by circulating to
electors in postal ballots
voting preference orders lodged
by candidates. That practice
seems to have created Victoria's
former 'dummy candidates'
problem. That
circulation, at public expense,
encouraged in Victoria's
municipal elections a confusing
proliferation of 'dummy candidates',
who were candidates nominated at
the behest of more serious
candidates, simply to appeal
superficially, on account of
certain characteristics - such
as their attractive appearance,
or their particular hobby horses
- to different relatively small
groups of uninformed voters. It
was intended that they collect a
low enough vote to be excluded
reasonably early in the count,
with the result that their
ballots were then transferred to
the intended principal
beneficiaries, who were those
listed later in the preference
order that they lodged, and that
was circulated to voters with
their ballot-papers. Recommendation
26 of the 2014 report of
the Local Government Electoral
Review Panel was that the
circulation by Returning
Officers of preference orders
lodged by candidates should be
discontinued. In late 2016, the
Legislative Council admirably disallowed
the relevant Regulation
38, so the dummy candidate
problem at future municipal
elections should
become largely confined to
remaining single-councillor
wards, where it can still have
a distorting effect on the
result of the election.
Victoria's 'dummy candidates' problem: This appeared in press reports in the March 2003 municipal polls when nearly all municipalities' postal ballots were still for single-councillor wards, as the then alternative multiple majority-preferential system for multi-councillor wards was confined to a minority of municipalities, before proportional representation became Victoria's standard system for multi-councillor electoral districts in December 2003, leading to most municipalities using proportional representation by the 2008 elections.
The use of 'dummy candidates'
was far less effective in PR-STV
polls as, in those polls, ballot
papers are first transferred for
surpluses of elected candidates,
who are usually the
highest-polling candidates,
whereas if only a single
position is being filled, all
transfers are from the
lowest-polling candidates, who
are more likely to be 'dummy
candidates'.
The
introduction of partial
optional preferential voting
does not require legislation,
but only an amendment to that Section 22 of the
regulations above, which
Victoria's Governor-in-Council
can make. Given the adoption in
March 2016 of partial optional
preferential voting for the
Senate's PR-STV
elections, and Victoria's use of
that voting option ever since it
adopted PR-STV
for its Legislative Council
elections, it would be
consistent to adopt the same
partial optional preferential
formality rule for
municipal PR-STV
which is the dominant municipal
electoral system in Victoria.
There is no justification for
the PR-STV
lowest-ranking of the
three elections in which
Victorians vote to have a
different formality requirement
from those other two elections. Removal of the
multi-councillor PR-STV ward
option in Victoria's
Local Government Bill 2019:
The
PRSA's Victoria-Tasmania
Branch was strongly
opposed to the Bill's
unreasonable reversal of the
Bracks Labor Government's fine 2003 reform that created
that multi-councillor
PR-STV
ward option. It wrote
to all of Victoria's MPs
urging them to amend the
bill to retain that
option, but to
nevertheless require that:
The above Bill
finally was, after amendments,
passed
and received
Royal assent on 24 March 2020.
Fortunately, it was amended to
still allow multi-councillor
wards and to require that they
each elect the same number of
councillors, but the the
Minister said he favoured either
single-councillor wards or
undivided municipalities, and he
has proceeded to act
accordingly.
For the City of Melbourne, the City of Melbourne Act 2001 regrettably provides for popular, but indirect, election of the Lord Mayor and the Deputy Lord Mayor, with the limiting and inflexible requirement - from the perspective of the electors - that there be a joint nomination for those two offices, and it segregates candidates for that election from those standing for the remaining Council positions, which are filled by the undesirable Group Voting Ticket system. See the PRSAV-T Inc. submission to a 2007 Elections Process Forum.
The use by Victoria, in the 19th Century, and up till 1920, of multiple plurality counting for municipal elections is illustrated by an 1888 report of the results of an election for the East Riding of Moorabbin Shire, as is its use 124 years later, of PR-STV (proportional representation using the single transferable vote), for the 2016 elections in the then Northern, Central and Southern Wards of Bayside City Council, which is a municipality within the area of that former shire, where some names of that former Shire's councillors are commemorated by street names.
For Victorian municipalities other than Melbourne:
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NEW The
first Lang Labor
Government repealed the proportional
representation provisions in its first term
(1925-27), but lost the ensuing
1927 election, which was held on
the system of single-member
electoral districts with fully
optional preferential voting
that it had introduced in
Section 8(10) of a 1926
Act. Criticisms of that
particular proportional
representation system included
its failure to make satisfactory
provision, such as countback,
for filling casual vacancies,
and the difference in the quota
for the 5-member urban districts
and the larger quota for the
3-member rural districts. |
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A
requirement that all preferences
be marked for a valid vote was
first introduced by a non-Labor
Coalition by Section 28 of a 1928
Act. That took effect for
the 1930
Assembly elections, and remained
until Labor re-introduced fully
optional preferential voting for
the 1981
elections. Legislative Council of NSW elected by PR-STV: The first NSW Legislative Council had all of its members appointed by the Governor-in-Council. It became part of a bicameral NSW Parliament, from 1856 to 1933. In 1861, George Holden MLC, supported by Sir John Darvall MLC, introduced a bill to have its members elected by PR-STV, which was passed by the Legislative Council, but lapsed after the Legislative Assembly rejected it. The Legislative Council was reconstituted, by a 1933 referendum, to be indirectly elected by an electoral college of MPs, whereby the third of that Council's seats that became vacant at each Assembly election were elected by PR by an electoral college of all MLAs and the continuing MLCs. The Heffron ALP Government's attempt to abolish the Legislative Council, and prohibit its restoration, was defeated at a 1961 referendum. The
PRSA's NSW Branch influenced the Wran Government away
from [4]
a party
list system of PR
towards the present direct
election by a quota-preferential
system (albeit
marred by the imposition of a Group Voting Tickets
contrivance) when
that Government introduced a Bill
for direct
popular voting for
the Legislative Council, which was
approved at a 1978
referendum. The NSW
Electoral
Act 2017
governs Changes
in the NSW Legislative Council
electoral system:
Exploitation of the weaknesses of
the Group Voting Tickets device
referred to above reached such a
level at the 1999 election that an
enormous 720 x 1010 mm 'tablecloth'
ballot-paper
was used for the State-wide
electoral district. Retrograde
changes to supposedly overcome
those weaknesses, including the
imposition of a 'threshold'
of the type being proposed for
Senate elections by a NSW Liberal
senator, were proposed by the then
NSW Treasurer, but fortunately
neither of his ill-considered
proposals went any further. The
above-the-line contrivance
in NSW was modified by the
1999 law that replaced the
1978 provision for Group
Voting Tickets with a set
of party squares that voters could
use to indicate preferences among
predetermined columns of party
candidates' names where the
preference order of the party
candidates' names within each had
been lodged by the party in its
preferred order, but not extending
to candidates not in that party.
That left it to voters to number
other squares with later
preferences as they saw fit, which
has avoided 'tablecloth'
ballot-papers
at and
since the 2003 elections.
Optional
preferential above-the-line
voting: Here, 'Group
Voting Squares', which only relate
to the candidates of the party
lodging them. replaced Group
Voting Tickets. They let voters
mark preferences in boxes above-the-line to
enable transfers to take effect
under Section
of 129EA of the Act, in a
similar unsatisfactory manner as
was proposed in a bill
unsuccessfully introduced by
former Tasmanian Senator, Bob
Brown, and later by others, such
as Senator Nick Xenophon. Surplus
transfer in NSW was late to
replace random selection of
ballots: The
electoral system for NSW
Legislative Council elections was
late to convert, under Clause
10(f) of Schedule
6 of the Constitution
Act 1902, from its previous
random transfer of ballots to use
a Weighted
Inclusive Gregory Transfer
system. That conversion away from
the crude random selection method,
which took effect for
Senate elections in 1983,
only
applied for NSW Local
Government elections from
2021. Other PRSA(NSW)
Work: As a result
of the Branch's advice, a By-law
of PRSA(NSW)
Vice-Presidents, Edwin Haber and Andrew
Gunter, were 2
of the 20 candidates elected
for NSW at a
national postal ballot,
to Australia's 1998
Constitutional Convention.
Entrenching proportional
representation in the Australian
Constitution was raised by Ted
Mack (Page 44
on 1998-02-02)
and by Edwin Haber (Pages
252-254 on 1998-02-04
and Pages 368-369 on 1998-02-05)
at that forum, but without
success. Ed Haber, who died
on 28 May 2018, had noticed
an obstacle in the Constitution
Alteration (Fair Elections) Bill
1998 to the achievement of PR-STV
for the House of Representatives,
and alerted the PRSA in time for
it to successfully
lobby the Senate to avert
that. |
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New South Wales - Local Government: In 1928 the Council of the then City of Armidale in north-eastern NSW became the first municipal council in NSW to be elected by quota-preferential proportional representation as a result of a local referendum to adopt it. What is now the PRSA's NSW Branch helped NSW to become the first State in Australia to have PR-STV as its predominant electoral system for local government, which the Cahill ALP Government began in 1953. In 1968, the Askin Liberal Government had reverted to a "winner-take-all" system for all councils, but the PR option was restored by the Wran ALP Government in 1976.
PR is one of
the two electoral systems in Section 285 of the Local Government Act 1993.
The detail of the PR-STV
used appears in Schedule
5 of the 2021 regulations
for Local
Government elections,
and it includes provision for
the transfer of surpluses by a
Gregory transfer method. PR-STV
used
to apply only where more than 2
councillors are to be elected
from an electoral district but,
since April 2012, an amendment
by the O'Farrell Liberal
Government has extended it to
all cases except
single-councillor wards. The
official term for the
alternative system is "optional
preferential", but that is a
confusing term, as the other
option of PR-STV
is also an optional preferential
system. That system, where only
one, and formerly two,
councillors are to be elected
from a ward or district, is a
preferential winner-take-all
system.
In 2008,
139 councils used PR-STV,
compared with only 13 councils
using the then available multiple
majority-preferential
winner-take-all
system for any polls they had,
as they had wards with fewer
than 3 councillors. When 2
councillors were to be elected
in a ward, that system - which
is the same system that the
Chifley ALP Government, with the
support of the Opposition led by
Robert Menzies, discontinued for
Senate elections in favour of
the present PR-STV
system in 1948 - usually results
in both vacancies being filled
by the same bare majority of
voters, even where the second
candidate elected gains a much
lower first preference vote than
the strongest-polling unelected
candidate. For more details, see
the third dot point
below. The
systems, neither of which uses Robson Rotation,
appear in NSW Local
Government (General)
Regulation 2005, Schedule 4
[majority-preferential winner-take-all]
and Schedule 5
[PR-STV].
The first of those systems is
termed "optional preferential"
in the regulation, which is
confusing, because the PR-STV
option is also an "optional
preferential" voting system. The
PR-STV
option unfortunately does not
fill casual vacancies by countback.
It is good that partial optional
preferential voting
applies, but NSW regressed
when it introduced Group Voting Tickets
into local
government in
A flexible and reasonably democratic feature in NSW is the requirement for a council to hold a municipal Constitutional Referendum, under Sections 15, 16 and 17 of the Act, to enable certain aspects of a municipality, such as the number of councillors or wards, and hence the electoral system, to be changed, but the electors have no ability to initiate such a referendum, so a council that is one of the few councils to have a winner-take-all rather than a PR-STV electoral system is unlikely to move for a change to its status. If electors wish to initiate a change, they have to elect a majority of councillors supporting such a change, which is possible if there is enough support for a change. View the worksheet here that shows the details and results of the Constitutional Referendums held in 16 municipalities in 2008.
For New
South Wales municipal
elections:
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WESTERN AUSTRALIA - PARLIAMENT:
A “Proportional
Representation Society of
Western Australia” was
formed in 1913, with Hon.
Douglas Gawler MLC as its
President, and Mr Frederick J Esmond as
its Hon. Secretary, but it would
appear that the onset of the First
World War led to its early demise.
Legislative Council
PR-STV: A Western Australian
Branch of the PRSA (Electoral Reform
Society of Western Australia Inc.)
was established in the latter part
of the 20th Century. It promoted
the 1987 law that introduced the
then Senate-style PR-STV
for the Legislative
Council, which provided for
its 34 members to be elected from
six electoral districts termed
regions, and having concurrent
terms. Unlike the Senate then,
each such region would return an odd number
of MLCs, with four 5-member
regions and two 7-member regions.
Weighted
Inclusive Gregory Transfer:
Mr Jack Wright, PRSA
National President, was keynote
speaker at the WA Government's
1984 Parliament Week seminar.
The unfortunate Unweighted
Inclusive Gregory Transfer
provision for the Legislative
Council replicated the transfer
value introduced for the Senate
system in 1983, but was replaced
in
2006
- after Dr
Narelle Miragliotta's 2002
monograph for the WA
Electoral Commission - with the
Weighted
Inclusive Gregory Transfer
provision in Schedule 1 of Western
Australia's Electoral Act
1907. Regions
with equal district
magnitudes: In 2005,
as part of the parliamentary
reform that discontinued the
previously prescribed
malapportionment of Legislative
Assembly districts - but not that
of the Legislative Council regions
- the law was changed to provide
for six 6-member regions.
Defenders of the marked
malapportionment that still
persisted - in which three regions
covered Perth's metropolitan area,
and the other three covered the
rest of the 2.5 million square
kilometres of Western Australia,
which includesd only about 25% of
the State's electors - argued
that, without it, WA's already
great disparity in area
between the three metropolitan and
the three non-metropolitan regions
would be very much more extreme
than it was. Casual MLC
vacancies filled by recount:
Fortunately,
Section 156 of Western Australia's
Electoral
Act 1907 provides
that casual vacancies in the
Legislative Council are to be
filled directly by the people's
votes, and not by political
party appointment like
the Senate, as had, until WA's direct
election requirement was
pointed out, originally
been intended. That filling,
which the WA Electoral
Commission conducts,
unfortunately uses a method that
is inferior
to the Tasmanian and A.C.T.
countback method, as it
involves a total recount of the
ballot papers at the original
election, with a savings
provision that continuing MLCs
are not to be displaced. WA's
entrenchment
of direct election of all MPs:
That direct election results from
an excellent prior alteration of
Western Australia's Constitution Act 1889 by the Government of Sir
Charles Court in 1978. Its Part
VII Section 73(2)(c) - alterable only by
referendum - entrenches a
requirement that all
of Western Australia's State MPs
be directly
chosen by the people. Suggestions
were made in
2017 that the Greens party
might support a move by WA's
Labor Government if it were to
legislate to discontinue the Group
Voting Ticket contrivance
that still encumbers the ballot
paper for the Legislative
Council. A Greens MLC introduced
a Bill for that discontinuance
in 2019, but it lapsed. WA's
Group Voting Tickets for its
Legislative Council elections
were finally discontinued, and
other major reforms made, by a
Bill that received Royal Assent
on 24 November 2021 after an Expert
Committee's Review to
which the PRSA made
a submission. Despite the
Government's claim that the
new Act would ensure
equality among all candidates,
ballot papers still include
options for voting either above-the-line
or below-the-line where,
with each option, party
candidates are listed in an
order decided by the party,
rather than being treated
impartially as with Robson
Rotation. WA's 37 MLCs are
now elected using the whole
State as a single electoral
district. |
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The PRSA's WA Branch campaigned for the replacement of this anomalous plurality throwback by a quota-preferential proportional representation system. In 2006 the then WA Government introduced a Bill for that purpose. A hostile and negative campaign by the Western Australian Local Government Association resulted in that bill being referred to a parliamentary committee for scrutiny, but the bill was enacted in 2007. Regulation 35 of WA's Local Government (Elections) Regulations 1997 then required the full marking of preferences for a vote to be valid.
The WA Local Government Association continued its campaign against that excellent new quota-preferential proportional representation system then provided for in Schedule 4.1 of WA's Local Government Act 1995. The WA Liberal Government announced that it would legislate to revert to the previous crude plurality procedure to take effect for the October 2009 municipal polls, and it did so via a 2009 Act.
For
Western Australian municipal
elections:
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In
the late 1980s, the
Fitzgerald Inquiry - a
major judicial inquiry - led to
the gross malapportionment
of electoral districts
being greatly reduced, but the PRSA's former
Queensland Branch had steadfastly warned
that equal enrolments will, by
definition, stop malapportionment,
but will in no way prevent
substantial electoral
distortions being produced by gerrymanders,
either accidental or
intentional. That
inquiry's recommendation that
marking preferences other than a
first preference should be fully
optional was implemented by the
Goss Labor Government in
1992. In 2016, with no
public forewarning, the minority
Palaszczuk
Labor Government
opportunistically achieved a
reversion to the mandatory
full marking of all preferences
that had been a hallmark of the
long-running Bjelke-Petersen
Nationals Government. |
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Electoral
Legislation: The
electoral provisions for
Queensland's unicameral Parliament
are in Queensland's Electoral Act 1992.
The former PRSA Branch sought the
re-introduction of an Upper House,
elected by PR-STV.
See a good
account of the history of
Queensland's Legislative Council.
Under the impressively democratic
Parliamentary
Bills Referendum Act 1908,
Queensland's Government conducted
a referendum in 1917 seeking the
electors' approval to abolish the
Upper House, but that approval was
not given. Notwithstanding that,
the Constitution
Act Amendment Act 1922 abolished the
former Upper House, as shown in
the above account. |
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For
multi-member electoral
districts, which are found
typically in Queensland's rural
areas, the idiosyncratic and
deceptive multiple plurality
system described below applies. There is no provision yet for PR-STV in Queensland municipal elections. The Parliament in 2010 resolved to refer its possible introduction to a parliamentary inquiry, but the Inquiry did not recommend PR-STV.
For Queensland municipal elections:
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AUSTRALIAN
CAPITAL TERRITORY - LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY:
The electoral system
used for the first self-government
election, in 1989,
instituted by the then Labor
Federal Government, was a modified party list
form of
proportional representation
called the Modified d'Hondt
system.
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That
1992 advisory poll in the ACT, which
was officially, but
misleadingly, described as a referendum,
was conducted by the
Australian Electoral Commission.
The Commission sent all ACT
electors a Referendum
Options Booklet that
depicted the format of the
proposed Hare-Clark ballot
paper. Over 65%
of voters favoured a Hare-Clark
form of PR-STV
over the alternative of 17
single-member electoral districts.
The Labor Party, which regularly
receives an absolute majority of
ACT votes at Federal elections,
campaigned for 17 single-member
electoral districts, but the
Liberal and the Australian
Democrats parties campaigned for
Hare-Clark, assisted by the PRSA's
Australian Capital Territory
Branch.
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NORTHERN
TERRITORY OF AUSTRALIA - LEGISLATIVE
ASSEMBLY: The Electoral Act
of the Northern Territory
specifies preferential voting in
the single-member districts
prescribed by Section 13(4)
of the Commonwealth's Northern
Territory (Self-Government)
Act 1978 (which is
effectively the Territory's
Constitution), and also
specifies a requirement for
voters to indicate all
preferences. The ballot-papers
have, for Australia, the novel
requirement that a photograph of
the candidate must be printed
against the name of each
candidate, and a requirement,
superseded elsewhere in
Australia, that names be listed
in alphabetical order on the
ballot-paper. |
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At the
first election of the Northern
Territory’s Legislative
Assembly, in 1974, before
self-government, the Australian
Labor Party won none of the 17
seats available, despite – over
the NT as a whole – having
gained more than 30% of the
first preference vote.
As NT Electoral Commission
figures show, a huge imbalance
between seats and votes still
occurred at the 2005 NT elections. A
2017
paper by a former MLA makes a
good case for the Territory's
government and representation being
greatly improved by a change to a Hare-Clark
electoral system. As stated
below, since 2012 NT voters at
municipal polls have experienced and
benefited by a PR-STV
system like Hare-Clark. If
Hare-Clark is used for the Assembly,
it would operate best if Robson
Rotation and optional
preferential voting were also
included. |
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View the 2008 count
for Alice Springs Town
Council aldermen
to see how, with that now
superseded multiple
majority-preferential system,
the successive re-use of the
same ballots that elected the
early winners allowed the last
candidate elected to win despite
stronger support for other,
unelected candidates. Compare
that with the very much fairer 2012 count
using PR-STV
counting. |
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TERRITORY OF NORFOLK ISLAND - FORMER LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY: Section 20 of the former Legislative Assembly Act 1979 of Norfolk Island had prescribed, for the election of the Territory's 9-member Legislative Assembly by a single Territory-wide electoral district, cumulative voting. That is a crude, inferior procedure that was used in Cape Colony (South Africa) in the 19th Century, and by the U.S. State of Illinois from 1870 to 1980, until Illinois's only constitutional change ever effected by a citizen-initiated referendum replaced it in 1980 with the even worse 'first-past-the-post' system that all the other U.S. States use. |
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A
1982 Norfolk
Island
referendum had
unfortunately
substituted
that
cumulative
voting for the
earlier Hare-Clark
PR-STV used
for the first
two elections
under that
Act. That
cumulative
voting
procedure
required each
voter to mark
9 crosses on
the
ballot-paper,
each of equal
value, and
they could
mark an
arbitrarily
prescribed
maximum of 4
for any one
candidate. As it
used
non-preferential,
non-transferable
ballots, votes
were wasted by
some
candidates
receiving more
than a
PR-STV
quota, and
others
receiving
less, with no
procedure for
transferring
such votes to
contribute to
a quota. At
the 2001 polls
(at others it
could have
been worse), 36.5%
of the 9,243
votes on the
1,027 valid
ballot-papers
completed by
the
Territory's
voters made no
contribution
to electing
anybody, but
with
PR-STV,
in this case
of 9 vacancies
being filled
by the votes
of one
electorate,
the wasted
fraction of
the votes
would have
been only
10.0%, and
never more. Under
2015
Commonwealth
legislation,
self-government
on Norfolk
Island was
abolished. |
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Click
here for the MAIN
INDEX.
Click
here for the COMMONWEALTH
OF AUSTRALIA
SUB-INDEX A-Z. |
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COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA - PARLIAMENT: |
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A certificate
for the Colony of Victoria framed
above (click on it to enlarge
it) was given
to voters in that colony after
they had voted - by the simple
majority needed for it to be
approved, as did each of the other
five colonies - on the proposed
Bill to Constitute the
Commonwealth of Australia at the
referendums on it, in 1899-1900.
It then became law when Queen Victoria signified her approval on it in July 1900. An original copy of that signed bill is on public view, in the lobby between both houses, at Parliament House, Canberra.  Tom Roberts's painting of the opening of Australia's first Commonwealth Parliament by the Duke of Cornwall and York in the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, is in Parliament House, Canberra, on permanent loan from King Charles III.
Opening
of the First
Commonwealth
Parliament:
Thus Tasmania's first 5
members of the
House of
Representatives
and 6
senators
were elected
by the Hare-Clark
system from
the same
single
state-wide
electoral
district, so
each of its 5
MHRs was
referred to as
an 'Honourable
Member for
Tasmania' as
each
represented
the same
State-wide
electorate,
although each
had been elected
by a different
quota of the
five quotas of
ballots cast.
That was the
only
Australian
House of
Representatives
election ever
in which over
83% of the
single
transferable
vote was
effective,
with less than
17% electing
nobody and
thus being
wasted. Since
the
introduction
of
preferential
voting in
single-member
divisions in 1918, the effective vote in the
House of
Representatives
has been
limited to 50%
of the vote,
plus one vote,
with the
remaining 50%,
less one vote,
electing
nobody and
thus being
wasted. The 5
MHRs elected for
Tasmania were
3 Free Trade
candidates, 1
Protectionist
candidate, and
1 independent
candidate, King
O'Malley,
who later
joined the
Labour Party.
Those 5 MHRs
were the only
Australian
MHRs to have
ever been
elected in a
multi-member
electoral
district by PR-STV counting, which has never been
prohibited by
the Constitution. Queensland used its
contingent
voting,
which was a
limited form
of preferential
voting,
in
single-member
electoral
districts.
All other
States used plurality (relative majority) voting; MHRs
from
single-member
electoral
districts,
with
boundaries
fixed by the
State
Governments,
except South
Australia,
which used a
single
State-wide
electoral
district to
elect its
7
MHRs as a
group.
Each of its 7
MHRs was
referred to as
an 'Honourable
Member for
South
Australia'.
Each mainland State elected its 6
original
senators as a
group
with the whole
State as one
electorate,
using a multiple
first-past-the-post
voting
system where plumping was prohibited. A complete
list of all
the people
ever elected
to the
Commonwealth
Parliament,
and all
Federal
Ministers that
have held
office,
appears in the
latest
Parliamentary
Handbook.
First
attempt at
proportional
representation
for the
Senate:
Owing to
pressure of
business, the
Government did
not proceed
with that bill
in the House, but
instead had
the Leader of
the Government
in the Senate,
Senator the
Hon. Richard
O'Connor,
introduce it
in the Senate,
with its
second reading
speech
beginning on
31 January
1902. In
response to
that speech, a
Tasmanian
member of the
Protectionist
Party, Senator John Keating, who had topped Tasmania's
poll in
1901, and was
at 28 the
youngest
member of the
first Federal
Parliament,
spoke very
supportively
of the
benefits of
the Hare-Clark
system of The Senate unfortunately removed the
Bill's
proposals for
preferential
voting,
replaced them
with plurality
voting (first-past-the-post)
for both
houses, and
sent the
amended bill
to the House
of
Representatives
seeking its
concurrence
with it. The
House had
little option
but to concur,
thus passing
the Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1902,
which was
the first
Commonwealth
electoral law.
That intended form of PR-STV was the only form of proportional representation that would meet the requirement of Section 7 of the Constitution that senators "be directly chosen by the people", but the Senate, which had, except for the six senators for Tasmania, been elected by a first past the post (plurality) multiple vote, amended the Bill (see the Hansard debate on that 1902 Bill) to substitute that system, with plumping being made unavailable. See the Australian Electoral Commission's summary of the history of the federal electoral system, and a summary of all federal elections up until 2010. Tasmania's first federal by-election, in 1902, replaced a Free Trade MHR that had died with another Free Trade candidate. It had the whole State voting as a single electorate, despite that method of filling a casual vacancy being inconsistent with the Hare-Clark principle used in the 1901 General Election, as the Federal Parliament had not yet used Section 31 of the Constitution to pass an Electoral Act. 1.
Full Marking
of All
Preferences,
Partial
Optional
Preference
Marking, or
Fully Optional
Preference
Marking: The use of plumping, in which voters in multi-member electorates could, under earlier first past the post multiple votes systems, which are still the common law voting system, vote for fewer candidates than there were vacancies, and hence concentrate their vote on fewer candidates, even just one, had allowed some rudimentary proportionality. Examples were certain earlier colonial elections, a more recent reversion to that on the Isle of Man, and the 1925-94 Japanese Lower House system of multi-member districts with a single non-transferable Vote. The method of indicating an Australian Senate vote from 1902-17 was - unlike some of the various colonial systems used at the 1901 polls - the placing of a cross (X) against the name of each candidate voted for. The 1917 periodic Senate election, in which W. M. Hughes's Nationalist Party won all Senate seats in all States, was the last time the first past the post multiple vote was used for Senate elections. NSW
Senator Hon.
Albert
Gardiner
was an
advocate of
proportional
representation
for Senate
elections. As
the prevailing
winner-take-all
plurality
electoral
system had
resulted in
the
Nationalist
Party gaining
in 1917
all the 18
Senate seats
to be filled
and, in 1919
under its
replacement -
the new
winner-take-all
multiple
majority-preferential
system - 17 of
the 18 seats
(Albert
Gardiner was
the only Labor
candidate
elected),
to be filled
for the whole
of Australia,
he was the
only Labor
senator in the
36-member
Senate from 01 July
1920 until 30
June 1923.
He held the
position of
Leader of the
Opposition in
the Senate,
even though he
had no party
colleagues to
lead, or even
to second a
motion. His
solitary
position,
despite
Labor's having
gained 43.7%
of the
national
Senate vote in
1917, and
42.8% in 1919,
was a stark
testament for
the need for
proportional
representation.
Senator Hon. Albert Gardiner made
a 12 hour
speech in the
Senate
on 13 November
1918 (2
days after Armistice Day) in
protest at W.M.Hughes's
Nationalist
Government's
seeking to
suspend
standing
orders then -
even after
the
Governor-General,
Sir
Ronald
Munro-Ferguson,
had issued his
writ for the
impending Corangamite
by-election
- to expedite
the passing of
the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918,
which replaced
the preceding
plurality
counting in
House of
Representatives
elections with
transferable
counting, with
the result
that it was
enacted in
time to apply
for that poll.
From the first House of
Representatives
election that
used
transferable
voting in all
divisions, in
1919, until
1951, both the
Labor and the
Coalition
parties chose
- over those
32 years - 30 divisions in which they each
had, at some
stage,
multiple
candidates
standing, from
two to as many
as five.
They could do
that safely,
in 59
different
contests,
because
transferable
ballots freed
them from a
major weakness
of the
previous
plurality
system,
which was the
splitting
of the vote.
In Werriwa, in
NSW,
in 1940,
there were
five United
Australia
Party
candidates. In
Franklin, in Tasmania,
in
1919, the
only two
candidates
were each from
the
Nationalist
Party, which
at least gave
voters a
choice of
candidates,
rather than an
unopposed
election.
Labor had
multiple
candidates on
five
occasions. A
revival of
that practice
of giving
voters more
choice would
enable all
parties to
deal with a
widespread
21st Century
concern about
the relative
dearth of
women as MHRs,
compared with
men, if
serious
parties were
to stand a
candidate of
each sex in
each present
single-member
division. That
would provide
the
flexibility of
letting
the voters
decide how
that concern
will be
resolved at
each
particular
election -
relative to
other
competing
priorities -
rather than
resorting to a
rigid form of
stage
management
by imposing a
pre-determined
dogmatic sex
ratio
regardless of
the qualities
of the
candidates, or
the opinions
of the voters
on the
particular
candidates. A much fairer solution would be to
have multi-member
divisions
with PR-STV,
so each major
party would
seek diversity
in its
candidates in
order to
maximize its
vote. Tasmania's
House of
Assembly
and the
Australian
Capital
Territory's
Legislative
Assembly,
which each use
the Hare-Clark
electoral
system, are
Australia's
first
legislative
chambers where
voters have
freely chosen
a majority of
women members.
Concentration
on equalizing
the numbers of
members of
each sex in an
elected
chamber
seriously
misses the
very much more
important
point of
ensuring that
the EXPRESSED
WISHES of as
many as
practicable of
the voters for
those members
are given
effect to.
That point is
not
implemented by
any system
that uses
single-member
electoral
districts,
which are
inherently winner-take-all systems, nor is it
implemented by
proportional
representation
systems - such
as party
list systems
or Australia's
above-the-line
contrivances -
that lack, or
are designed
to thwart, the
direct
election
of members. As
Tasmania's
2018 Assembly
election
showed,
Tasmania's
system of Robson Rotation, and its filling of casual
vacancies by countback, which prompts parties to nominate
more
candidates
than they
expect to be
elected, is
needed to
ensure that
the members
elected
correspond to
the voters'
EXPRESSED
WISHES, rather
than to some
imposed sex
ratio. That important Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 , which, in its current amended and consolidated form, is still the Principal Act for federal elections, changed the electoral system for MHRs from a first past the post system to its present majority-preferential system, but the Senate system was not changed until the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1919 replaced the previous multiple first past the post system (see 1917 NSW example) with a multiple majority-preferential system (see 1919 NSW example). Its Sections 7 and 8 changed the Principal Act to provide that, to cast a valid vote, voters had to indicate preferences for a number of candidates equal to one more than twice the number of vacancies to be filled. The Lyons
United
Australia
Party
Government
introduced the
Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1934,
whose Sections
8-10 and 13
began what
many now see
to be an
oppressive and
ridiculously
unnecessary
requirement
that, to cast
a valid vote,
a voter in an
election in a
multi-member
electorate
must, instead
of the 1919
provision
above,
indicate a
preference for
each of the
candidates,
regardless of
how many there
might be.
In response
to the Labor
Party's
unexpected "four A's" ploy in 1937 to
exploit the
possibilities
of stage
management of
preferential
voting
afforded by
the absence of
Robson
Rotation,
R.G.Menzies's
UAP Government
introduced the Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1940,
in
which the
electoral law
explicitly let
party
organizations
exercise an
almost
overwhelming
influence on
which of a
party's Senate
candidates
would be
likely to be
elected, and
which would
not be. The
Act replaced
the single
column with
the present below-the-line
layout of
separate
vertical group
columns set by
lot
side-by-side
left to right,
but with the
order of names
down each
column set by
a joint
written
statement of
the candidates
in the group
that they
would have
their names
appear in the
order
specified in
the statement
(the amended
Act did not
refer to
parties, but
candidates
within each
group were
inevitably of
the same
political
party).
When
the Chifley
ALP Government
introduced the
Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1948
to change the
Senate
electoral
system from a
multiple
majority-preferential
system to a single transferable vote (quota-preferential) PR
system, it
insisted on
continuing the
1934
provision for
full
preferential
voting
despite it
being imposed
on a
PR-STV
system, which
is a very
different
system from
the multiple
majority-preferential
system to
which the
provision was
originally
applied, and
despite the
long-term
proven success
of Hare-Clark
PR-STV's
partial
optional
preferential
voting
Tasmania-wide
since 1909. That introduction by the Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1940
of the order
of surnames
down a party's
column on the
ballot paper
being decided
by the party
led - at all
except the
first two PR-STV
elections of
senators for
Tasmania - to
the voters'
expected
marking down
party columns
in accordance
with the party
how-to-vote
cards. At
both the 1949
and 1951
elections of
senators,
enough Liberal
Party voters,
accustomed to
the Hare-Clark
system's lack
of
regimentation,
made their own
decisions
rather than
follow a party
recommendation,
and gave their
first
preference
vote to
Reginald
Wright - whose
name was
listed fourth
down the party
column - to
make him the
Tasmanian
senator that
was first to
be declared
elected. The
Menzies
Coalition
Opposition
unsuccessfully
moved to amend
the 1948 Bill
to provide
instead for partial
optional
marking
of
preferences,
but the
Chifley ALP
Government
insisted that
a voter must
mark all
preferences on
a ballot-paper
for it to be
valid. The
Whitlam ALP
Government
proposed
partial
optional
marking of
preferences in
its Electoral
Laws Amendment
Bill 1974,
which the
Senate twice
rejected, and
later in its Electoral
Bill (No. 2)
1975,
but its lack
of a Senate
majority
prevented it
legislating
for that, as
the Coalition
had, since
1948, changed
its view on
the matter. It
is ironic that
the PR system
in the Commonwealth
Electoral Bill
1902
introduced by
the Barton
Government,
and rejected
by the 1902
Senate, had
provided for
fully optional
marking of
preferences.
The statutory
requirement to
mark all
preferences
for a valid
vote, which
has never
applied in
Tasmanian
State
elections, has
given rise, in
mainland
Australia, to
the widespread
use by
political
parties of how-to-vote
cards. At
the 2013 Senate election,
there were a record 110
candidates in New
South Wales. For the first time
ever, each of Australia's six
States had a full quota of votes
(16.7%) where voters marked their
preferences for candidates of the
parties already represented in the
Parliament below their
preferences for other candidates
that were not members of such
parties. That novelty led to
widely-based, and long overdue,
calls for changing the virtually
full preferential voting system
used for Senate elections since 1934
to a system of optional
preferential voting, as cogently
discussed in a paper
by Michael Maley. That
change was fortunately made in 2016.
Michael Maley's paper showed that,
for the 110 candidates in New
South Wales in 2013, the number of
possible preference orders of
those 110 candidates was the factorial
of 110 [110!] - which equals
1.5882 x 10178 - and that unimaginably
large number obviously made
consideration of all possible
preference orders an impossible
task for anybody. 2.
Senate's 2
former
Winner-take-all
Electoral
Systems
(1903-17 &
1919-46) &
Proportional
Representation
(1949- ):
The Proportional Representation Society of Victoria held a Melbourne Town Hall meeting in October 1943 (see Uhr, J Page 4). It resolved to urge the wartime Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. John Curtin MHR, to introduce PR-STV for the Senate. The Society sent a letter to the Prime Minister, and received his reply. A
volume
of the 1948
Hansard [6]
records on 16,
and 29
April 1948 the
Attorney-General,
Rt.
Hon. Since then, the PRSA has
monitored the
Senate system
- the world's
largest scale
PR-STV election. PR-STV
is the longest
operating
electoral
system used
for Senate
elections. The
PRSA has
monitored
other
Australian elections
also.
Regrettably
there is no
constitutional
or other
entrenchment
requiring
approval at a
referendum, or
even an
absolute
majority
vote in
both houses of
Parliament,
before the
Senate's
PR-STV
system can be
weakened or
abolished. A significant
consequence of
the Senate's
ceasing to be
elected by a
'winner-take-all'
electoral
system in 1948
was that the
1943 general
election for
the House of
Representatives
was the last
such election
in which an
Australian MHR
was elected
unopposed. The
two largest
party
groupings
always
contested all
House
divisions
after 1948, as
such contests
- even when
quite lopsided
in their
results -
helped to
increase voter
turnout for
the concurrent
elections for
the Senate,
which were no
longer
'winner-take-all'
elections
where a low
Senate vote in
occasional
divisions had
little effect
on the Senate
outcome. On 21 August 1943, Labor's candidate for the New South Wales division of Hunter, Rowland James, was Australia's last MHR to be elected unopposed. He had also been unopposed at the 1937 general election, and had won that seat in 1940 with 75.0% of first preference votes. See the list of Hunter's five unopposed elections. Another
notable
unopposed
election was
that of the
Hon. Albert
Green as
Labor MHR for
Kalgoorlie, in
Western
Australia, on
21 September
1940. He died
on 02 October
1940, and a
Labor
candidate won
the ensuing
by-election,
with 51.4% of
the first
preference
votes, on 10
November 1940. 3. Casual
Vacancies
Setback:
They
urged that
replacement
senators
should be
elected by the
people via countback
and not - as
proposed in
the Bill - by
altering the
Constitution
to mention
political
parties in it
for the first
time, and to
effectively
compel State
Parliaments to
appoint as a
senator the
sole nominee
of the party
of the
vacating
senator, with
no requirement
that the
nominee had
ever been a
candidate at a
Senate poll.
The
Minister's
second reading
speech on the
Constitution
Alteration
(Senate Casual
Vacancies)
Bill 1977,
was not read
in the Senate,
but just taken
as read. It
can be read here.
In the Bill's
rushed,
hushed,
very cursory
passage, the
Senate voted
to suspend its
Standing
Orders to
dispense with
the
requirement
for a Call of
the Senate
to be made
before the
third reading
of the Bill on
25 February
1977. With a
Division being
called for,
eight
senators,
seven of whom
were
Government
senators; Sir
Magnus
Cormack, Ian
Wood, Kathryn
Martin, Peter
Sim, including
four Tasmanian
senators - Brian Harradine, Michael Townley, Peter Rae
and Reginald
Wright - were
recorded as
having voted against the Bill. Senator
Wright, as
he then was,
stressed, in
the mere 90 seconds he was allowed to speak, the
democratic
need for a
recount system
of the
original votes
rather than party
appointment. Use of countback would
have ensured direct
election
of all
replacement
senators, but
those
senators'
advocacy
failed to
change the
Bill, so senators
filling casual
vacancies now
have been,
regrettably,
indirectly
elected since
approval
of the Bill at
a 1977
referendum
by over
53% of voters
in each State
produced an
alteration
resulting in
the present
form of
Section 15 of
the
Constitution.
From the
adoption of
the original
1901
Constitution
until that
change in
1977, Section
15 had
prescribed
that casual
vacancies had
to be filled -
until the next
periodic or
general
federal
election - by
a person
appointed as
the relevant
State
Parliament, or
until it sat,
the State
Governor, saw
fit. That
temporary
appointment
provision was
abused in 1975
for partisan
gain. Its
replacement
was well
justified, but
not by an
indirect
system of
party
appointment,
when a
provision for
countback
would have
given direct
election by
the voters,
and also party
continuity in
all
significant
cases. With the
1948 adoption
of
PR-STV
for Senate
elections, the
occasional
extra place to
be filled
reduced the
quota and
could have the
disadvantage
of causing the
number of
places to be
an even
number rather
than the odd
number
that was
provided for
before the
number of
senators per
State was
increased
to12, which
leaves an even
number to be
elected at
each periodic
election of
senators.
 Nearly
always, the
so-called
'choosing' of
a replacement
senator by a
State
Parliament
involves the
acceptance of
a single
nomination, as
that 1996
South
Australian
example
showed, but
there was an
exception in Tasmania in 1994 when
the Groom
Liberal
Government
required the
Parliament, in
acrimonious
circumstances,
to actually
choose between
two Liberal
Party members
as candidates
to replace
Senator Brian
Archer. The 2013
periodic
election of
State senators
was
accompanied by
a failure of
the Rudd
Government to
win enough
lower house
seats to
remain in
power.
Speculation
that quickly
began about
the possible
intention of
the outgoing
Foreign
Minister, NSW
Senator Hon.
Bob Carr - who
had never been
elected to the
Senate by
electors
before that
election, but
who had been
elected at it
- to resign
highlighted
certain
possible extra
problems from
the looseness
of Section
15
of the
Constitution
that were well
explained
by the
psephologist,
Antony Green.
A feasible and
beneficial interim
measure,
pending the
necessary
alteration of
Section 15,
was advanced
by Michael
Maley.
The
1977
change to the
Constitution
was motivated
by the breach
in 1975, by
the NSW and
Queensland
Coalition
Governments,
of the
convention
that a person
appointed to
replace a
senator would
always be
member of the
party of that
vacating
senator. That
breach was
encouraged by
the climate
established by
the very
contentious Gair Affair in 1974,
when the
Whitlam
Government
induced a
non-Labor
senator to
resign, in the
expectation
that Labor
would gain an
extra senator
as an outcome
of having an even
number of
places to be
filled at the
imminent poll
to fill that
vacancy, as
was then still
necessary.
That
opportunistic
manoeuvre was
foiled by the
rapid,
effectual
response
of the
Queensland
Premier. The practical
importance of
that
long-standing
convention had
increased
greatly since
proportional
representation
had been
introduced in
1948.
The convention
originally
applied for
the first
three Senate
casual
vacancies,
but it was
disrupted
after a 1907
High Court
decision
that voided
the purported
appointment,
under Section
15 of the
Constitution
as it was then,
by the South
Australian
Parliament in
1907 of the
Hon. James
O'Loghlin, a
Labour Party
member, as a
senator to
replace Mr
Joseph Vardon,
an endorsed
Anti-Socialist
Party member.
Mr Vardon's election
at the 1906
periodic
election of
senators
was, in 1907
after a
recount,
declared void
by the High
Court acting
as the Court
of Disputed
Returns. That High
Court decision
led to the 1908
Special
Election in
South
Australia,
at which
Messrs
O'Loghlin and
Vardon were
the only
candidates. A
separate 1907
High Court
action, the
King versus
the Governor
of South
Australia,
also touches
on this
matter. Mr
Vardon was
elected in
1908 to fill
the vacancy
that the High
Court had
declared had
not been
filled at the
1906 periodic
election, and
was not a
casual vacancy
subject to
being filled
under Section
15 of the
Constitution,
as had been
attempted by
the South
Australian
Parliament.
The casual
vacancies
convention
continued to
operate, by
and large, but
the 1975
breach, in the
finely-balanced
context of a
Senate elected
by
proportional
representation,
showed the
need for a
better system
of filling
casual
vacancies,
which
countback,
rather than
the party
appointment
instituted in
1977, would
have provided.
An
excellent suggestion
by Michael
Maley that
would shed
more light on
the operation
of Section
15
of the
Constitution
is that the Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1918
should be
amended to
include a
requirement
for the
Australian
Electoral
Commission to
conduct a countback when a Senate casual vacancy
occurs, and to
notify the
relevant State
Parliament of
the result, so
its members
would be aware
of the person
that would
have been
elected had countback
applied, and
could consider
that in its
deliberations.
He points out
that Act's Section 282 as a good precedent for
such an
informative
provision. 4.
Gregory
Fractional
Transfer
variant
replaces
Random
Selection
Transfer:
The original Gregory fractional transfer, which Hare-Clark has used since 1907, is the transfer of all ballot-papers showing a particular first preference, but at a fractional value appropriate to the level of the surplus. When it is applied to transfers of surpluses other than those arising from first preferences, it applies only to the last parcel of votes received, whereas the later Unweighted Inclusive variant applies to all parcels, but relates to ballot papers rather than vote values, so it can greatly over-emphasize surplus votes transferred at a very small transfer value. Victorian Liberal Senator Alan Missen had Hansard in 1983 [7] incorporate a PRSA letter stating concern about the defective nature of the Unweighted Inclusive Gregory Fractional Transfer introduced then, which still applies. The PRSA notes that in 1983 computer processing of such transfers was seen as being impracticable, but by 2015 it is certainly practicable and would, for Senate scrutinies, beneficially allow the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Fractional Transfer, whose original proposal by the PRSA is noted in the 1986 JSCER inquiry's Recommendation 89, and in a 2003 paper by Professor David Farrell, to replace the defective Unweighted Transfer in Section 273(9-12). Western Australia adopted the Weighted Transfer in 2006 for its Legislative Council polls. The PRSA's Victoria-Tasmania Branch submitted further details to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in 2014. A Weighted Inclusive Gregory fractional transfer is prescribed by Schedule 1 of Western Australia's Electoral Act 1907. See in particular Clause 5 of that Act's Schedule 1. The Submission No. 94 to the Inquiry into the 2007 federal election by the federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters by the then South Australian Branch of the PRSA proposed that Senate counts should use a Weighted Inclusive Gregory Fractional Transfer instead of the present unweighted transfer. 5.
Group
Voting
Tickets: Click
on hyperlinks
below to see
aspects of
that former
system. It is
now
fortunately a
museum piece
federally and
in all but one
of the four
State
Legislative
Councils that
had adopted
it. Victoria's
Legislative
Council, which
fortunately
uses PR-STV,
is the last
legislative
chamber in the
world to use
Australia's
manipulative
Group Voting
Tickets, which
have never
been adopted
anywhere
outside
Australia. The
system
described in Para. 5A, below, which still includes stage
management,
but less
severely,
replaced it. 5.1
Implementation
of the Group
Voting Ticket
device in
1983, by the
ALP and the
Australian
Democrats 5.2
Parliamentary
debate in 1983
on Group
Voting
Tickets'
introduction 5.3
Senate
electoral
system was
made less
voter-empowering
in contrast to
Hare-Clark's
progressiveness 5.4
Regimentation
of the vote
actually
disadvantages
the major
parties 5.5
Below-the-line
voting became
exceptionally
hard given the
large number
of candidates
in the 2013
elections 5.6
The 2004
election gave
an early
warning of the
problems in
the 2013
election 5.7
The need for
the direct
election of
senators and,
at least,
partial
optional
preferential
voting 5.8
The first High
Court
challenge to
Group Voting
Tickets under
Section 7 of
the
Constitution 5.9
Untested
constitutional
validity of a
party's being
able to lodge
up to 3
different
Group Voting
Tickets 5.10
Greens' 2008
bill to
replace Group
Voting Tickets
with separate
party squares
above-the-line 5.11
Defects of the
Green's 2008
bill 5.12 Greens' further efforts to promote their 2008 bill 5.13
Senator Nick Xenophon's
unsatisfactory 2013 bill 5.14
Weakness in the Greens' and
Senator Xenophon's bills compared
to NSW and Victorian Upper House
systems 5.15
Final
abolition of
Group Voting
Tickets by the
Turnbull
Government's Commonwealth
Electoral
Amendment Bill
2016 5A. The extreme stage
management
by the Group
Voting Ticket
system
that persisted
from 1983 to
March 2016 was
fortunately
replaced by
the Turnbull
Liberal
Government in
2016. The
replacement
system
provided, for
the first time
since
1934 - a
gap of 82
years - for
voters to
indicate
preferences
for individual
candidates
without
deeming their
ballot to be
informal
because they
had not marked
their
preferences
for almost all
candidates.
The last
NSW Senate
poll with
virtual full
compulsory
marking of all
preferences,
in 2013, had
111 candidates
that voters
were required,
in order to
cast a valid
vote, to
indicate their
order of
preference
for. Being
able to
indicate
preferences
for individual
candidates is
a prized right
protected by Section 7 of the Constitution, but that
important
Section
neither
requires nor
forbids
compulsory
full marking
of
preferences. That long overdue discontinuation of that full
marking
requirement
was achieved
by
re-introducing
partial
optional
preferential
voting. A
less extreme
form of stage
management,
similar to,
but more
party-focussed
than that introduced in 1940, still
remains, as an
above-the-line
option has
been retained
in which each
group's voting
square implements
a ballot
that has all
the names of
the candidates
for that
group, but
only that
group, ranked
in preference
order in
exactly the
same way that
they appear in
that party's
column below-the-line.
That
unnecessary
contrivance is
unavailable to
ungrouped
candidates,
which is
unfair and
unjustifiably
discriminates
between
candidates. It
makes ballot
papers more
cluttered and
confusing to
voters. During
the debate, in
committee, Senator
Ricky Muir,
of Victoria,
who had issued
his Dissenting
Report on
the bill, in
which he had
put a good
case for using
the Hare-Clark
system, moved
an amendment
to require the
use of Robson
Rotation
in the
printing of
Senate ballot
papers, but
that was not
supported by
the Coalition
or the Labor
Party, and it
failed. Labor
Senator
Jacinta
Collins,
of Victoria, accepted
that Robson
Rotation had
worth, but
made the
reasonable
point that the
Labor Party
could not
accept it
without
careful study
and report by
the Joint
Standing
Committee on
Electoral
Matters.
Senator Muir
is the first
federal
parliamentarian
to have ever
moved to adopt
this important
democratic
reform. He
helpfully
mentioned,
during his
speech to that
amendment
motion, that
Robson
Rotation was
supported by
the
Proportional
Representation
Society of
Australia. The
new form of above-the-line
voting
that replaced
Group Voting
Tickets in
2016 has been
criticized,
and claimed to
be
'dishonest',
because the
ballot paper
instructions
state that at
least six
boxes must be
marked despite
the formality
requirements
being that
only a single
above-the-line
box need be
marked for a
formal ballot.
That criticism
and claim
overlooks the
reasonable
need in a
transferable
vote system to
encourage the
expression of
at least a
modest number
of preferences
so as to
reduce the
incidence of
exhausted
ballots, but
at the same
time ensure
that voters
that have, for
whatever
reason, only
marked fewer
than the
required
number of
boxes do not
have their
ballot
unnecessarily
wasted as
informal. 6.
The aim of Senator
Coonan's
proposal
to impose an
exclusionary
threshold was
to prevent
candidates of
parties with a
low level of
first
preference
vote support
from accruing
enough votes
transferred
from
surpluses, or
from other
less
successful
candidates, to
be elected
with a quota
of votes. The
effect of the
proposal would
be to reduce
the
proportionality
of the
counting
system. The
weakness in her
failed plan,
which is the
subject of a 1999
letter to The
Age,
is its
arbitrary
redirection of
voters' ballot
preferences
away from one
or more of
their higher
preferences to
one of their
lower
preferences,
which is
manifestly
against the
plainly
expressed
wishes of such
voters. See
Michael
Maley's excellent 2014 JSCEM
submission. A threshold flouts the direct election provision of Section 7 of the Australian Constitution, and a High Court challenge could invalidate it. Malcolm Mackerras AO raised that on Page 4 of Appendix A of his 2013 JSCEM submission where he stated, " ... Two types of reform have been proposed. One is to place a threshold below a party's vote and cut out any party with less than, say, three per cent. The trouble with that proposal is that it would be unconstitutional. My basis for that assertion is Section 7 of the Constitution: 'The Senate shall be composed of senators for each State, directly chosen by the people of the State, voting (until the Parliament otherwise provides) as one electorate. ...' The words 'directly chosen' command a candidate-based election. Few people seem to understand this point but the fact is that the present system is candidate-based. Once you put in a threshold you change it to a party-list system and senators would then no longer be directly chosen by the people. ..." 7.
Why the number
of senators to
be elected
should be an
odd Number:
The advantage of setting an odd number is that an absolute majority of votes for a given party, however slight, produces an absolute majority of seats for that party whereas, with an even number of places, an absolute majority of votes for a party does not, unless it is high enough, produce an absolute majority of seats for that party. If the absolute majority is not large enough to produce an absolute majority of an even number of seats, the party gaining such an absolute majority of votes will only gain half the number of available seats, and the party, or parties, that jointly gain only a minority of the seats, will gain the other half of the seats, which is unsatisfactory. The Whitlam Government instigated the Gair Affair in 1974, which sought to exploit the nature of a PR-STV election where the number of positions to be filled is an even number. The remedy for this problem is to arrange matters so that the number of places to be filled is an odd number, but the requirement of the nexus provision in the first sentence of Section 24 of the Constitution has made that onerous and expensive as the size of the Parliament has increased. The greatly increased difficulty, with there no longer being an odd number of places to be filled in each State at periodic elections of senators, for either major party to obtain a majority of seats in any State has led to increased demands for a relaxation of the careful safeguards of Section 57 of the Constitution, which provides for procedures that can ensue following a disagreement between the two Houses of the Parliament. There is also the fact that, with an even number of places to be filled in each State, a party that gains half of the quotas of Senate votes in all States at two successive periodic elections (42.9% of the vote), or a single election after a dissolution of the Senate (46.2% of the vote), can thereby, with much less than 50% of the overall vote, gain half the seats in the Senate, and thus deprive an opposing party that might have gained Government by the vagaries of the single-member electorate system used for elections to the Lower House of a majority of Senate seats, thus enabling it to reject any Government Bill it chooses. A change to the law to set the numbers for periodic Senate elections to be odd numbers would be desirable, but a further change to provide for PR for the House of Representatives would be better still. 8.
A sounder
basis for
dividing State
senators into
two classes
after a
dissolution of
the Senate:
That long-standing practice was examined by the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform, whose First Report, dated September 1983, stated in its Paragraphs 3.36 - 3.39 that the practice had been appropriate under the Senate's previous two winner-take-all electoral systems, but was inequitable under the current system of proportional representation. That First Report's Recommendation 16 therefore was that the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 should be amended to include a new section to require the Australian Electoral Commission to conduct, after each election necessitated by a dissolution of the Senate, a recount of the votes confined to the elected candidates, and to determining, in each State - for the sole purpose of informing the Senate - which of the candidates for that State that had been elected would have been elected if only half the number of vacancies were to be filled, and to report that to the Parliament. That new section, Section 282, was added to the Act. Recommendation 17 of that First Report was that Section 13 of the Constitution should be amended to require the division to be made according to the result of such a recount, but no further action was taken on achieving such an amendment. At
the first
opportunity to
implement the
new system,
the Hawke
Labor
Government,
which had
supported it
at the Joint
Select
Committee, and
had supported
the
introduction
of the
necessary
Section 282 of
the Act,
failed to
support it in
the Senate. A
member of that
Committee,
Victorian
Labor Senator
Robert Ray,
spoke in
favour of the
new section,
as Page 3220
of the Senate
Hansard of 02
December 1983
shows. The
Coalition
Opposition
supported the
new approach
that the Hawke
Government had
developed but,
at the first
opportunity to
implement it,
when the
Senate met on
15th September
1987 and
proceeded to
its task of
dividing the
newly-elected
State senators
into two
classes, the
Australian
Democrats
senators
joined with
the Hawke
Labor
Government
senators to
defeat an
Opposition
motion to
implement the
new procedure
that the Hawke
Government had
developed,
which reversal
in attitude
appears to
have resulted
from an
assessment
that avoiding
implementing
the reform
would result
in fewer
long-term
senators for
the Coalition
Opposition
than would
occur if the
reformed
procedure was
adopted. Liberal
Senator Jim
Short's 1987
speech in
support of his
amendment
motion to the
Hawke Labor
Government's
motion to use
the
traditional
procedure, in
which he
advocated the
use instead of
the reformed
procedure that
that
Government had
favoured in
1983,
appears on
Page 96 of the
Senate
Hansard of 15
September 1987
and continues
on Page 155 of
the Senate
Hansard of 16
September 1987.
The speech by
the Australian
Democrats
spokesman,
Senator
Michael
Macklin, shown
on Page 156 of
that Hansard,
reveals quite
starkly that
the Australian
Democrats'
vote against
implementing
the new system
was based on a
consideration
of which
system would
yield more
long-term
senators for
them for the
coming term.
Page 194 of
the Senate
Hansard of 17
September 1987
shows the end
of the debate,
and the
results of
divisions on
the amendment
motion, and
the
substantive
motion. Until
the Senate's carte
blanche to
decide which
senators after
a dissolution
of the Senate
will gain the
benefit of the
longer term
has been
superseded by
an alteration
of Section
13
of the
Constitution,
along the
lines of the
reform that
the Hawke
Government had
first
advocated, it
would seem
that party
political
advantage will
continue to
override
considerations
of electoral
propriety. The next time the sounder system for
the rotation
of senators
could be
applied
followed the 2016
double
dissolution
election,
but expediency
again resulted
in Senate
power blocs
maximizing
their
senators'
terms. 9.
Single
Transferable
Vote
proportional
representation
(PR-STV) for
the House of
Representatives:
The final sentence of Section 29 of the
Constitution
is, "In
the absence of
other
provision,
each State
shall be one
electorate.",
which
provision
applied in the
case of the
first election
of MHRs for
South
Australia and
Tasmania,
although South
Australia
used, for that
first federal
election, a multiple
plurality
(multiple
first-past-the-post)
system,
whereas
Tasmania used
Hare-Clark
PR.
Tasmania's 1901 use of Hare-Clark
(PR-STV or
quota-preferential
proportional
representation)
for electing
its five MHRs
was an example
of the
Constitution's
not preventing
Hare-Clark
PR-STV
being used,
although it
would be
preferable - if
Hare-Clark
PR-STV were to
be instituted
-
if Section
33 of the
Constitution
was altered so
that casual
vacancies
were filled by
countback.
The election
for each House
of
Representatives
single-member
division was
counted using
a plurality
system until
1918, but ever
since then preferential voting (the alternative vote) has
been used, as
prescribed in
Section
274
of the Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1918. A
misconception
that some
commentators
have about preferential
voting in a
single-member
electoral
district
is that it
amounts to
electors voting
more than once,
or
insinuations
of "a
second bite of
the cherry".
This
misconception
was
authoritatively
refuted in the
1999 High
Court case of
Ditchburn
vs Divisional
Returning
Office for
Herbert,
where the
High Court
made it clear
that a
preferential
vote was a
single vote,
transferable
according to
clear rules.
In the 2011 UK
plebiscite to
adopt a
preferential
voting system
to replace the
present House
of Commons plurality system, the then British
Conservative
Party Prime
Minister,
David Cameron,
misleadingly
used that
'cherry'
insinuation to
argue
against
transferable
voting. A 1981 Background Paper, 'Proposals
for Change to
our Electoral
System',
issued by NSW
Senator Hon.
Arthur
Gietzelt, the
then Labor
Party
Spokesperson
on
Administrative
Services and
Home Affairs,
proposed
introducing PR-STV for elections of members of the House of
Representatives.
The paper
proposed
partial
optional
preferential
voting, as had
been included
for Senate
voting in the
Whitlam ALP
Government's Electoral
Bill (No. 2)
1975,
which was not
passed by the
Senate. The
then Federal
Opposition
Leader, Hon.
Bill Hayden
MHR, spoke
favourably of
the proposed
adoption
of
PR-STV
on national
television,
but he was
replaced as
Opposition
Leader in 1983
by Robert
Hawke, who
soon became
Prime
Minister, with
a result that,
rather than
those
proposals
for
PR-STV
being
introduced,
the ensuing
electoral
change did not
even include
partial
optional
preferential
Senate voting,
with the main
change being
the retrograde
1983 adoption
of Senate Group Voting Tickets, which persisted until
it was
replaced in
2016, with
a different above-the-line
option, and
partial
optional
voting
replaced full
preferential
voting below-the-line. The
Australian
Democrats
Senators Michael
Macklin
and Jack
Evans
spoke in 1983
of the need
for
PR-STV
for the House
of
Representatives
when speaking
on electoral
legislation
then. The PRSA
suggested
improvements
to Australian
Democrats
Senator David
Vigor's Commonwealth
Electoral
(Representation
of the People)
Amendment Bill
1985,
which sought
to amend the Commonwealth
Electoral Act
1918
to provide
for
PR-STV
for House of
Representatives
elections.
Sections 24,
27,
29
and 122
of the
Constitution,
which govern
the composition
of the House
of
Representatives,
must be
complied with
in determining
the numbers of
MHRs in each
State and
Territory. As
Section
24
of the
Constitution
requires that
at general
elections MHRs
be "directly
chosen
by the people
of the
Commonwealth",
PR-STV
is fortunately
the only form
of
proportional
representation
that can be
used for
electing MHRs
at a general
election. Senator
David Vigor spoke on,
and moved
amendments to,
the Commonwealth
Electoral
Amendment Bill
1987
during which
he again
sought PR-STV
for the House
of
Representatives,
and drew
attention to
the faulty Unweighted Inclusive Transfer Value
introduced by
a 1983
amendment, and
the fact that
the PRSA's
highlighting
that fault had
been referred
to in that
Senate debate.
Hansard
[9]
records
Australian
Democrats
Senator John
Coulter
drawing the
Senate's
attention to
the PRSA's 1993
Federal
Election
Analysis. The
PRSA has
produced PR
Analyses of
House of
Representatives
polls for
1996-2004. Mr
Michael Organ
MHR, a
Greens Party
member elected
at a
by-election in
the division
of Cunningham,
introduced in
the House of
Representatives,
on 1st
December 2003,
his Royal
Commission
(House of
Representatives
Elections)
Bill 2003,
which provided
for the
appointment of
a Royal
Commission to
investigate
the
implementation
of a system of
proportional
representation
for the House
of
Representatives
but, without
support by any
other
political
party in that
House, it did
not proceed
beyond its first
reading
(Hansard Page
23318),
and lapsed. 10.
Forestalling a
1988
Constitution
Alteration
blunder:
It
was a proposed
new Section
29(2) of the
Constitution,
"Electoral
divisions: The
number of
members shall
be the same
for each
division of a
particular
State",
that - if the
ensuing
referendum had
unfortunately
succeeded
without that
necessary
omission
having been
made - would
have, for no
good or
discernable
reason,
removed PR-STV
as a
practicable
constitutional
option for
House of
Representatives
elections,
unless each
whole State
where the
total number
of MHRs was a
prime number -
or was
otherwise not
divisible to
attain the
proposed
constitutional
requirement -
became a
single
electoral
district. Such
a single
electoral
district would
be most
ill-advised
for a populous
State such as
NSW, with a
number of MHRs
that once
reached 50,
and could
again become
larger. As
shown on Page 28
of the
pamphlet -
posted to each
voter under
the
requirements
of the Referendum
(Machinery
Provisions)
Act 1984
- the bill in
the form
presented to
the electors
contained a
quite
different
Section 29(2),
which had been
reduced to
being one of
only three
sub-sections
instead of the
four proposed
in the
Government's
original form
of the bill.
The referendum
was one of
four
alterations
proposed.
Each failed
to achieve a
majority
in any State,
with only
28.89% of
Tasmanian
voters, who
were from the
only State
with a lower
house elected
by Hare-Clark
PR-STV, voting
YES to the
proposed 'Fair
Elections'
alteration.
The overall
national YES
vote for that
alteration was
only 37.59%. 11. PRSA
member
successfully
suggested
improvement to
Commonwealth
Electoral Act:
She
said that the
initially-proposed
legislative
provision for
replacing -
for House of
Representatives
ballot papers, -
the
originally-prescribed
alphabetical
order of
candidates'
surnames with
a single fixed
order,
randomly
decided by
lot, of
candidates'
surnames down
the ballot
paper; and -
for Senate
ballot papers
- of randomly
deciding by
lot the order
of party
columns from
left to right;
was
insufficiently
rigorous. She
proposed it be
replaced by
the double
randomization
method she
detailed,
which is now
provided for
in Section
213(1).
Those
single orders
set by lot
should not be
confused with
the far
superior Robson
Rotation.
It has
ballot-papers
printed in
batches, and
each batch has
a different
order of
names, so
overall none
of the
candidates is
unequally
advantaged or
disadvantaged
by the
position of
his or her
name. A 2020 Report
of the
Parliament's
Joint Standing
Committee on
Electoral
Matters
proposed the
use of Robson
Rotation for
House of
Representatives
ballot papers,
but the then
Morrison
Liberal
Government
took no action
on that
Report. 12. PR for
the 1997
Constitutional
Convention
Election:
13.
Representation
and
Institutional
Change
Conference: 14.
Formation of Proportional
Representation
Society of
Australia Inc:
The PRSA
held a National Conference in Melbourne on 23 and 24
April 1983 to
settle various
matters
including its
future
operations.
The Australian
Capital
Territory
Branch was
admitted by a
PRSA referendum in 1989. The Queensland and
Western
Australian
Branches were
later
dissolved. In
December 2023,
PRSA(V-T) Inc.
changed its
name to Proportional
Representation
Society of
Australia Inc.
and expanded
its scope to
enable it to
supersede the
unincorporated
PRSA. The
PRSA Inc's
quarterly
newsletter, Quota
Notes,
which began in
December 1975
as the NSW
Branch
newsletter,
became the
national
society's
newsletter in
September 1983
with its Issue No. 31. The PRSA's first National
President, Mr
J.F.H.Wright,
wrote the
informative
book, Mirror
of the
Nation's Mind
- Australia's
Electoral
Experiments
(available
from PRSA
Inc), and had
earlier been
recognized for
his
international
contributions
by being
elected a
Vice-President
of the Electoral Reform Society of Great Britain and
Ireland. See the table
of PRSA
National
Officers
since the
PRSA's
inception.
PRSA
Presidents to
date have
been: Mr Geoffrey Goode (Victoria) 1986-93 Mr Boguslaw (Bogey) Musidlak (ACT) 1994-2017 [died in office on 27 August 2017] Dr Jeremy Lawrence (Victoria-Tasmania) 2017- [Jeremy filled the casual vacancy for the remainder of Bogey Musidlak's term, and was elected for the terms 2018-19, 2020-21, 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-26.] |
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NEW
ZEALAND - PARLIAMENT: The
PRSA publicly
supported the
PR-STV
option, at the
1992
plebiscite
in New
Zealand
on its first
question of
whether NZ's
system of
single-member
electorates
with plurality counting should be replaced. Voters
were also
asked to vote
on a
multi-choice
(unfortunately
non-preferential) question on which of four options should replace
it if it were
to be changed.
A Royal
Commission on
the Electoral
System
unanimously recommended
in 1986 a
Mixed Member Proportional
system (MMP),
the German
party-list
hybrid - which
the PRSA
considers a
distinctly
inferior
approach to
implementing
the principle
of
proportional
representation. |
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The
plebiscite
resulted in
that Mixed
Member
Proportional
system being
chosen by an
absolute
majority of
New Zealand's
voters, with
PR-STV
being
the
second-most
preferred. The
PRSA opposes
MMP as it is
party-proportional
only, and not
proportional
within
individual
electorates,
with a large
number of MPs
being elected
in
single-member
pluralty
districts
by
counting, and
the large
remainder indirectly
from a closed
party list. Neither
of those
methods of
electing MPs
has the
PR-STV
advantage, by
which all MPs
have the same
basis of
election, of
each being directly
elected
by a quota of
votes from a
multi-member
district. A
54% vote
confirmed MMP
at a 1993
national
referendum.
On 25th July
1997, New
Zealand's
Deputy Prime
Minister and
Treasurer, Hon.
Winston Peters
MP,
was Guest
Speaker at a
PRSA meeting
held in the
Council
Chamber of the
University of
Melbourne. He
spoke
[11]
on New
Zealand's
experience of
MMP. In
November
2011, in
conjunction
with the
scheduled
election for
New Zealand's
House of
Representatives,
a non-binding
plebiscite
was, as a
result of the
Keys National
Government's
dissatisfaction
with New
Zealand's MMP
electoral
system, held
on two
questions. The
first question
was, "Should
New Zealand
keep the Mixed
Member
Proportional
(MMP) voting
system?" The
second
question was,
"If New
Zealand were
to change to
another voting
system, which
voting system
would you
choose?" and
there were
four options:
If a
majority of
voters voted
NO to the
first
question, the
Government
could hold a
referendum at
the subsequent
General
Election at
which voters
would be given
a choice
between the
existing MMP
system and
whichever of
the four
options above
(a
preferential
voting system
will not be
used in that
poll)
gained the
highest vote
in 2011. A
majority of
voters did not
vote NO to the
first
question, so
the possible
referendum was
not held, and
MMP remained
in place. |
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PAPUA NEW GUINEA - PARLIAMENT: The 2007 general election for the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea marked the first use of the nation's Limited Preferential Voting System, where voters in the single-member electoral districts used are limited to indicating their first three preferences among the candidates standing. The previous voting systems used in PNG are mentioned here. |
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The
ballot-paper,
which is
printed by the
Papua
New Guinea
Electoral
Commission,
has three rows
where the
voter is
required to
mark, on the
first row,
which displays
the number 1,
the code or
name of the
candidate that
is his or her
first choice,
on the second
row, which
displays the
number 2, the
code or name
of the
candidate that
is his or her
second choice,
and finally,
on the third
row, which
displays the
number 3, the
code or name
of the
candidate that
is his or her
third choice. |
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CANADA -
PARLIAMENTS: |
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A similar arrangement applied for the legislature of Manitoba. The disparity between the quotas for election in rural and urban areas led to justifiable dissatisfaction at the rural areas gaining undue advantage, which would not have applied if each electorate had the same number of seats. A 2005
plebiscite in
British
Columbia
demonstrated
57% support
for
PR-STV
to replace the
existing
single-member
electoral
district
system still
used
throughout Canada.
There are
similar moves
federally, and
in other
provinces, but
unfortunately
some of those
moves are for
systems that,
unlike
PR-STV,
do not fully
allow direct
election,
such as party
list or mixed
systems like
New Zealand's
Mixed-Member
Proportional
system.
Canada's Prime
Minister,
Justin
Trudeau,
reneged on a
promise to
replace the
federal system
of
single-member
electoral
districts,
which all use
plurality
counting. The
British
Columbia
plebiscite did
not result in
the
implementation
of
PR-STV
because one of
the two
criteria for
its success
was a 60%
majority of
votes
province-wide.
The other
criterion -
that 60% of
the province's
79 electoral
districts must
show a
majority
for
PR-STV
- was easily
met, as over
97% (77 of the
79 electoral
districts)
showed such a
majority.
Because that
plebiscite
failed so
narrowly,
British
Columbia held
a further
plebiscite for
a change to a
Hare-Clark
type of PR-STV
(called BC-STV)
in conjunction
with the
provincial
elections on
12th May 2009.
Fair
Voting BC
was the main
campaigner for
BC-STV, but
unfortunately
a reversal in
support for
the two
options
occurred, with
BC-STV gaining
only 38.74%
of the overall
vote,
and showing a
majority in
only 7 of the
85 electoral
districts. The
only
consolation is
that BC-STV
twice gained a
larger
percentage of
the vote than
the distinctly
inferior "Mixed-Member
Proportional"
systems gained
in the
plebiscites in
other
provinces
described
below. A
third British
Columbia
plebiscite in
2018 also
failed to
result in a
change to the
status quo. Canada's
Mixed-Member
Proportional
proponents
might see a
message in
results of the
various
plebiscites so
far held to
replace the
single-member
electorate
systems used
in Canada's
provinces. The
PRSA view is
that
PR-STV
is the way to
provide for
direct
election by
proportional
representation,
and that the
MMP system,
which provides
for most MPs
to be elected
for
single-member
electoral
districts ,
with an
indirectly
elected party
list top-up
for the rest,
is markedly
inferior. At Prince
Edward
Island's
failed 2005
plebiscite,
36% of voters
favoured MMP,
with the only
alternative
being offered
being the
existing
single-member
district
system. At Ontario's
failed 2007
plebiscite,
37% of voters
favoured MMP,
with the only
alternative
offered being
the existing
single-member
district
system. A
majority vote
for MMP was
gained in
fewer that 5%
of the 107
provincial
electorates. The
results should
discourage
parliaments
from holding
further MMP
plebiscites,
but the more
publicly-acceptable
PR-STV
could have
gained the
extra 3
percentage
points needed
to succeed in
British
Columbia in
2009, but
unfortunately
is did not.
Its success
there could
have revived
moves to
replace
Canada's
single-member
district
systems, but
it would be
wise if the
moves were for
a Hare-Clark
type system. An 1892 book, by Sir
Sandford
Fleming KCMG
of Nova
Scotia, shows
an early
recognition of
why PR-STV
should
replace
Canada's
unrepresentative
system of
single-member
electoral
districts. |
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MALTA
- PARLIAMENT:
The
use of PR-STV
to elect the
members of
Malta's House
of
Representatives
began in 1921. The Constitution
of Malta,
Section 56(1),
now requires
proportional
representation,
with the
single
transferable
vote ( PR-STV),
and also
electoral
districts with
an odd
number of
members,
between 5 and
15, for
elections to
the House of
Representatives
of its
unicameral
parliament.
Section 66(2)
entrenches
that PR-STV by
requiring a
2/3 vote of
Malta's MPs
for the
deletion of
that
requirement. |
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Unlike Eire, Malta has a General Elections Act, Part III of the 13th Schedule of which provides for countback for filling casual vacancies. Part II of that 13th Schedule prescribes that the transfer of surpluses shall be by a primitive random selection method, rather than one of the varieties of the more thorough Gregory Transfer. See the reference, under Tasmania, to Sir Gerald Strickland, whose earlier experience as Governor of Tasmania led him to support Hare-Clark for Malta when he later became the Prime Minister of Malta. |
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REPUBLIC
OF IRELAND - PARLIAMENT:
The
Constitution
of the
Republic of
Ireland
(Eire), which
was adopted at
a 1937
referendum,
requires that
both the lower
house (Article
16.2) and the
upper house
(Article 18.5)
of the
parliament
must be
elected by proportional
representation
with the single
transferable
vote,
although only
the lower
house is
directly
elected by the
people. |
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Referendums in Eire in 1958
and in 1968
to replace the
requirement
for
PR-STV
with a
single-member
plurality
electoral
district
system, which
were each
introduced by
the governing
Fianna Fail
party - but
opposed by the
next two
largest
parties, Fine
Gael and
Labour - each
failed. The
last such
referendum, in
1968, showed
that support
for
PR-STV
had increased
to above 60%.
Malta and Eire
are the only
members of the
European Union
in which all
the Members of
the European
Parliament for
the country
are elected
by
PR-STV.
(The
only other
MEPs elected
by STV were
those formerly
representing
the Northern
Ireland
province of
the United
Kingdom). Elections
for Eire's
Lower House
still transfer
surplus votes
by a random
selection
method
superseded by
the Gregory
Transfer
in Tasmania in
1907. District
magnitudes
vary across
Eire, and some
are
unfortunately
set as even
numbers.
Casual
vacancies are
not yet filled
by countback. |
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UNITED
STATES OF
AMERICA - FEDERAL CONGRESS: |
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Jack
Wright, the
first PRSA
President, met
in the USA Dr
George
Hallett, joint
author of the
1926 classic
book Proportional
Representation
[12].
Professor
Douglas Amy,
author to the
book Real
Choices/New
Voices
- The Case for
Proportional
Representation
in the United
States
acknowledged
in his book
helpful
correspondence
he had with
Geoffrey
Goode, the
second PRSA
President.
Professor
Amy's website,
Second-Rate
Democracy,
details the
USA's problems
with its
electoral
systems. Those
systems
originated in
the 19th
Century, and
are subject to
the U.S.
Constitution.
Proposed
alterations to
the U.S,
Constitution
face a
higher barrier
than in
Australia,
where they can
be initiated
by a simple
majority vote
in a single
house of the
Federal
legislature,
and then be
approved by a
simple
majority of electors
in a majority
of States, and
of electors
overall,
followed by
the
Governor-General's
approval. By
contrast, U.S.
electors have
no direct vote
on its
Constitution. Alterations
to it require
instead -
despite
the
opening words
of the
preamble to
the U.S.
Constitution,
'We
the people of
the United
States ...'
- to be
initiated by a
two-thirds
vote in each
house of the
Federal
Congress, and
then be
approved by
three-quarters
of the State
legislatures,
nearly all of
which are
bicameral.
Like the
individual
citizens of
the U.S, the
U.S. President
has no role in
the process of
altering the
Constitution. The leading U.S. electoral reform
group, FairVote,
in Washington
DC, has
acknowledged
on its website
the
Proportional
Representation
Society of
Australia as
the originator
of the Gerrymander
Wheel,
on a page that
gives access
to an electronic
version
of it, in
colour, called
"Redistricting
Roulette". The
wheel
convincingly
demonstrates
how the
placement of
the boundaries
of
single-member
electorates
produces
arbitrary and
unrepresentative
outcomes . The
PRSA
called a
large-scale
version of it
the Berrymander
wheel in the
ACT, after an
MLA opposing
Hare-Clark
PR-STV
during its
successful
campaign
there.   The word "gerrymander"
originates
from a
newspaper
cartoon that
ridiculed the
tortuous shape
(said to
look like a salamander,
above) of
an electoral
district whose
boundaries had
been contrived
for partisan
political
advantage,
which Governor
Elbridge
Gerry of
Massachusetts
(shown
above, to the
left of a
salamander, he
was a
signatory to
the US
Declaration of
Independence,
and later was
the
Vice-President
when James
Madison was
President)
had
authorized. A very bad 2017 example of gerrymandering among others instanced in an informative article in The Age is Illinois's 4th Congressional District. Shown below, it is nicknamed the 'Latin Earmuffs' because of its concentration of Democrat-inclined hispanic electors, who live in a ring around inner suburban Chicago, within its outrageously-contrived boundary, which includes its two lobes being linked by a narrow strip of land that contains only a highway. 
Adopted
in 1789, Article
1, Section 2,
of the US
Constitution
provides for
the election
of members of
the House of
Representatives,
but nowhere in
the
Constitution
is
gerrymandering
prohibited.
The different
problem of malapportionment,
which is the
existence of
electoral
districts with
significantly
different
numbers of
voters
enrolled, has
been overcome
by Supreme
Court
decisions, but
gerrymandering
of
congressional
districts
continues to
be a power
to distort
voters' wishes
that is used
ruthlessly by
the State
legislatures,
in whom it is
vested by the
US
Constitution. The
USA's early
start as a
democracy has
not always
meant that it
has been easy
for it to
overcome some
of the
entrenched
impediments to
democratic
best practice
that younger
nations such
as Australia
have achieved.
US electoral
systems have
not evolved as
progressively
as have
Australia's,
but some
efforts to
eradicate
impediments
have
succeeded, as
a 1963
Supreme Court
decision on
Georgia
demonstrated. The replacement of the Electoral College used for Presidential elections, and the replacement of winner-take-all plurality systems with single transferable vote systems of proportional representation (PR-STV) are yet to come. A video on gerrymandering by John Oliver is worth watching.
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1.
Electoral Reform Society, UK,
The Best System - An account of the first hundred years of the Electoral Reform Society, ISBN 0 903278 09 X
3.
Quick,
J &
Garran, R R, The
Annotated
Constitution
of the
Australian
Commonwealth,
1901, 4.
New
South Wales, Proof Hansard No. 61 of 2nd June 1977, Page 6563
See also the Final
Hansard. 5.
Commonwealth
of Australia,
Report
of the Royal
Commission on
the
Constitution,
1929, Page 267 6.
Hansard:
House of
Representatives,
16th April
1948, Page
965, and 29th
April 1948,
Page 1300 7.
Hansard:
Senate 30th
November 1983
Pages
3054-3055 8.
Hansard:
Senate 1st
June 1988
Page 3330 9.
Hansard
(Proof):
Senate 19th
August 1993
Pages 308-309 10.
Hansard:
Senate 24th
June 1997 Page
5024 Rt Hon Winston Peters MP, is available 12.
'Proportional
Representation', by Clarence G. Hoag A.M. (Harvard) and George H.
Hallettt Jr. |
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