Categories of Electoral Systems ELECTORAL
SYSTEMS: The
definition of the word election
involves a choice of a person for a political
office or other position by voting, and is based
on the Latin “eligere”, meaning
to pick out. The appointment of a person to a
position by a resolution, even though voting is
also used, is significantly
different from an election
because an election allows the filling of a
defined number of positions from a larger number
of candidates, whereas votes for appointment
by resolution are either YES or NO to each
of a number of single candidates conducted seriatim,
or to a single slate of candidates. Australia’s
first Federal Parliament in 1901 chose to make a
significant change from the practice of the
British House of Commons. It inaugurated its
present practice when the Senate resolved to
elect its first President (see Parliamentary Debates Page 9,
on 9th May 1901) by a
transferable secret ballot from the three
candidates that stood. The House of Commons in
the UK has since followed that lead for the
election of its Speaker, but in 2001, a century
later, Australia’s Corporations Act 2001
still provides that company directors can be appointed
by sequential resolutions,
rather than being elected from multiple
candidates being compared against each other in
one decision. Alternatives to that provision are
now allowed, but no election process is made
mandatory. 1. DIRECT ELECTION OF
CANDIDATES versus INDIRECT ELECTION OF
CANDIDATES This major
and fundamental distinction between electoral
systems can be seen by clicking here.
2.
SINGLE VACANCIES versus MULTIPLE VACANCIES: The use of
vote-counting systems to fill a single vacancy,
such as the president of an organization, which
requires the use of a winner-take-all
system, is a simpler operation than their use to
fill the multiple vacancies required to be
filled when the members of a representative body
are to be elected in the most representative
manner, as there are fewer possibilities, and
usually fewer candidates. Similar general
approaches can be applied to both situations,
but there are obviously more variations possible
with the multiple vacancy situation. Proportional
representation only applies to
elections of a representative body, and provides
the fullest and most accurate representation of
as many voters as possible. It requires
multi-member electorates for it to operate.
Single-member electorate systems, which are
necessarily and inherently winner-take-all
systems, do not soundly elect representative
bodies, as they collectively represent barely
half of all voters, and leave the remaining
voters totally unrepresented. 3.
TRANSFERABLE VOTE SYSTEMS versus
NON-TRANSFERABLE VOTE SYSTEMS A useful resource for details of
these systems is the Wikipedia page on
Voting Systems. Single
Vacancies: The earliest and
simplest voting took place for single positions,
such as the chairperson or presiding officer of
an organization. When there were only two
candidates for such a single position, it was
obvious that the candidate with most of the
votes was the candidate that should be elected.
When there were more than two candidates, the
assumption was made that the same "first-past-the-post"
rule should apply there also, and that was
widely done as it was not a difficult operation. Widespread
long term use of such systems has led to their
replacement in countries such as the UK and USA
being resisted, although it was soon recognized
that having three or more candidates could
result in the candidate with the most votes of
any candidate nevertheless not receiving most of
the votes cast overall. A working solution to
that anomaly arrived in the form of the single
transferable vote in the 19th Century, which is
the system now used in all the Lower Houses of
Australia's Federal and mainland State
Parliaments, but that was not implemented until
1919, when the Commonwealth Electoral
Act 1918 - the present
principal Act - was first used. That system,
called the Alternative Vote, Single Transferable Vote,
or preferential
system as it is usually known
in Australia, ensures that the votes for the
less strongly-supported candidates are
successively transferred to the next
most-preferred candidate until a candidate gains
more votes than the remaining votes combined,
whereupon that candidate is declared elected. The
Alternative Vote for a
single-member electorate is easily explained by
showing how it can fill a single vacancy such as
that for a single spokesperson to represent, on
behalf of a public meeting - particularly
if it was not significantly party-political
and thus perhaps likely to require a secret
ballot - what was decided at that meeting
by way of successful resolutions, which can only
be passed by the vote of more than 50% of those
voting supporting them. As those resolutions
were only able to be passed by that absolute
majority, it is consistent that a single
spokesperson for the meeting should be elected
with the support of an absolute majority (more
than 50%) of those voting at the meeting.
If there are more than two candidates for the
election of such a spokesperson, a first-past-the-post
count will not necessarily produce a
spokesperson elected by an absolute majority, so
a transferable voting system is needed.
The
original bill
for the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1902
provided for the single transferable vote
(preferential voting) for both houses of the
Australian Parliament with marking of second and
later preferences being fully optional, as is
the modern optional preferential
system for the Legislative Assembly of New
South Wales, but that 1902 Bill,
which was introduced by the Barton Government
and passed by the House of Representatives, was
amended in the Senate to remove the transferable
element, leaving a "first-past-the-post"
non-transferable vote for the electors for both
houses. The House of Representatives passed the
amended bill, which became Australia's first
federal electoral law, the Commonwealth
Electoral Act 1902. Multiple
Vacancies: With multiple
vacancies both transferable and non-transferable
vote systems exist. The non-transferable systems
can be either proportional or winner-take-all (majoritarian), as can
the transferable systems. For example,
Australia's first and second
federally-enacted vote-counting systems at
Senate elections were both winner-take-all
systems:
That second
system was in turn replaced in 1948 by the
present PR-STV
(quota-preferential system of proportional
representation), which is a
transferable proportional system. Since 1948, no
single party has won all the seats,
Australia-wide, at a periodic Senate election,
as happened in 1910, 1917, 1925,
1934 and 1943. Eire
and Malta
each prescribe in their Constitution a PR-STV
system for elections to their national
parliaments. Interest in PR is growing in the USA and
Canada. By contrast
the majority of countries on the continent of
Europe use proportional systems that involve
non-transferable votes, usually called party list systems.
Many new introductions of electoral systems
involve the use of such systems ostensibly
because of the ease of use for voters, despite
(or because of) that ease of use leading to the
voters having no real control over the actual
persons being elected, as the voters are only
permitted to vote for parties. Examples of such
systems are those now used in South Africa, Sri
Lanka and Iraq. New Zealand
uses a hybrid MMP system, like Germany, where
one part is winner-take-all
(majoritarian) and
the other part is an attempt at a proportional
correction, in party terms, of the distortions
of that majoritarian
component. Fortunately the use of party list
systems, which do not directly elect MPs, would
appear to be unconstitutional (see next
paragraph) for electing either MHRs or senators
to Australia's Federal Parliament and – alone
among the Australian States – 4.
MULTIPLE VACANCY SPECTRUM: The
Proportional Representation End:
At the proportional representation end of this
spectrum are those systems - whether
transferable vote or non-transferable vote
systems - that provide, in electoral districts
electing five or more candidates as a group, for
the election of candidates with a significant
degree of diversity able to represent,
collectively, some five-sixths of the total
number of voters.
The Winner-take-all
End: At the winner-take-all
end of the spectrum are those systems, mostly
like the two different majoritarian
systems above used for Australian Senate
elections from 1902-46
where, like the multiple plurality
system (1902-17), the candidates that gained the
largest single group of votes filled all
the available positions, or the multiple
majority-preferential system
(1919-47), where the candidates that gained a
bare absolute majority of votes filled all
the available positions. At five separate
periodic Senate elections, a single party won all
available seats Australia-wide! As stated in Section
2 above, single-vacancy systems
are inherently winner-take-all
systems. Intermediate
Positions: Between those two ends
of the spectrum of proportionality are systems
that give a degree of proportionality, but tend
to have some bias towards larger groups.
Examples are PR-STV systems where the number of
persons to be elected is fewer than five, and
non-preferential non-proportional systems that
nevertheless enable some minority
representation, such as the limited vote or the
cumulative vote.
The
requirement of transferable vote electoral
systems relating to the marking of preferences
has extended from a requirement to mark all
preferences consecutively without error or any
omission or duplication of numbers to the
complete removal of any requirement to mark any
preferences other than a unique first
preference. In all PR-STV
(quota-preferential) systems, a ballot-paper is
informal if it has no unique first preference
marked on it.
The Hare-Clark system
of proportional representation
used in By
contrast, electoral systems in other parts of
Australia and elsewhere have been overlaid with
aspects that operate against voters being the
real arbiters of whom is elected. Examples of
such aspects include a degree of stage management
where political parties are allowed to decide
the order of candidates on ballot-papers, and
the Group
Voting Tickets still used for
Upper House polls in Victoria. Those aspects
allow voters to be readily persuaded to adopt a
specific choice of candidates from a ticket
lodged by their party of choice, and to not
bother distinguishing between the particular
candidates, even though - unlike the case with
party list systems, which are indirect electoral
systems - there is provision for them to do so,
although that is made harder for them than the
easy method of donkey
voting, or just ticking a box above-the-line. Representative bodies elected from
single-member electorates weaken voter control
as - unlike proportional representation systems
- each party nominates only one candidate, and
nearly half the voters in each electorate, and
hence overall, have absolutely no effect on the
final outcome. 7.
DESCRIPTIONS OF A WIDE RANGE OF
VOTE-COUNTING SYSTEMS
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