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PROPORTIONAL
REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA |
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Tel +613 9589 1802 |
Tel +61429176725 |
18 Anita Street |
BEAUMARIS VIC 3193 |
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19th November 2008 |
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First Preference Votes |
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A quota or
more of first preference votes under quota-preferential PR provides a
candidate receiving them with an absolute entitlement to be elected. |
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It is possible
and legitimate for a candidate gaining no first preference votes at all to
receive a quota of votes by a surplus transfer from a candidate that has
gained two or more quotas of first preference votes and be elected. Such
election is fair and reasonable if voters have explicitly voted that way, but
it is not so fair and reasonable if it has arisen from the use of Group
Voting Tickets, which can mislead voters that are busy, distracted or less
that fully aware. |
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If a
party’s voters have decided, or have been persuaded or conditioned - as
happens with Group Voting Tickets
since they began in Australia in 1984 - to vote for the first-listed in a
single order of party candidates put forward at an election, it is usual for
that first-listed candidate to receive nearly all the first preference votes
for that party, leaving every other candidate of that party with only a tiny
number of first preference votes. |
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Controversy
over the election of Senator Stephen Fielding, of the Family First Party, in Victoria
in 2004 with a very small number of first preference votes has led to
ill-informed critics casting doubt on the system that has allowed him to be
elected a senator for that reason, but such critics are silent about the even
smaller number of first preference votes that nearly all the major party
senators received. Like Senator Fielding, those senators assembled most of
their quotas with preference votes transferred as surpluses from elected
candidates or as full value transfers from excluded candidates, but those
transfers were mandated not mainly by the voters explicitly as happens with
Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system, but by very dubious Group Voting Tickets
that were not widely examined by voters. |
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Criticisms of
Senator Fielding’s election based on his small personal vote, rather
than on the grave defects of Group Voting Tickets, were well refuted in a 2008 letter to The Sunday Age by Chris Curtis
(see 2nd letter listed) . |