Australian electoral system

"This article deals with elections to the Australian Parliament. For the Australian state and territories, see Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories."The Australian electoral system has evolved over nearly 150 years of continuous democratic government, and has a number of distinctive features including compulsory voting, preferential voting (known elsewhere as instant-runoff voting) and the use of proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Australian Senate. [Scott Bennett and Rob Lundie, [http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/RP/2007-08/08RP05.pdf 'Australian Electoral Systems'] , "Research Paper" no. 5 2007-08, Department of the Parliamentary Library, Canberra.]

Compulsory voting

Australia enforces compulsory voting, including compulsory enrolment (registration) to vote. [Scott Bennett, [http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rb/2005-06/06rb06.pdf Compulsory voting in Australian national elections] , "Research Brief" no. 6 2005-06, Department of the Parliamentary Library, Canberra.] Compulsory voting at referendums was introduced in 1915, but compulsory voting for federal elections was not introduced until 1924 [Matt Rosenberg, [http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa060100a.htm Compulsory Voting] , About.com: geography, retrieved September 2007.] . The immediate impetus for compulsory voting at federal level was the low voter turnout (59.38 per cent) [http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/What/voting/turnout/] at the 1922 federal election. However, it was not on the platform of either the Stanley Bruce-led Nationalist/Country party coalition government or the Matthew Charlton-led Labor opposition to introduce this requirement; rather, the initiative was taken by a backbench Tasmanian senator from the Nationalist Party, Herbert Payne (1866-1944), who introduced a private member's bill. Senator Payne's bill was passed with little debate (the House of Representatives agreed to it in less than an hour), and in neither house was a division required, hence no votes were recorded against the bill. [ [http://www.mind-trek.com/writ-dtf/votehoax/c-puplic.htm] ] The 1925 federal election was the first to be held under compulsory voting; the turnout figure climbed to 91.4 per cent, an increase of 32 percentage points on the previous election.

Voting is compulsory both at federal elections and at elections for the state and territory legislatures. In some states voting at municipal elections is also compulsory. About 5% of enrolled voters fail to vote at most elections. People in this situation are asked to explain their failure to vote. If no satisfactory reason is provided (for example, illness or religious prohibition), a relatively small fine is imposed ($20-$70) [cite web |url=http://aec.gov.au/Elections/australian_electoral_system/electoral_procedures/Electoral_Offences.htm |title=Electoral Offences |work=Voting within Australiandash Frequently Asked Questions |publisher=Australian Electoral Commission |accessdate=2006-10-21] , and failure to pay the fine may result in a court hearing.

It is commonly but wrongly claimed [http://www.cis.org.au/Exechigh/Eh2006/EH32906.htm] that it is compulsory to only attend a polling place and have one's name checked against the electoral roll. In fact, Section 245 of the Electoral Act [http://scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/0/57/0/PA003170.htm] says that "It shall be the duty of every elector to vote at each election... The Electoral Commissioner must, after polling day at each election, prepare for each Division a list of the names and addresses of the electors who appear to have failed to vote at the election." A voter who has their name crossed off but then refuses a ballot paper or is seen not to put the ballot in the ballot box may be recorded as having not voted.

Informal voting

Those who do not wish to vote for any of the available candidates sometimes resort to "informal voting"—placing a blank or incompletely filled out ballot in the ballot box. [" [A ballot is informal if] it does not indicate the voter's first preference for 1 candidate and an order of preference for all the remaining candidates"— [http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cea1918233/s268.html Informal ballot papers] Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, Section 268] Deliberate informal voting is technically a breach of the Electoral Act, but it is impossible to identify and penalise an offender without violating the secrecy of the ballot. As in the case of Langer voting, it has become an offence to advocate or promote informal voting. The number of informal votes is recorded, but they are not counted as part of the total number of votes cast. Around 95% of registered voters attend polling, and around 5% of Representatives votes are informal [Australian Electoral Commission, [http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/pocketbook/electoral_pocketbook.pdf Electoral Pocketbook] , Australian Electoral Commission, Canberra, June 2006, pp. 71-77, retrieved September 2007.]

Arguments for and against compulsory voting

("See main article" Compulsory voting)
Some political scientists believe that compulsory voting benefits the Australian Labor Party, while others dispute this. It is argued that most of the social groups who would tend not to vote if voting were voluntary are more inclined to vote Labor (people from the ethnic and immigrant communities, indigenous Australians, and people with lower levels of education). Occasionally conservative politicians or libertarian intellectuals argue for the abolition of compulsory voting on philosophical grounds, but no government has ever attempted to abolish it.

Following the 2004 federal elections, at which the Liberal-National coalition government won a majority in both Houses, a senior minister, Senator Nick Minchin, said that he favoured the abolition of compulsory voting. The then government gave no indication, however, that it would legislate to this effect, and indeed did not do so before being defeated in the 2007 federal election. Some prominent Liberals, such as Petro Georgiou, former chair of the Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, have spoken in favour of compulsory voting.

Because it maximises voter turnout, compulsory voting also maximises the quantum of campaign cost reimbursement--public moneys paid to candidates and parties polling a minimum of 4 per cent at an election.

Preferential voting

Australia uses various forms of "preferential voting" for almost all elections. Under this system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference. The preferential system was introduced in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Corangamite by-election on 14 December 1918. [http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/1917/1918-corangamite-by.txt] [http://www.australianpolitics.com/voting/history/voting-methods.shtml] It had previously been introduced as a result of the work of Thomas Hare and Andrew Inglis Clark in the Tasmanian House of Assembly.

Preferential voting has gradually extended to both upper and lower houses, in the federal, state and territory legislatures, and is also used in municipal elections, and most other kinds of elections as well, such as internal political party elections, trade union elections, church elections, elections to company boards and elections in voluntary bodies such as football clubs. Negotiations for disposition of preference recommendations to voters are taken very seriously by candidates because transferred preferences carry the same weight as primary votes. The federal Senate electoral system and those for some state legislatures now provide for simultaneous registration of party-listed candidates and party-determined orders of voting preference, known as 'group voting tickets'.

Under this system, voters can opt to either 'vote above the line' simply by placing the number '1' in a single box or to 'vote below the line' by numbering a large number of individual candidate's boxes in the order of their own preference. In the latter option, there is a risk that the vote will be declared invalid ('informal') if any number in the sequence is inadvertently duplicated or omitted. However, an estimated 95% of all votes are cast 'above the line', meaning that the precise valuation of those votes is passed to the control of the party receiving the single primary vote. The electoral authority automatically allocates preferences, or votes, in the predetermined order outlined in the group voting ticket. Each party or group can register up to three group voting tickets. This highly complex system has potential for unexpected outcomes, including the possible election of a candidate who may have initially received an insignificant primary vote tally.

With the exception of an experiment with voting machines in the Australian Capital Territory, [http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html] all Australian elections are carried out using paper ballots.

Gerrymandering and malapportionment

Australian history has seen very little gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, which have nearly always been drawn up by civil servants or independent boundary commissioners. But Australia has seen systematic malapportionment of electorates (the allocation of more or fewer electoral districts to one part of a country or state than its population would merit), and indeed until fairly recently this was considered a perfectly natural and defensible practice in some states.

All the colonial legislatures before Federation, and the federal parliament after it, saw country districts allocated more representation than their populations merited. This was justified on several grounds: that country people had to contend with greater distances and hardships and thus deserved greater representation; that country people (and specifically farmers) produced most of the nation's real wealth, and thus deserved greater representation; and that greater country representation was necessary to balance the radical tendencies of the urban population.

In the 19th century these assertions usually reflected genuinely held beliefs. By the 20th century, and especially after the rise of the Labor Party, they became increasingly self-serving rationalisations by politicians (usually conservatives) who benefitted from the malapportionment. In the later 20th century these arguments were increasingly and usually successfully challenged, and the malapportionment was reduced and finally abolished in all states.

The most conspicuous examples of malapportionment were South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

In South Australia the 1856 Constitution stipulated that there must be two rural constituencies for every urban constituency, and this remained in force until 1968, by which time the urban-rural voter ratio was almost exactly reversed: that is, there were two urban voters for every rural voter. As a result, rural seats had on average one-quarter the number of voters that urban seats had. This gross distortion enabled Sir Thomas Playford to hold office as Liberal and Country League premier of South Australia from 1938 to 1965, despite losing several elections by wide margins in terms of votes. This arrangement was popularly called "the Playmander," although it was not strictly speaking a gerrymander.

In Queensland, the malapportionment initially benefitted the Labor Party, since many small rural constituencies were dominated by rural workers organised into the powerful Australian Workers Union. But after 1957, the Country Party (later renamed the National Party) governments of Sir Frank Nicklin and Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen were able to manipulate the electoral system so that the National Party could win elections with only a quarter of the first preference votes. This "Bjelkemander" was not overcome until the final defeat of the Nationals in 1989.

Western Australia retained a significant malapportionment until 2005. On 20 May 2005 the state Parliament passed new electoral laws, removing the malapportionment. Under the previous system, votes in the country were worth up to four times the value of votes in Perth, the state's capital city. Under the new laws, electorates must have a population of 21,343, with a permitted variation of 10%. Electorates with a land area of more than 100,000km² (40,000 mi²) are permitted to have a variation of 20% in recognition of the difficulty of representing the sparsely populated north and east of the state. [http://www.findlaw.com.au/news/default.asp?task=read&id=23585&site=LE]

Additionally, large district would be attributed and extra number of notional voters, equal to 1.5% the area of the district in square kilometres, for the purposes of this calculation. This Large District Allowance will permit large rural districts to have many fewer voters than the average district enrolment. The West Australian Electoral Commission [http://www.waec.wa.gov.au/download/Boundaries2009August.pdf] gives the following example: Central Kimberley-Pilbara district has 12601 electors and an area of 600038 square kilometres. The average district enrolment for WA is 21343. Central Kimberley-Pilbara thus obtains 9000 notional extra electors, bringing its notional total to 21601, which is acceptably close to the average district enrolment.

The Parliament

The Parliament of Australia is a bicameral (two-house) Parliament. It combines some of the features of the Parliament of the United Kingdom with some features of the United States Congress. This is because the authors of the Australian Constitution had two objectives: to reproduce as faithfully as possible the Westminster system of parliamentary government, while creating a federation in which there would be a division of powers between the national government and the states, regulated by a written Constitution.

In "structure", the Australian Parliament resembles the United States Congress. There is a House of Representatives elected from single-member constituencies of approximately equal population, and there is a Senate consisting of an equal number of Senators from each state, regardless of population (there are also Senators representing the territories).

But in "function", the Australian Parliament follows the Westminster system. The Prime Minister holds office because he can command the support of the majority of the House of Representatives, and must resign or advise an immediate election if the House passes a vote of no confidence in his administration. If he fails to do so he risks dismissal by the Governor-General during whose pleasure he holds office. All ministers are required to be members of Parliament (although the Constitution permits a person who is not currently a member of parliament to hold a ministerial portfolio for a maximum period of three months).

The House of Representatives

The Australian House of Representatives has 150 members elected from single-member constituencies (usually called "seats" or "electorates" in Australia; see Australian electorates) for three-year terms. Voters must fill out the ballot paper by numbering all the candidates in order of their preference. Failure to number all the candidates, or an error in numbering, renders the ballot "informal" (invalid). [http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/Voting_HOR.htm] The average number of candidates has tended to increase in recent years: there are frequently 10 or 12 candidates in a seat, and at the Wills by-election in April 1992 there were 22 candidates. [http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/1990/1992-wills-by.txt] This has made voting increasingly onerous, but the rate of informal voting has increased only slightly.

The low rate of informal voting is largely attributed to advertising from the various political parties indicated how a voter should number their ballot paper, called a "How-to-Vote Card". On election day, volunteers from political parties stand outside polling places, handing voters a card which advises them how to cast their vote for their respective party. Thus, if a voter wishes to vote for the Liberal Party, they may take the Liberal How-to-Vote Card and follow its instructions. While they can lodge their vote according to their own preferences, Australian voters show a high degree of party loyalty in following their chosen party's card.

The challenge of numbering the ballot paper leads a certain number of voters to simply number the candidates sequentially from 1 to the number of candidates down the ballot paper. This practice is commonly referred to as "donkey voting." It gives some advantage to the candidate at the top of the ballot paper. Before 1984, candidates appeared in alphabetical order, which led to a profusion of Aaronses and Abbotts contesting elections. (The most famous example of this was the 1937 election, in which the Labor Senate ticket in New South Wales consisted of candidates named Armour, Ashley, Armstrong and Arthur: all were elected.) Since 1984 ballot paper order has been decided at random by drawing lots prior to printing of the ballot papers.

The House Count

The House of Representatives uses "full preferential voting", also known outside Australia as "instant runoff voting", "IRV" or the "alternative ballot".

When the polls close at 6pm on election day, the votes are counted. The count is conducted by officers of the Australian Electoral Commission, watched by nominated volunteer observers from the political parties, called "scrutineers", who are entitled to observe the whole voting process from the opening of the booth. The votes from each polling booth in the electorate are tallied at the office of the returning officer for the electorate. If one of the candidates has more than 50% of the vote, then she or he is declared elected. Australian politics are influenced by social and economic demographics, though the correlation between "class" and voting is not always simple [http://elecpress.monash.edu.au/pnp/free/pnpv4n4/bettcl.htm] . Typically, the Labor Party will poll higher in strongly working-class seats, the Liberal party in middle-class seats, and the National Party in rural seats. In a strong seat, the elected party might win up to 80% of the two-party preferred vote. In the 2004 Federal Election, the highest winning margin in a seat was 25.1%, [http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/results/latest.htm] with most seats marginal by less than 10%.

In the remaining seats, no single candidate will have a majority of the "primary votes" (or "first-preference votes"). A hypothetical result might look like this:

:

Nominations

Candidates for either House must formally nominate with the Electoral Commission. The signature of the Registered Officer of a party registered under the Electoral Act is required for a party-endorsed candidate. A registered party must have at least 500 members. Fifty signatures of eligible voters are required for an independent candidate. A deposit of $500 is required for a candidate for the House, and $1000 for a candidate for the Senate; this deposit is refunded if the candidate or group gains 4% of the first preference votes. To receive public funding, a party or candidate must receive at least 4% of the vote. [cite web |url=http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Candidate/Handbook/nominations.htm |title=Nominations |publisher=Australian Electoral Commission |accessdate=2007-12-15]

References

See also

* Albert Langer

External links

* [http://www.aph.gov.au The Parliament of Australia]
* [http://www.aec.gov.au The Australian Electoral Commission]
* [http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia Adam Carr's Australian Election Archive]
* [http://www.alp.org.au The Australian Labor Party]
* [http://greens.org.au/ The Australian Greens]
* [http://www.liberal.org.au The Liberal Party of Australia]
* [http://www.nationals.org.au The National Party of Australia]
* [http://www.prsa.org.au Proportional Representation Society of Australia]