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QUOTA Newsletter of the Proportional
Representation Society of Australia QN2011C September 2011 www.prsa.org.au · Disappointing 2010 federal elections report · UK Government proposes using Quota-Preferential PR in House of Lords reform · Antony Green speaks on UK’s referendum and NZ’s November 2011 plebiscite on MMP · Melbourne University abandons Nanson’s pioneering PR for a plurality system · Call for Nominations for Elections of the four PRSA Office-bearers for 2012-13 · List of issues of Quota Notes Disappointing 2010 federal elections
report On 7 July
2011, the tabling of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on the conduct of the
2010 federal elections brought profound disappointment to
advocates of effective voting. No
attention was paid to the distorting effects on the campaigning and other
political behaviour attributable to the plethora of
safe single-member electorates, nor to the high levels of wasted votes and
regional and statewide winner-take-all distortions of
voters’ wishes. For instance, Labor won 26 of the 48 NSW House of
Representatives seats (54%) with just 37.3% of the first preference vote, and
just 48.4% of the two-party-preferred vote. Rather than
making it simpler to cast a formal vote, the Committee again endorsed the
prevailing requirement for full marking of preferences for House of
Representatives polls, without any below-the-line
easing for Senate polls. It recommended increased deposits to deter
frivolous candidates for both House and Senate nominations. A Committee
majority expressed alarm that about half the House informal votes were most
likely unintentional, and suggested that as many as possible of those be “saved” through
the South Australian Assembly mechanism of candidates being allowed to
register how-to-vote tickets.
Although it would be illegal to advocate anything but the marking of all
preferences, incomplete ballot-papers would be deemed to follow a ticket
order whenever their numbering (usually
just a single “1”, tick or cross in practice) remained consistent with
the start of that ticket. Coalition
members of the Committee raised constitutional doubts about such deeming
provisions qualifying as direct election by the
people when ticket deeming information could not be presented to
voters, and said that the most straightforward way of just saving votes would
be through optional preferential voting. The same
Committee majority recommended that administrative data including that from
the Australian Taxation Office be automatically used to update enrolments
when individuals leave an address but fail to lodge a new form, and that
individuals be allowed to notify new particulars as late as election day
instead of being allowed to advise changes only until the close of the rolls.
It also suggested that postal vote applicants not be allowed to send their
forms through political parties, which usually ensures they are sent just that
party’s how-to-vote
material. Although submissions and evidence, including No. 85, from the Electoral Reform Society of South Australia, pointed out the unsuitability of the unweighted approach to defining transfer values in Senate elections, this matter did not even get mentioned in the report. It appears that only a clearly iniquitous outcome will prompt the remedial action or consciousness of the problem already achieved in the Western Australian and Victorian Parliaments. UK Government proposes using
Quota-Preferential PR in House of Lords reform Following consideration of possible reform
by a cross-party committee, the United Kingdom Government released a White
Paper and House of Lords Reform Draft
Bill on 17 May 2011 that proposes the use of quota-preferential
proportional representation for electing members of a reformed House of
Lords, and also seeks to completely remove the connection between the
hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords. No change is
proposed to the constitutional powers and privileges of the House once it is
reformed. The Bill proposes that there be 240 elected
and 60 appointed members, although the Government is not ruling out a wholly
elected House of Lords, nor PR systems other than
the quota-preferential Single Transferable Vote in the Bill. The Bill
proposes that those elected or appointed receive a salary and normally serve
a single non-renewable term equal to three Commons terms, a third of the
House usually being renewed concurrently with the Commons. The Bill provides for the 5 most senior Church of England bishops
and eventually just 7 other bishops selected by the Church at each periodic
election to sit as ex officio
unsalaried members. At present all 26 of the Church’s bishops sit as Lords Spiritual.
The remainder of the present 789 members of the House are
entitled to sit as Lords Temporal.
Nearly all the latter are life peers, as a 1999 Blair Government law
left the House with only 90 hereditary peers, elected by all hereditary
peers. The appointed members will be recommended
to the Queen by the Prime Minister, after nomination by a statutory
Appointments Commission, and are expected to participate in a non-partisan
manner. There will be a minimum allowable of three members per district for
those elected, and electoral districts in England
will usually have from five to seven members. Electoral boundaries will not
cross any border of the UK’s four constituent countries. The Bill proposes fully optional
preferential voting, as did Australia’s original 1902 Bill for PR for its
Senate. Where a vacating member stood as a party
member, the casual vacancy will be filled by the available unsuccessful
candidate from that party whose final progress total was highest during the
original scrutiny, and otherwise the available unsuccessful candidate with
highest final progress total. The person filling a casual vacancy will hold
the seat only until the next periodic election, with that seat being added to
the number to be filled then, rather like Australia’s original provision for
filling Senate casual vacancies. The UK Government expects the two Houses to
establish a Joint Committee to report on the draft Bill, and it is committed
to introducing a Bill for enactment in time to provide for the first elections
in 2015. Antony
Green speaks on UK’s referendum and NZ’s November 2011 plebiscite on MMP In late August, Antony Green, the
popular Election Analyst for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was the
Guest Speaker at the 2011 Annual General Meeting of the PRSA’s Victoria-Tasmania Branch. Mr Green spoke
firstly about his experience of visiting the United Kingdom to observe its May 2011 referendum on whether the House
of Commons’ longstanding plurality voting
system should be replaced by the alternative vote, which is equivalent to the
fully optional preferential
voting used to elect MLAs in New South Wales and Queensland. He noted the oddity
that preferential voting in single-member electorates was a compromise, and
was not the first preference of any of the political parties, as their
members tended to want either the status
quo or a proportional system, and said that made YES votes hard to
achieve. His talk on that, and on November’s NZ plebiscite, can be heard via
a hyperlink on the PRSA home page. Mr Green also
explained the background to
the present New Zealand National Party Government’s desire to put the Mixed
Member Proportional system’s future to voters, and said it is hard to
forecast the outcome of either plebiscite question. The first is, “Should New
Zealand keep the MMP voting system?” The second asks
voters to choose one of four replacement systems if New Zealand decides to
change from MMP; first-past-the-post in single-member electoral districts,
preferential voting in single-member districts, the single transferable vote in
multi-member districts for 3-7 MPs, and a supplementary member system (with a 25% list component that does not
attempt to correct single-member distortions). If a majority votes
NO to keeping MMP, the Government may, on or before the day of the next
general election, hold a referendum to choose between MMP and the alternative
option that has received a plurality of votes. If a majority votes to
continue MMP, the appropriateness of its current features will be assessed by
the NZ Electoral Commission. PRSA notes that STV
is used for hospital board and some municipal polls, but NZ appears to lack
an organized campaign for STV as a specific replacement. A self-styled Vote for Change group, some of whose prominent members
support a supplementary member system to minimize the prospect of coalition
negotiations following a general election, was quickly embarrassed by revelations that
one of its founding members was a white supremacist, followed by early
resignation of another with a Labour background. In
view of the vast amounts that business interests poured into unsuccessful
television advertising at the referendum that adopted MMP, there is a
spending limit on plebiscite campaigning. Reported public opinion polls
have generally shown support for MMP’s retention at around 50%, with 10% of
voters still undecided. Melbourne
University abandons Nanson’s pioneering PR for a
plurality system A great campaigner
for quota-preferential proportional representation for Australian elections
was Edward Nanson, Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Melbourne from 1875 to 1922. Professor Nanson
was, for a long period, Secretary of the Proportional Representation League
of Victoria (PRLV), and was an active member of the University’s Senate,
later renamed the Committee of Convocation and, in 2011, the Alumni Council. Nanson campaigned for PR before and after Australian
federation. His 1899 booklet, Electoral Reform, was most influential at
various levels. He, with the PRLV’s President, Sir James Barrett, convinced
the University’s Senate that it should use PR for its polls. Its PR system
stayed until it was replaced this year by a system of filling prescribed single vacancies by a first-past-the-post system. As the flawed first-past-the-post (plurality)
count was what Nanson strove to
replace, the PRSA’s Victoria-Tasmania Branch wrote stating its concerns. The
University’s Secretary, Dr Christopher Stewardson,
replied that the University Council approved the change after consulting the
Committee of Convocation and others, but he gave no reasons why proportional
representation was abandoned. Call for
Nominations for Elections of the four PRSA Office-bearers for 2012-13 The Returning Officer is Mr Martin Dunn of the PRSA's ACT Branch. Under the PRSA Constitution, the Returning Officer rotates among the Branch Secretaries. The order, by precedent, is VIC-TAS, NSW, SA, WA, and the ACT. Nominations, for President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer,
need be signed by the candidate only, as consent to nomination, and must be
with Mr Martin Dunn, at dunnmj@ozemail.com.au
or 41 Benaroon Circuit, AMAROO ACT 2914 by 14
November 2011. © 2011 Proportional Representation Society
of Australia National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604 National Secretary: Dr Stephen Morey 4 Sims Street SANDRINGHAM 3191 Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122 Mobile 04291 76725 quota@prsa.org.au |
