These notes were the basis of a presentation given by Lee Naish, member of the Victorian branch of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia to the Tax Reform Association on 8th November 1995.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

by Lee Naish

Why do we want Representation?

Making decisions for large groups is very difficult. Should all the tax payers in the country collectively decide how the money is to be spent? Could they collectively decide? Should all members of the PR society collectively decide that the secretary's most recent postal expenses be reimbursed? Would they want to? Or would the members prefer to delegate this responsibility to their representatives?

Making decisions in small groups is easier. Most people prefer to delegate some decisions.

Why do we want Proportional Representation?

There are many ways representatives can be chosen: members of rich and powerful families, military leaders, etc. The underlying principle of democracy is that decisions that affect the people should largely accord with the will of the people. One way to improve the prospects of this is for representatives to be elected. The basis of representative democracy is that the collective views of the representatives reflect the collective views of the people. Proportional Representation is simply a more precise statement of this ideal: the proportion of representatives who hold a particular view should be roughly the same as the proportion of the people who hold that view. Note that if there is only a single representative this is impossible. Proportional Representation must be based on a corporate body of representatives.

How can we achieve it?

Many systems that look democratic on the surface do not result in fair representation.

Voting is not sufficient

Sadaam Hussein won an overwhelming percentage of the votes in a recent election in Iraq. Was this a triumph of democracy? As well as voting we need an environment free of harassment, a reasonable range of candidates with access to the media and universal adult suffrage. In the 1995 Queensland State election in Australia the ALP won government though it received significantly fewer votes than the Coalition. As well as voting we need a good electoral system.

Marking X is not sufficient

If voters only indicate their first preference there is simply not enough information for a good selection of representatives. Votes may be split across several candidates with similar views, leading to all those candidates losing while another candidate with opposing views wins with fewer votes in total. Votes for candidates who are not successful must be wasted since there is no indication of the voter's second and subsequent preferences. Systems that lead to votes being wasted encourage insincere voting: rather than waste a vote on the genuine first preference who may be unlikely to be elected, the vote is cast for a lower preference who has a chance of getting elected. Often this results in people voting for the "lesser of two evils" and makes it very difficult for smaller parties to gain ground. Systems based on marking multiple X's do not solve the problem and sometimes make things even worse.

Proportional Representation relies on the order of preferences being specified. There are two forms of Proportional Representation corresponding to two ways in which preferences are provided. The first is the "party list" form where voters vote for a party and it is assumed that their preferences are identical to the preferences of the party. The second form allows voters to indicate their preferences explicitly; this has many advantages for the voters and is advocated by the Proportional Representation Society.

Single member electorates are not sufficient

If each electorate returns a single member then with an even distribution of voters, a group with the support of 50.5% of voters will win 100% of the seats and 49.5% of the votes will be wasted. The collective views of the representatives clearly do not reflect the views of the people. With a different distribution of voters (or electoral boundaries) the group with 49.5% of the votes can win 99% of the seats! For example, assume there are 100 electorates, each with 10000 voters. One electorate has only voters from the 50.5% group, the other 99 electorates all have 5001 "49.5%" voters and 4999 "50.5%" voters. Deliberate adjusting of the size and shape of electorates to achieve a desired outcome is called Gerrymandering. Unfair results can also occur quite by chance, as happened in Queensland in 1995.

The Quota Preferential system

The Quota Preferential system (also called Single Transferable Vote or STV) is a method of counting votes designed to result in proportional representation.

The Quota Preferential system allows voters to indicate their preferences in order.
Each electorate elects multiple members, preferably an odd number such as 7 or 9. Using an odd number ensures that in a close election a group that wins more than 50% of the votes can win more than (not just equal to) 50% of the seats.
In order to be elected, a candidate needs a percentage of the vote greater than 100 divided by one more than the number of vacancies. For example, with 9 members to be elected a candidate needs greater than 100/(9+1) = 10% of the votes. The quota is the mimimum number of votes needed (10%+1 in this case).
In a single member system (which will not result in PR) a candidate would need greater than 100/2 = 50% of the votes.
Assuming enough preferences are marked by the voters, less than one quota of votes is wasted.
Candidates who get at least a quota of votes get elected.
Votes for candidates who get more than a quota are redistributed to later preferences at a reduced value. For example, if a candidate has two quotas of first preference votes then they are distributed to the second preferences with a value of 1/2.
Votes for candidates with too few votes are redistributed to preferences at their full value rather than being wasted.

Enhancements

The Australian Capital Territory has adopted three enhancements which complement the Quota Preferential vote counting system. The first two have been used successfully for many years in Tasmania, where the system is known as Hare-Clark.

Rotation of ballot papers

Instead of all ballot papers being the same, different ballot papers have the candidates' names and affiliations listed in different orders. Each candidate will appear near the top of some ballot papers and near the bottom of others. This virtually eliminates the effect of the "donkey vote".

Filling casual vacancies

Casual vacancies are filled by re-counting the ballots that were used to elect the vacating candidate. This preserves the wishes of the voters and avoids costly by-elections and divisive undemocratic party appointments.

Entrenchment

The major electoral provisions of the ACT have been entrenched by requiring a referendum or 2/3 majority in parliament. A government can no longer tinker with the electoral system to further its own dubious motives.

Advantages

There are a great number of advantages of proportional representation. Here we list a few of them.

There are no safe seats

With single member electorates safe seats are common. Political parties generally put most of their efforts into trying to please the minority of voters that are in marginal seats. With multi-member electorates every seat is marginal and the parties must take more interest in the views of all voters. Voters also tend to take more interest in politics if their vote is more likely to actually change something.

Voters have more choice

Major parties endorse several candidates for each multi-member electorate. Voters can choose between parties and between different candidates from the same party. This contrasts with single member electorates (and party list PR) where the parties and the factions within parties have much more control over who is elected.

The elected body is more representative

This is obviously a good thing for democracy, whether the elected body is the parliament of a large country of the executive of a small organisation.

Lee