Australian electoral system
Encyclopedia
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
.
. Compulsory voting at referendums was considered when a referendum was proposed in 1915, but, as the referendum was never held, the idea was put on hold. The immediate impetus for compulsory voting at federal level was the low voter turnout (59.38 percent) 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 Nationalists
, Herbert Payne
, who introduced a Private Senator's Bill
, the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1924, on 16 July 1924. 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. It received Royal Assent on 31 July 1924. 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 the states of South Australia
, Tasmania
and Western Australia
voting at local elections is not 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), and failure to pay the fine may result in a court hearing.
It is commonly but wrongly claimed that it is compulsory only to attend a polling place and have one's name checked against the electoral roll
. In fact, Section 245 of the Electoral Act 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. However, due to secrecy of the ballot, it is impossible to determine if a voter who receives and casts a ballot has actually cast a valid vote, or whether the voter has spoiled the ballot or left it blank.
, it became an offence to cause voters to unknowingly vote informally. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, as of October 2007 "It is not an offence to vote informally in a federal election, nor is it an offence to encourage other voters to vote informally". It is, however, an offence to "mislead an elector in relation to the casting of his vote". 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
argue for the abolition of compulsory voting on philosophical grounds, but no government has ever attempted to abolish it.
Following the 2004 federal election, 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. 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 amount of campaign cost reimbursement—public moneys paid to candidates and parties polling a minimum of 4 per cent at an election.
On the other hand, the weakness of non-compulsory voting regimes is that governments can be seen to lack legitimacy by those sections of the populace who chose not to cast a vote. A characteristic of non-compulsory voting is that it makes it easier for special interest groups to vote themselves into power if large sections of the population do not participate in the political process.
Peter Singer in Democracy and Disobedience argues that Australian compulsory voting negates any obligation of the voter to support the outcome of the election [citation needed]. In 1996 Albert Langer
was jailed for three weeks on contempt charges in relation to a constitutional challenge on a legal way not to vote for either of the major parties. Chong, Davidson and Fry argue that Australian compulsory voting is disreputable, paternalistic, disadvantages smaller political parties, and allows major parties to target marginal seats and make some savings in pork barreling because of this targeting. Chong et al. also argue that denial is a significant aspect of the debate about compulsory voting.
A counter argument to Singer's contention is that although voting is compulsory in Australia, under Australian law the individual still has the legal right to spoil their vote by voting informally
if they so choose. A spoilt vote does not count towards any political party and effectively is the same as choosing not to vote under a non-compulsory voting system. In this way, contrary to Singer's assertion, compulsory voting in Australia does not remove from the individual the obligation or the choice to support the outcome of the political process. However the benefit of compulsory voting is that it ensures the government has legitimacy by legally requiring all citizens to either vote for the political party of their choice or spoil their vote.
In the 2010 Australian election, Mark Latham
urged Australians to vote informally
by handing in blank ballot papers for the 2010 election. He also stated that he doesn't feel it is fair for the government to force citizens to vote if they don't have an opinion or threaten them into voting with a fine.
Contrary to popular speculation at the time, the Australian Electoral Commission confirmed that voting informally
does not break any Australian laws and is completely legal. How the Australian Electoral Commission arrived at this opinion is unknown and runs contrary to the opinions of Chief Justice Barwick, who wrote that voters must actually mark the ballot paper and deposit that ballot into a ballot box and Justice Blackburn who was of the opinion that casting an invalid vote was a violation of the Act.
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. 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.
At some polling places in the Australian Capital Territory
, voters may choose between voting electronically or on paper. Otherwise, Australian elections are carried out using paper ballots.
The main elements of the operation of preferential voting are as follows:
Following the full allocation of preferences, it is possible to derive a two-party-preferred
figure, where the votes are divided between the two main candidates in the election. In Australia, this is usually between the candidates from the two major parties.
s 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. By the early 1960s, the urban-rural voter ratio was almost exactly reversed. More than two-thirds of the state's population lived in Adelaide
and its suburbs, but the rural areas elected two-thirds of the legislature. This was despite the fact that by this time, rural seats had on average one-quarter the number of voters that urban seats had. This gross distortion came into sharp focus in the 1962 state elections
, in which Labor routed the governing Liberal and Country League
in the two-party vote, but came up one seat short of a majority. Long time premier Sir Thomas Playford
was able to continue in power with the support of two independents. The setup enabled Playford to stay in office from 1938 to 1965, even though from 1947 onward he was defeated by increasing margins in terms of actual votes. Largely because Playford was the main beneficiary, the setup was called "the Playmander
," although it was not strictly speaking a gerrymander. The Playmander was not overcome until Labor defeated the LCL in 1965, though it was not abolished until 1968.
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 that it could win elections with only a quarter of the first preference votes. Combined with the votes of the Liberals (in Queensland, the National Party had historically been the senior partner in the non-Labor coalition), this was enough to lock Labor out of power even in years when Labor was the biggest single party in the legislature. This "Bjelkemander
" was not overcome until the final defeat of the Nationals in 1989.
Western Australia
retained a significant malapportionment in the Legislative Assembly
until 2008. On 20 May 2005 the state Parliament passed new electoral laws, removing the malapportionment with effect from the following election
. 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 100,000 km² (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. A modified form of malapportionment was, however, retained for the Legislative Council
, the state upper house.
Additionally, large districts would be attributed an 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 Office of the Electoral Distribution Commissioners 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.
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 (since 1975 there have also been Senators representing the territories).
But in function, the Australian Parliament follows the Westminster system. The Prime Minister holds office because they 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 they fail to do so, they risk dismissal by the Governor-General. 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 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). 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. 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 Amour, 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.
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 they are declared elected. Australian politics are influenced by social and economic demographics, though the correlation between "class" and voting is not always simple. 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%, 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:
On election night, an interim distribution of preferences called a TCP (Two Candidate Preferred) count is performed. The electoral commission nominates the two candidates it believes are most likely to win the most votes and all votes are distributed immediately to one or the other preferred candidate. This result is indicative only and subsequently the formal count will be performed after all "declaration" (e.g. postal, absent votes) votes are received.
In this example, the candidate with the smallest vote, Davies, will be eliminated, and his or her preferences will be distributed: that is, his or her 4,000 votes will be individually re-allocated to the remaining candidates according to which candidate received the number 2 vote on each of those 4000 ballot papers. Suppose Davies's preferences split 50/50 between Smith and Jones. After re-allocation of Davies's votes, Smith would have 47% and Jones 37% of the total votes in the electorate. White would then be eliminated. Suppose all of White's preferences went to Smith. Smith would then have 53% and would be declared elected. Johnson's votes would not need to be distributed.
Here is a real example of the operation of preferential voting in Australia, from the federal election of 1990: Charles Blunt
was the leader of the conservative National Party of Australia
, representing Richmond
, a traditional National Party seat in northern New South Wales
. The intervention of the anti-nuclear campaigner, Dr Helen Caldicott
, allowed the Labor
candidate, Neville Newell
, to win the seat despite polling only 27% of the primary vote. Note that Caldicott also had a good chance of winning the seat – if all of Gibbs' preferences had gone to her as directed on the How-to-Vote card, she would have drawn ahead of Newell and won on his preferences.
RICHMOND, NSW 73,794 enrolled, 70,571 (95.6%) voted
North Coast NSW: Byron Bay, Lismore, Murwillumbah, Tweed Heads
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1987 two-party majority: NPA over ALP 06.6
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stan Gibbs AD 4,346 06.3 (−00.8)
Neville Newell
ALP 18,423 26.7 (−08.5)
Gavin Baillie 187 00.3
Alan Sims CTA 1,032 01.5
Ian Paterson 445 00.6
Dudley Leggett 279 00.4
Charles Blunt
* NPA 28,257 40.9 (−10.2)
Dr Helen Caldicott
16,072 23.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1,530 (02.2%) informal 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Caldicott was an independent Green candidate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2nd count: Baillie's 187 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 34 (18.4) 4,380 06.3
Newell 44 (23.8) 18,467 26.7
Sims 21 (11.4) 1,053 01.5
Paterson 35 (18.9) 480 00.7
Leggett 15 (08.1) 294 00.4
Blunt * 17 (09.2) 28,274 41.0
Caldicott 19 (10.3) 16,091 23.3
(exhausted 2 2 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 187 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3rd count: Leggett's 294 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 40 (13.9) 4,420 06.4
Newell 17 (05.9) 18,484 26.8
Sims 6 (02.1) 1,059 01.5
Paterson 50 (17.4) 530 00.8
Blunt * 29 (10.1) 28,303 41.0
Caldicott 146 (50.7) 16,237 23.5
(exhausted 6 8 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 294 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
4th count: Paterson's 530 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 84 (16.3) 4,504 06.5
Newell 60 (11.7) 18,544 26.9
Sims 57 (11.1) 1,116 01.6
Blunt * 113 (21.9) 28,416 41.2
Caldicott 201 (39.0) 16,438 23.8
(exhausted 15 23 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 530 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
5th count: Sims's 1,116 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 179 (16.3) 4,683 06.8
Newell 139 (12.6) 18,683 27.1
Blunt * 562 (51.1) 28,978 42.0
Caldicott 220 (20.0) 16,658 24.1
(exhausted 16 39 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1,116 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
6th count: Gibbs's 4,683 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newell 1,555 (33.8) 20,238 29.4
Blunt * 800 (17.4) 29,778 43.2
Caldicott 2,245 (48.8) 18,903 27.4
(exhausted 83 122 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 4,683 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
7th count: Caldicott's 18,903 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWELL 14,426 (77.4) 34,664 50.5
Blunt * 4,202 (22.6) 33,980 49.5
(exhausted 275 397 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 18,903 69,041 00.5 07.1 to ALP
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If two candidates are tied at the end of the process, the Electoral Commissioner casts the deciding vote. In practice, however, a recount would almost certainly be requested by an unsuccessful candidate.
Section 268(1)(c) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 now has the effect of making the vote of any elector that does not preference every candidate on the ballot paper an informal vote as opposed to counting the vote until the voter's preference exhausts.
Once the two-party majorities in all seats are known, they can then be arranged in a table to show the order in which they would be lost in the event of an adverse swing at the next election. Such tables frequently appear in the Australian media and are called election pendulums or sometimes Mackerras pendulums after the political scientist Malcolm Mackerras
, who popularised the idea of the two-party vote in his 1972 book Australian General Elections.
Here is a sample of the federal election pendulum from the 2001 election, showing some of the seats held by the Liberal-National Party coalition government, in order of their two-party majority. A seat with a small two-party majority is said to be a marginal seat or a swinging seat. A seat with a large two-party majority is said to be a safe seat, although "safe" seats have been known to change hands in the event of a large swing.
, an independent statutory authority, completely independent of political considerations. Members of Parliament and political parties may make submissions to the Commission on proposed new boundaries, but any interference with the Commission's deliberations would be a serious offence.
The Electoral Act requires that all seats have approximately equal numbers of enrolled voters
. When the Commission determines that population shifts within a state have caused some seats to have too many or too few voters, new boundaries are drawn up. This is called a redistribution. Redistributions are also held when the Commission determines (following a formula laid down in the Act) that the distribution of seats among the states and territories must be changed because some states are growing faster than others.
In 2003, for example, redistributions were held in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. South Australia lost one seat, while Queensland gained a seat. Victoria kept the same number of seats, but one seat was abolished and one new seat created.
may be held. Further details are at Casual vacancies in the Australian Parliament.
has 76 members: each of the six states
elects 12 Senators, and the Northern Territory (NT) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) each elect two Senators. The several other Australian Territories have very small populations and are represented by Northern Territory and ACT Senators (for example, Christmas Island
residents are represented by NT Senators, while Jervis Bay Territory
residents are represented by ACT Senators).
Senators for the states serve six-year terms, with half the Senators from each state being elected at each federal election. The terms of the territory Senators coincide with the duration of the House of Representatives.
The Senate is elected both proportionately and preferentially, except that each state has an equal number of seats so that the distribution of seats to states is non-proportional to the total Australian population. Thus, although within each state the seats proportionally represent the vote for that state, overall the less populous states are proportionally stronger in representation for their population compared to the more populous states.
In each state, political parties which are registered with the Electoral Commission present lists of candidates, which appear as a group on the Senate ballot paper. Independents and members of unregistered parties can also nominate, but they cannot appear on ballot paper as a group.
Voters can vote for the Senate in one of two ways. They can number all the candidates, as they would with a House of Representatives ballot: but since there may be 50 or 60 candidates on the ballot paper, few voters do this. This is called below the line voting. Or they can simply write "1" in a box indicating the party for which they wish to vote. This is called above the line voting. More than 95% of voters cast their votes above the line.
When votes are cast above the line, they amount to accepting whatever "1,2,3,4,..." sequence has been pre-nominated by that party-or-group for that state-or-territory. When an election is imminent, such details (multi-page) can be inspected at the electoral commission's website, http://www.aec.gov.au. Concise single-page sortable tabulations of these pre-nominations have been prepared by Ondwelle Publications for 3 selected states for the election of 21 August 2010: Queensland, NSW and Victoria. — Also available are: Victoria 2007 and Victoria 2004. The latter is of some interest because it illustrates how overly-clever strategic preference-advice can seriously backfire. As explained briefly on page 2, that is how S.Fielding (as candidate for a minor party antagonistic to Labor) ended up being elected thanks to Labor's own preference votes! — a serious matter because Fielding then sometimes held the balance-of-power in the Senate during his six-year term.
The system for counting Senate votes is complicated, and a final result is sometimes not known for several weeks. When the Senate vote is counted, a quota for election is determined. This is the number of valid votes cast, divided by the number of Senators to be elected plus one.
For example, here is the Senate result for the state of New South Wales from the 1998 federal election. For greater clarity the votes cast for 50 minor party and independent candidates have been excluded.
The quota for election was 3,755,725 divided by seven, or 536,533.
Enrolment: 4,031,749
Turnout: 3,884,333 (96.3%)
Informal votes: 128,608 (03.3%)
Formal votes: 3,755,725
Quota for election: 536,533
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve HUTCHINS
ALP 1,446,231 38.5 ELECTED 1
Hon John Faulkner
* ALP 2,914 00.1 Group H
Michael Forshaw
* ALP 864 00.0 Q:2.7073
Ursula Stephens
ALP 2,551 00.1
David Oldfield ON 359,654 09.6 Group K
Brian Burston ON 570 00.0 Q:0.6729
Bevan O'Regan ON 785 00.0
Bill HEFFERNAN
* Lib 1,371,578 36.5 ELECTED 2
Dr John Tierney
* Lib 1,441 00.0 Group L
Sandy Macdonald
* NPA 1,689 00.0 Q:2.5638
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
Lib 855 00.0
Aden Ridgeway
AD 272,481 07.3 Group M
Matthew Baird AD 457 00.0 Q:0.5142
Suzzanne Reddy AD 2,163 00.1
David Mendelssohn AD 809 00.0
John Sutton Grn 80,073 02.1 Group U
Catherine Moore Grn 748 00.0 Q:0.1521
Lee Rhiannon
Grn 249 00.0
Suzie Russell Grn 542 00.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
128,608 (03.3%) informal 3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In this table, the Group number allocated to each list is shown at right. Below that is the number of quotas polled by each list. Thus, "Q:2.7073" next to the Labor Party list indicates that the Labor candidates between them polled 2.7073 quotas.
It will be seen that the leading Labor and Liberal candidates, Hutchins and Heffernan, polled more than the quota. They were therefore elected on the first count. Their surplus votes were then distributed. The surplus is the candidate's vote minus the quota. Hutchins's surplus was thus 1,446,231 minus 536,533, or 909,698. These votes are multiplied by a factor (called the "transfer value") based on the proportion of ballot papers preferencing other parties. ABC Election commentator Antony Green
believes that this method distorts preference allocation.
After Hutchins's surplus votes were distributed, the count looked like this:
Votes Total after
distributed distribution
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUTCHINS E 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 1
FAULKNER * 908,567 (99.9) 911,481 24.3 ELECTED 3
Forshaw * 196 (00.0) 1,060 00.0
Stephens 130 (00.0) 2,681 00.1
Oldfield 186 (00.0) 359,840 09.6
Burston 6 (00.0) 576 00.0
O'Regan 4 (00.0) 789 00.0
HEFFERNAN * E 1,371,578 36.5 ELECTED 2
Tierney * 13 (00.0) 1,454 00.0
Macdonald * 1 (00.0) 1,690 00.0
Fierravanti-Wells 1 (00.0) 856 00.0
Ridgeway 278 (00.0) 272,579 07.3
Baird 5 (00.0) 462 00.0
Reddy 3 (00.0) 2,166 00.1
Mendelssohn 4 (00.0) 813 00.0
Sutton 66 (00.0) 80,139 02.1
Moore 2 (00.0) 750 00.0
Rhiannon 1 (00.0) 250 00.0
Russell 0 542 00.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
909,698 3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
It will be seen that virtually all of Hutchins's surplus votes went to Faulkner, the second candidate on the Labor ticket, who was then elected. This is because all those voters who voted for the Labor party "above the line" had their second preferences automatically allocated to the second Labor candidate. All parties lodge a copy of their How-to-Vote Card with the Electoral Commission, and the Commission follows this card in allocating the preferences of those who vote "above the line." If a voter wished to vote, for example, Hutchins 1 and Heffernan 2, they would need to vote "below the line" by numbering each of the 69 candidates.
In the third count, Heffernan's surplus was distributed and these votes elected Tierney. Faulkner's surplus was then distributed, but these were insufficient to elect Forshaw. Likewise, Tierney's surplus was insufficient to elect McDonald.
After this stage of the count, the remaining candidates in contention (that is, the leading candidates in the major party tickets) were in the following position:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUTCHINS 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 1
FAULKNER * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 3
Forshaw * 375,587 10.0
Oldfield 360,263 09.6
HEFFERNAN * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 2
Tierney * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 4
Macdonald * 300,313 08.0
Ridgeway 273,109 07.3
Sutton 80,186 02.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
All the other candidates were then eliminated one by one, starting with the candidates with the smallest number of votes, and their votes were distributed among the candidates remaining in contention in accordance with the preferences expressed on their ballot papers. After this process was completed, the remaining candidates were in the following position:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUTCHINS 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 1
FAULKNER * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 3
Forshaw * 450,446 12.0
Oldfield 402,154 10.7
HEFFERNAN * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 2
Tierney * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 4
Macdonald * 357,572 09.5
Ridgeway 286,157 07.6
Sutton 112,602 03.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3,755,725
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Sutton was then eliminated. 80% of Sutton's preferences went to Ridgeway, giving Ridgeway more votes than McDonald. McDonald was then eliminated, and 93% of his preferences went to Ridgeway, thus giving him a quota and the fifth Senate seat. Ridgeway's surplus was then distributed, and 96% of his votes went to Forshaw, thus giving him a quota and the sixth seat. Oldfield was the last remaining unsuccessful candidate.
A final point needs to be explained. It was noted above that when a candidate polls more votes than the quota, their surplus vote is distributed to other candidates. Thus, in the example given above, Hutchins's surplus was 909,698, or 1,446,231 (his primary vote) minus 536,533 (the quota). It may be asked: which 909,698 of Hutchins's 1,446,231 primary votes are distributed? Are they chosen at random from among his votes? In fact they are all distributed, but at less than their full value. Since 909,698 is 62.9% of 1,446,231, each of Hutchins's votes is transferred to other candidates as 62.9% of a vote: each vote is said to have a transfer value of 0.629. This avoids any possibility of an unrepresentative sample of his votes being transferred. After each count the candidate's progressive total is rounded down to the nearest whole number. This means that a small number of votes are lost by fractionation in the final count.
When a person is appointed Divisional Returning Officer for a seat, his electoral enrolment will be transferred from the electorate where he lives to the one he administers. Normally he will be precluded from voting at an election, but instead will have two special powers; these are:
1. If during the count there are two candidates with equal lowest votes, he can decide which will be excluded.
2. If at the end of the count the two candidates left have an equal number of votes, he will get to vote in the election by giving a casting vote to the candidate he prefers. This is his personal vote, just like any other elector's, and is awarded at his sole discretion.
, the House of Representatives and the Senate generally have equal legislative powers (the only exception being that appropriation (supply) bills must originate in the House of Representatives). This means that a government formed in the House of Representatives can be seriously frustrated by a Senate majority determined to reject its legislation.
In these circumstances, Section 57 of the Constitution allows the Governor-General to dissolve the House of Representatives and the entire Senate – this is called a "double dissolution" – and issue writs for an election in which every seat in the Parliament is contested. A governor-general would usually take such action only on the advice of the Prime Minister.
Compulsory voting
Compulsory voting is a system in which electors are obliged to vote in elections or attend a polling place on voting day. If an eligible voter does not attend a polling place, he or she may be subject to punitive measures such as fines, community service, or perhaps imprisonment if fines are unpaid...
, preferential voting
Preferential voting
Preferential voting is a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank candidates in order of relative preference. For example, the voter may select their first choice as '1', their second preference a '2', and so on...
(known elsewhere as instant-runoff voting
Instant-runoff voting
Instant-runoff voting , also known as preferential voting, the alternative vote and ranked choice voting, is a voting system used to elect one winner. Voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their ballots are counted as one vote for their first choice candidate. If a candidate secures a...
) and the use of proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Australian Senate
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...
.
Compulsory voting
Australia enforces compulsory votingCompulsory voting
Compulsory voting is a system in which electors are obliged to vote in elections or attend a polling place on voting day. If an eligible voter does not attend a polling place, he or she may be subject to punitive measures such as fines, community service, or perhaps imprisonment if fines are unpaid...
. Compulsory voting at referendums was considered when a referendum was proposed in 1915, but, as the referendum was never held, the idea was put on hold. The immediate impetus for compulsory voting at federal level was the low voter turnout (59.38 percent) at the 1922 federal election
Australian federal election, 1922
Federal elections were held in Australia on 16 December 1922. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives, and 19 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for election. The incumbent Nationalist Party of Australia led by Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes lost its majority...
. However, it was not on the platform of either the Stanley Bruce
Stanley Bruce
Stanley Melbourne Bruce, 1st Viscount Bruce of Melbourne, CH, MC, FRS, PC , was an Australian politician and diplomat, and the eighth Prime Minister of Australia. He was the second Australian granted an hereditary peerage of the United Kingdom, but the first whose peerage was formally created...
-led Nationalist/Country party coalition government or the Matthew Charlton
Matthew Charlton
Matthew Charlton was an Australian Labor Party politician.Charlton was born at Linton in rural Victoria but moved to Lambton, New South Wales at the age of five. He worked as a coal miner after only a primary education and then married Martha Rollings in 1889...
-led Labor opposition to introduce this requirement; rather, the initiative was taken by a backbench Tasmanian senator from the Nationalists
Nationalist Party of Australia
The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...
, Herbert Payne
Herbert Payne
Herbert James Mockford Payne was an Australian politician. Born in Hobart, Tasmania, he was educated at state schools before becoming an investor and grazier. In 1903, he was elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly for Burnie, transferring to Darwin in 1909. He was Treasurer, Minister for...
, who introduced a Private Senator's Bill
Private Member's Bill
A member of parliament’s legislative motion, called a private member's bill or a member's bill in some parliaments, is a proposed law introduced by a member of a legislature. In most countries with a parliamentary system, most bills are proposed by the government, not by individual members of the...
, the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1924, on 16 July 1924. 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. It received Royal Assent on 31 July 1924. The 1925 federal election
Australian federal election, 1925
Federal elections were held in Australia on 14 November 1925. All 75 seats in the House of Representatives, and 22 of the 36 seats in the Senate were up for 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 the states of South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
, Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
and Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
voting at local elections is not compulsory. About 5% of enrolled voters
Electoral register
The electoral roll is a listing of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The register facilitates the process of voting, helps to prevent fraud and may also be used to select people for jury duty...
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), and failure to pay the fine may result in a court hearing.
It is commonly but wrongly claimed that it is compulsory only to attend a polling place and have one's name checked against the electoral roll
Electoral register
The electoral roll is a listing of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The register facilitates the process of voting, helps to prevent fraud and may also be used to select people for jury duty...
. In fact, Section 245 of the Electoral Act 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. However, due to secrecy of the ballot, it is impossible to determine if a voter who receives and casts a ballot has actually cast a valid vote, or whether the voter has spoiled the ballot or left it blank.
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. In principle, informal votes are excluded from the election count. Resulting from the disputed validity of so-called Langer votingLanger vote
A Langer vote is a vote marked "1, 2, 3, 3 , 3. . ., etc" in the Australian electoral system. It was widely publicised by Albert Langer, an Australian political activist, as a means of limiting votes to the voter's preferred parties, and thus avoiding the statutory instruction to mark the ballot...
, it became an offence to cause voters to unknowingly vote informally. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, as of October 2007 "It is not an offence to vote informally in a federal election, nor is it an offence to encourage other voters to vote informally". It is, however, an offence to "mislead an elector in relation to the casting of his vote". 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
Arguments for and against compulsory voting
Occasionally conservative politicians or libertariansLibertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
argue for the abolition of compulsory voting on philosophical grounds, but no government has ever attempted to abolish it.
Following the 2004 federal election, at which the Liberal
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
-National
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
coalition government won a majority in both Houses, a senior minister, Senator Nick Minchin
Nick Minchin
Nicholas Hugh "Nick" Minchin is a former Australian politician, serving as a Liberal member of the Australian Senate representing South Australia from July 1993 to June 2011, and a former cabinet minister in the Howard Government....
, said that he favoured the abolition of compulsory voting. Some prominent Liberals, such as Petro Georgiou
Petro Georgiou
Petro Georgiou , Australian politician, was a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives from November 1994 to July 2010, representing the Division of Kooyong, Victoria.-Early life:...
, 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 amount of campaign cost reimbursement—public moneys paid to candidates and parties polling a minimum of 4 per cent at an election.
On the other hand, the weakness of non-compulsory voting regimes is that governments can be seen to lack legitimacy by those sections of the populace who chose not to cast a vote. A characteristic of non-compulsory voting is that it makes it easier for special interest groups to vote themselves into power if large sections of the population do not participate in the political process.
Peter Singer in Democracy and Disobedience argues that Australian compulsory voting negates any obligation of the voter to support the outcome of the election [citation needed]. In 1996 Albert Langer
Albert Langer
Albert Langer is an Australian political activist, best known for his 1996 conviction and gaoling on contempt charges after breaching an injunction forbidding his advocacy of marking electoral ballot papers in a way discouraged by the Australian Electoral Commission...
was jailed for three weeks on contempt charges in relation to a constitutional challenge on a legal way not to vote for either of the major parties. Chong, Davidson and Fry argue that Australian compulsory voting is disreputable, paternalistic, disadvantages smaller political parties, and allows major parties to target marginal seats and make some savings in pork barreling because of this targeting. Chong et al. also argue that denial is a significant aspect of the debate about compulsory voting.
A counter argument to Singer's contention is that although voting is compulsory in Australia, under Australian law the individual still has the legal right to spoil their vote by voting informally
Spoilt vote
'Bold text'In voting, a ballot is considered to be spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal or stray if it is regarded by the election authorities to be invalid and thus not included in the tally during vote counting. This may be done accidentally or deliberately...
if they so choose. A spoilt vote does not count towards any political party and effectively is the same as choosing not to vote under a non-compulsory voting system. In this way, contrary to Singer's assertion, compulsory voting in Australia does not remove from the individual the obligation or the choice to support the outcome of the political process. However the benefit of compulsory voting is that it ensures the government has legitimacy by legally requiring all citizens to either vote for the political party of their choice or spoil their vote.
In the 2010 Australian election, Mark Latham
Mark Latham
Mark William Latham , an author and former Australian politician, was leader of the Federal Parliamentary Australian Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition from December 2003 to January 2005....
urged Australians to vote informally
Spoilt vote
'Bold text'In voting, a ballot is considered to be spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal or stray if it is regarded by the election authorities to be invalid and thus not included in the tally during vote counting. This may be done accidentally or deliberately...
by handing in blank ballot papers for the 2010 election. He also stated that he doesn't feel it is fair for the government to force citizens to vote if they don't have an opinion or threaten them into voting with a fine.
Contrary to popular speculation at the time, the Australian Electoral Commission confirmed that voting informally
Spoilt vote
'Bold text'In voting, a ballot is considered to be spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal or stray if it is regarded by the election authorities to be invalid and thus not included in the tally during vote counting. This may be done accidentally or deliberately...
does not break any Australian laws and is completely legal. How the Australian Electoral Commission arrived at this opinion is unknown and runs contrary to the opinions of Chief Justice Barwick, who wrote that voters must actually mark the ballot paper and deposit that ballot into a ballot box and Justice Blackburn who was of the opinion that casting an invalid vote was a violation of the Act.
Preferential voting
Australia uses various forms of preferential votingPreferential voting
Preferential voting is a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank candidates in order of relative preference. For example, the voter may select their first choice as '1', their second preference a '2', and so on...
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
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
, 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
Billy Hughes
William Morris "Billy" Hughes, CH, KC, MHR , Australian politician, was the seventh Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923....
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. It had previously been introduced as a result of the work of Thomas Hare and Andrew Inglis Clark
Andrew Inglis Clark
Andrew Inglis Clark was an Australian barrister, politician, electoral reformer and jurist. He initially qualified engineer, however he re-trained as a barrister in order to effectively fight for social causes which deeply concerned him...
in the Tasmanian House of Assembly
Tasmanian House of Assembly
The House of Assembly, or Lower House, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of Tasmania in Australia. The other is the Legislative Council or Upper House...
.
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.
At some polling places in the Australian Capital Territory
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory, often abbreviated ACT, is the capital territory of the Commonwealth of Australia and is the smallest self-governing internal territory...
, voters may choose between voting electronically or on paper. Otherwise, Australian elections are carried out using paper ballots.
The main elements of the operation of preferential voting are as follows:
- Voters are required to place the number "1" against the candidate of their choice, known as their "first preference".
- Voters are then required to place the numbers "2", "3", etc., against the other candidates listed on the ballot paper, in order of preference.
- The counting of first preference votes, also known as the "primary vote", takes place first. If no candidate secures an absolute majority of primary votes, then the candidate with the fewest votes is "eliminated" from the count.
- The ballot papers of the eliminated candidate are re-allocated amongst the remaining candidates according to the number "2", or "second preference" votes.
- If no candidate has yet secured an absolute majority of the vote, then the next candidate with the fewest primary votes is eliminated. This preference allocation continues until there is a candidate with an absolute majority. Where a second preference is expressed for a candidate who has already been eliminated, the voter's third or subsequent preferences are used.
Following the full allocation of preferences, it is possible to derive a two-party-preferred
Two-party-preferred vote
In politics, the two-party-preferred vote , or two-candidate-preferred vote , in an election or opinion poll uses preferential voting to express the electoral result after the distribution of preferences...
figure, where the votes are divided between the two main candidates in the election. In Australia, this is usually between the candidates from the two major parties.
Gerrymandering and malapportionment
Australian history has seen very little gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, which have nearly always been drawn up by public servantCivil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
s 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
Federation
A federation , also known as a federal state, is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central government...
, 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
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
, 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
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
, Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
and Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
.
In South Australia, the 1856 Constitution stipulated that there must be two rural constituencies for every urban constituency. By the early 1960s, the urban-rural voter ratio was almost exactly reversed. More than two-thirds of the state's population lived in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
and its suburbs, but the rural areas elected two-thirds of the legislature. This was despite the fact that by this time, rural seats had on average one-quarter the number of voters that urban seats had. This gross distortion came into sharp focus in the 1962 state elections
South Australian state election, 1962
State elections were held in Australia on 3 March 1962. All 39 seats in the South Australian House of Assembly were up for election. The incumbent Liberal and Country League led by Premier of South Australia Thomas Playford IV defeated the Australian Labor Party led by Leader of the Opposition...
, in which Labor routed the governing Liberal and Country League
Liberal and Country League
The Liberal and Country League was a major political party in South Australia throughout its forty year existence. Thirty-four years were spent in government, in part due to the electoral malapportionment known as the Playmander, introduced after coming to power.Created on 9 June 1932 as the...
in the two-party vote, but came up one seat short of a majority. Long time premier Sir Thomas Playford
Thomas Playford IV
Sir Thomas Playford, GCMG was a South Australian politician. He served continuously as Premier of South Australia from 5 November 1938 to 10 March 1965, the longest term of any elected government leader in the history of Australia. His tenure as premier was marked by a period of population and...
was able to continue in power with the support of two independents. The setup enabled Playford to stay in office from 1938 to 1965, even though from 1947 onward he was defeated by increasing margins in terms of actual votes. Largely because Playford was the main beneficiary, the setup was called "the Playmander
Playmander
The Playmander was a form of electoral malapportionment in the Australian state of South Australia, in place from 1936 to 1968. It consisted of rural districts enjoying a 2-to-1 advantage in the state parliament, even though they contained less than half of the population, as well as a change from...
," although it was not strictly speaking a gerrymander. The Playmander was not overcome until Labor defeated the LCL in 1965, though it was not abolished until 1968.
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)
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
governments of Sir Frank Nicklin
Frank Nicklin
Sir George Francis Reuben Nicklin, KCMG, MM was Premier of the Australian state of Queensland from 1957 to 1968, and the first Country Party Premier since 1932.-Early life and career:...
and Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG , was an Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state...
were able to manipulate the electoral system so that that it could win elections with only a quarter of the first preference votes. Combined with the votes of the Liberals (in Queensland, the National Party had historically been the senior partner in the non-Labor coalition), this was enough to lock Labor out of power even in years when Labor was the biggest single party in the legislature. This "Bjelkemander
Bjelkemander
The Bjelkemander was the term given to a system of malapportionment in the Australian State of Queensland in the 1970s and 1980s. Under the system, electorates were allocated to zones such as rural or metropolitan and electoral boundaries drawn so that rural electorates had about half as many...
" was not overcome until the final defeat of the Nationals in 1989.
Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
retained a significant malapportionment in the Legislative Assembly
Western Australian Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of parliament in the Australian state of Western Australia. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Perth....
until 2008. On 20 May 2005 the state Parliament passed new electoral laws, removing the malapportionment with effect from the following election
Western Australian state election, 2008
A general election was held in the state of Western Australia on Saturday 6 September 2008 to elect 59 members to the Legislative Assembly and 36 members to the Legislative Council...
. Under the previous system, votes in the country were worth up to four times the value of votes in Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, 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 100,000 km² (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. A modified form of malapportionment was, however, retained for the Legislative Council
Western Australian Legislative Council
The Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of parliament in the Australian state of Western Australia. Its central purpose is to act as a house of review for legislation passed through the lower house, the Legislative Assembly. It sits in Parliament House in the state...
, the state upper house.
Additionally, large districts would be attributed an 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 Office of the Electoral Distribution Commissioners 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 AustraliaParliament of Australia
The Parliament of Australia, also known as the Commonwealth Parliament or Federal Parliament, is the legislative branch of the government of Australia. It is bicameral, largely modelled in the Westminster tradition, but with some influences from the United States Congress...
is a bicameral (two-house) Parliament. It combines some of the features of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
with some features of the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
. This is because the authors of the Australian Constitution had two objectives: to reproduce as faithfully as possible the Westminster system
Westminster System
The Westminster system is a democratic parliamentary system of government modelled after the politics of the United Kingdom. This term comes from the Palace of Westminster, the seat of the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
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 (since 1975 there have also been Senators representing the territories).
But in function, the Australian Parliament follows the Westminster system. The Prime Minister holds office because they 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 they fail to do so, they risk dismissal by the Governor-General. 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
Australian House of Representatives
The House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the Parliament of Australia; it is the lower house; the upper house is the Senate. Members of Parliament serve for terms of approximately three years....
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). 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. 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
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
, 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
Donkey vote
Donkey voters vote the way candidates appear on the ballot paper. Sometimes the term "donkey vote" is incorrectly used to refer to an informal vote although this use is not included in major dictionaries....
. 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
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
consisted of candidates named Amour, Ashley, Armstrong
John Armstrong (Australian politician)
John Ignatius Armstrong, AC was an Australian politician and federal minister.Armstrong was born in the Sydney suburb of Ultimo and ducated at St Bede's School, Pyrmont, and Marist Brothers' High School, Darlinghurst...
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.
Counting votes in elections for the House of Representatives
The House of Representatives uses full preferential voting, which is known outside Australia by names such as "instant runoff voting" (IRV) and "alternative voting".When the polls close at 6pm on election day, the votes are counted. The count is conducted by officers of the Australian Electoral Commission
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission, or the AEC, is the federal government agency in charge of organising and supervising federal elections and referendums. State and local government elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission in each state and territory.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
Returning Officer
In various parliamentary systems, a returning officer is responsible for overseeing elections in one or more constituencies.-Australia:In Australia a returning officer is an employee of the Australian Electoral Commission or a State Electoral Commission who heads the local divisional office...
for the electorate. If one of the candidates has more than 50% of the vote, then they are declared elected. Australian politics are influenced by social and economic demographics, though the correlation between "class" and voting is not always simple. 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%, 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:
| White (Democrat) | 6,000 | 06.0% |
| Smith (Labor) | 45,000 | 45.0% |
| Jones (Liberal) | 35,000 | 35.0% |
| Johnson (Green) | 10,000 | 10.0% |
| Davies (Ind) | 4,000 | 04.0% |
On election night, an interim distribution of preferences called a TCP (Two Candidate Preferred) count is performed. The electoral commission nominates the two candidates it believes are most likely to win the most votes and all votes are distributed immediately to one or the other preferred candidate. This result is indicative only and subsequently the formal count will be performed after all "declaration" (e.g. postal, absent votes) votes are received.
In this example, the candidate with the smallest vote, Davies, will be eliminated, and his or her preferences will be distributed: that is, his or her 4,000 votes will be individually re-allocated to the remaining candidates according to which candidate received the number 2 vote on each of those 4000 ballot papers. Suppose Davies's preferences split 50/50 between Smith and Jones. After re-allocation of Davies's votes, Smith would have 47% and Jones 37% of the total votes in the electorate. White would then be eliminated. Suppose all of White's preferences went to Smith. Smith would then have 53% and would be declared elected. Johnson's votes would not need to be distributed.
Here is a real example of the operation of preferential voting in Australia, from the federal election of 1990: Charles Blunt
Charles Blunt
Charles William Blunt Australian politician and businessman, was leader of the National Party of Australia from 1989 to 1990....
was the leader of the conservative National Party of Australia
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
, representing Richmond
Division of Richmond
The Division of Richmond is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of New South Wales. It is located in the far north-east of the state, along the Pacific coast...
, a traditional National Party seat in northern New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
. The intervention of the anti-nuclear campaigner, Dr Helen Caldicott
Helen Caldicott
Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, war and military action in general. She hosts a...
, allowed the Labor
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
candidate, Neville Newell
Neville Newell
Neville Joseph Newell is an Australian politician. He served as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1990 until 1996 and as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1999 to 2007....
, to win the seat despite polling only 27% of the primary vote. Note that Caldicott also had a good chance of winning the seat – if all of Gibbs' preferences had gone to her as directed on the How-to-Vote card, she would have drawn ahead of Newell and won on his preferences.
RICHMOND, NSW 73,794 enrolled, 70,571 (95.6%) voted
North Coast NSW: Byron Bay, Lismore, Murwillumbah, Tweed Heads
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1987 two-party majority: NPA over ALP 06.6
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Stan Gibbs AD 4,346 06.3 (−00.8)
Neville Newell
Neville Newell
Neville Joseph Newell is an Australian politician. He served as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1990 until 1996 and as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1999 to 2007....
ALP 18,423 26.7 (−08.5)
Gavin Baillie 187 00.3
Alan Sims CTA 1,032 01.5
Ian Paterson 445 00.6
Dudley Leggett 279 00.4
Charles Blunt
Charles Blunt
Charles William Blunt Australian politician and businessman, was leader of the National Party of Australia from 1989 to 1990....
* NPA 28,257 40.9 (−10.2)
Dr Helen Caldicott
Helen Caldicott
Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, war and military action in general. She hosts a...
16,072 23.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1,530 (02.2%) informal 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Caldicott was an independent Green candidate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2nd count: Baillie's 187 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 34 (18.4) 4,380 06.3
Newell 44 (23.8) 18,467 26.7
Sims 21 (11.4) 1,053 01.5
Paterson 35 (18.9) 480 00.7
Leggett 15 (08.1) 294 00.4
Blunt * 17 (09.2) 28,274 41.0
Caldicott 19 (10.3) 16,091 23.3
(exhausted 2 2 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 187 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3rd count: Leggett's 294 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 40 (13.9) 4,420 06.4
Newell 17 (05.9) 18,484 26.8
Sims 6 (02.1) 1,059 01.5
Paterson 50 (17.4) 530 00.8
Blunt * 29 (10.1) 28,303 41.0
Caldicott 146 (50.7) 16,237 23.5
(exhausted 6 8 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 294 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
4th count: Paterson's 530 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 84 (16.3) 4,504 06.5
Newell 60 (11.7) 18,544 26.9
Sims 57 (11.1) 1,116 01.6
Blunt * 113 (21.9) 28,416 41.2
Caldicott 201 (39.0) 16,438 23.8
(exhausted 15 23 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 530 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
5th count: Sims's 1,116 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gibbs 179 (16.3) 4,683 06.8
Newell 139 (12.6) 18,683 27.1
Blunt * 562 (51.1) 28,978 42.0
Caldicott 220 (20.0) 16,658 24.1
(exhausted 16 39 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1,116 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
6th count: Gibbs's 4,683 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newell 1,555 (33.8) 20,238 29.4
Blunt * 800 (17.4) 29,778 43.2
Caldicott 2,245 (48.8) 18,903 27.4
(exhausted 83 122 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 4,683 69,041
--------------------------------------------------------------------
7th count: Caldicott's 18,903 votes distributed
--------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWELL 14,426 (77.4) 34,664 50.5
Blunt * 4,202 (22.6) 33,980 49.5
(exhausted 275 397 )
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> 18,903 69,041 00.5 07.1 to ALP
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If two candidates are tied at the end of the process, the Electoral Commissioner casts the deciding vote. In practice, however, a recount would almost certainly be requested by an unsuccessful candidate.
Exhausted preferences
The exhausted counts correspond to votes that ought to be informal, if strictly following the rules above, but were deemed to have expressed some valid preferences. The Electoral Act has since been amended to almost eliminate exhausted votes.Section 268(1)(c) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 now has the effect of making the vote of any elector that does not preference every candidate on the ballot paper an informal vote as opposed to counting the vote until the voter's preference exhausts.
Two-party majorities, swings and pendulums
Since 1984 the preferences of all candidates in House of Representatives seats have been distributed, even if this is not necessary to determine the winner of the seat. This is done to determine the percentage of the votes obtained by the winning candidate after the distribution of all preferences. This is called the two-party-preferred vote. For example, if (in the example given above), Smith finished with 58% of the vote after the distribution of Johnson's preferences, Smith's two-party vote would be 58% and the seat would be said to have a two-party majority of 8%. It would therefore need a two-party swing of 8 percentage points to be lost to the other side of politics at the next election.Once the two-party majorities in all seats are known, they can then be arranged in a table to show the order in which they would be lost in the event of an adverse swing at the next election. Such tables frequently appear in the Australian media and are called election pendulums or sometimes Mackerras pendulums after the political scientist Malcolm Mackerras
Malcolm Mackerras
Malcolm Hugh Mackerras AO is an Australian psephologist and commentator and lecturer on Australian and American politics.-Education and works:...
, who popularised the idea of the two-party vote in his 1972 book Australian General Elections.
Here is a sample of the federal election pendulum from the 2001 election, showing some of the seats held by the Liberal-National Party coalition government, in order of their two-party majority. A seat with a small two-party majority is said to be a marginal seat or a swinging seat. A seat with a large two-party majority is said to be a safe seat, although "safe" seats have been known to change hands in the event of a large swing.
| Seat | State | Majority | Member | Party |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HINKLER | Qld | 00.0 | Paul Neville | NPA |
| SOLOMON | NT | 00.1 | Dave Tollner | Lib |
| ADELAIDE | SA | 00.2 | Hon Trish Worth | Lib |
| CANNING | WA | 00.4 | Don Randall | Lib |
| DOBELL | NSW | 00.4 | Ken Ticehurst | Lib |
| PARRAMATTA | NSW | 01.1 | Ross Cameron | Lib |
| McEWEN | Vic | 01.2 | Fran Bailey | Lib |
| PATERSON | NSW | 01.4 | Bob Baldwin | Lib |
| HERBERT | Qld | 01.6 | Peter Lindsay | Lib |
| RICHMOND | NSW | 01.6 | Hon Larry Anthony | NPA |
| DEAKIN | Vic | 01.7 | Philip Barresi | Lib |
| EDEN-MONARO | NSW | 01.7 | Gary Nairn | Lib |
| HINDMARSH | SA | 01.9 | Hon Christine Gallus | Lib |
Redistributions
The boundaries of Australian electoral constituencies are drawn up by the Australian Electoral CommissionAustralian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission, or the AEC, is the federal government agency in charge of organising and supervising federal elections and referendums. State and local government elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission in each state and territory.The Australian Electoral Commission...
, an independent statutory authority, completely independent of political considerations. Members of Parliament and political parties may make submissions to the Commission on proposed new boundaries, but any interference with the Commission's deliberations would be a serious offence.
The Electoral Act requires that all seats have approximately equal numbers of enrolled voters
Electoral register
The electoral roll is a listing of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The register facilitates the process of voting, helps to prevent fraud and may also be used to select people for jury duty...
. When the Commission determines that population shifts within a state have caused some seats to have too many or too few voters, new boundaries are drawn up. This is called a redistribution. Redistributions are also held when the Commission determines (following a formula laid down in the Act) that the distribution of seats among the states and territories must be changed because some states are growing faster than others.
In 2003, for example, redistributions were held in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. South Australia lost one seat, while Queensland gained a seat. Victoria kept the same number of seats, but one seat was abolished and one new seat created.
Casual vacancies
If a member's seat becomes vacant mid-term, whether through resignation, death or some other possible reasons, a by-electionBy-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
may be held. Further details are at Casual vacancies in the Australian Parliament.
The Senate
The Australian SenateAustralian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...
has 76 members: each of the six states
States and territories of Australia
The Commonwealth of Australia is a union of six states and various territories. The Australian mainland is made up of five states and three territories, with the sixth state of Tasmania being made up of islands. In addition there are six island territories, known as external territories, and a...
elects 12 Senators, and the Northern Territory (NT) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) each elect two Senators. The several other Australian Territories have very small populations and are represented by Northern Territory and ACT Senators (for example, Christmas Island
Christmas Island
The Territory of Christmas Island is a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. It is located northwest of the Western Australian city of Perth, south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and ENE of the Cocos Islands....
residents are represented by NT Senators, while Jervis Bay Territory
Jervis Bay Territory
The Jervis Bay Territory is a territory of the Commonwealth of Australia. It was surrendered by the state of New South Wales to the Commonwealth Government in 1915 so that the Federal capital at Canberra would have "access to the sea"....
residents are represented by ACT Senators).
Senators for the states serve six-year terms, with half the Senators from each state being elected at each federal election. The terms of the territory Senators coincide with the duration of the House of Representatives.
The Senate is elected both proportionately and preferentially, except that each state has an equal number of seats so that the distribution of seats to states is non-proportional to the total Australian population. Thus, although within each state the seats proportionally represent the vote for that state, overall the less populous states are proportionally stronger in representation for their population compared to the more populous states.
In each state, political parties which are registered with the Electoral Commission present lists of candidates, which appear as a group on the Senate ballot paper. Independents and members of unregistered parties can also nominate, but they cannot appear on ballot paper as a group.
Voters can vote for the Senate in one of two ways. They can number all the candidates, as they would with a House of Representatives ballot: but since there may be 50 or 60 candidates on the ballot paper, few voters do this. This is called below the line voting. Or they can simply write "1" in a box indicating the party for which they wish to vote. This is called above the line voting. More than 95% of voters cast their votes above the line.
When votes are cast above the line, they amount to accepting whatever "1,2,3,4,..." sequence has been pre-nominated by that party-or-group for that state-or-territory. When an election is imminent, such details (multi-page) can be inspected at the electoral commission's website, http://www.aec.gov.au. Concise single-page sortable tabulations of these pre-nominations have been prepared by Ondwelle Publications for 3 selected states for the election of 21 August 2010: Queensland, NSW and Victoria. — Also available are: Victoria 2007 and Victoria 2004. The latter is of some interest because it illustrates how overly-clever strategic preference-advice can seriously backfire. As explained briefly on page 2, that is how S.Fielding (as candidate for a minor party antagonistic to Labor) ended up being elected thanks to Labor's own preference votes! — a serious matter because Fielding then sometimes held the balance-of-power in the Senate during his six-year term.
The Senate count
The form of preferential voting used in the Senate is technically known as the "Inclusive Gregory".The system for counting Senate votes is complicated, and a final result is sometimes not known for several weeks. When the Senate vote is counted, a quota for election is determined. This is the number of valid votes cast, divided by the number of Senators to be elected plus one.
For example, here is the Senate result for the state of New South Wales from the 1998 federal election. For greater clarity the votes cast for 50 minor party and independent candidates have been excluded.
The quota for election was 3,755,725 divided by seven, or 536,533.
Enrolment: 4,031,749
Turnout: 3,884,333 (96.3%)
Informal votes: 128,608 (03.3%)
Formal votes: 3,755,725
Quota for election: 536,533
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve HUTCHINS
Steve Hutchins
Stephen Patrick Hutchins , Australian politician, has been a member of the Australian Senate for the state of New South Wales since October 1998, representing the Australian Labor Party.Hutchins was born in Sydney...
ALP 1,446,231 38.5 ELECTED 1
Hon John Faulkner
John Faulkner
John Philip Faulkner is an Australian politician. He has been a Labor member of the Australian Senate since 1989, representing the state of New South Wales. Following a period serving on various Senate Committees and as Deputy Whip, he was a Minister in the Keating Labor government 1993-96...
* ALP 2,914 00.1 Group H
Michael Forshaw
Michael Forshaw
Michael George Forshaw , Australian politician, was a member of the Australian Senate for the state of New South Wales from May 1994 to June 2011, representing the Australian Labor Party....
* ALP 864 00.0 Q:2.7073
Ursula Stephens
Ursula Stephens
Ursula Mary Stephens is an Australian politician. She was elected to the Australian Senate for New South Wales in November 2001, representing the Australian Labor Party. She began her term on 1 July 2002....
ALP 2,551 00.1
David Oldfield ON 359,654 09.6 Group K
Brian Burston ON 570 00.0 Q:0.6729
Bevan O'Regan ON 785 00.0
Bill HEFFERNAN
Bill Heffernan
William Daniel Heffernan, more commonly known as Bill Heffernan, , Australian politician, has been a Liberal Party member of the Senate, representing the state of New South Wales, since September 1996.-Early life:...
* Lib 1,371,578 36.5 ELECTED 2
Dr John Tierney
John Tierney (Australian politician)
Dr John Tierney , Australian politician, was a Liberal member of the Australian Senate 1991 - 2005, representing the state of New South Wales....
* Lib 1,441 00.0 Group L
Sandy Macdonald
Sandy Macdonald
John Alexander Lindsay "Sandy" Macdonald is a former Australian politician. He was member of the Australian Senate from 1993 to 1998, and again from 2000 to 2008, representing the state of New South Wales for the National Party.-Early life:...
* NPA 1,689 00.0 Q:2.5638
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
Concetta Anna Fierravanti-Wells , Australian politician, is a member of Australian Senate for the state of New South Wales...
Lib 855 00.0
Aden Ridgeway
Aden Ridgeway
Aden Derek Ridgeway , Australian politician, was a member of the Australian Senate for New South Wales, from 1999 to 2005, representing the Australian Democrats. During his term he was the only Aboriginal member of the Australian Parliament.-Early history:Ridgeway was born in Macksville, New South...
AD 272,481 07.3 Group M
Matthew Baird AD 457 00.0 Q:0.5142
Suzzanne Reddy AD 2,163 00.1
David Mendelssohn AD 809 00.0
John Sutton Grn 80,073 02.1 Group U
Catherine Moore Grn 748 00.0 Q:0.1521
Lee Rhiannon
Lee Rhiannon
Lee Rhiannon , an Australian politician, is a Senator for New South Wales, elected at the 2010 federal election, representing the Australian Greens...
Grn 249 00.0
Suzie Russell Grn 542 00.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
128,608 (03.3%) informal 3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In this table, the Group number allocated to each list is shown at right. Below that is the number of quotas polled by each list. Thus, "Q:2.7073" next to the Labor Party list indicates that the Labor candidates between them polled 2.7073 quotas.
It will be seen that the leading Labor and Liberal candidates, Hutchins and Heffernan, polled more than the quota. They were therefore elected on the first count. Their surplus votes were then distributed. The surplus is the candidate's vote minus the quota. Hutchins's surplus was thus 1,446,231 minus 536,533, or 909,698. These votes are multiplied by a factor (called the "transfer value") based on the proportion of ballot papers preferencing other parties. ABC Election commentator Antony Green
Antony Green
Antony John Green is an Australian psephologist and commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.-Early years and background:...
believes that this method distorts preference allocation.
After Hutchins's surplus votes were distributed, the count looked like this:
Votes Total after
distributed distribution
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUTCHINS E 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 1
FAULKNER * 908,567 (99.9) 911,481 24.3 ELECTED 3
Forshaw * 196 (00.0) 1,060 00.0
Stephens 130 (00.0) 2,681 00.1
Oldfield 186 (00.0) 359,840 09.6
Burston 6 (00.0) 576 00.0
O'Regan 4 (00.0) 789 00.0
HEFFERNAN * E 1,371,578 36.5 ELECTED 2
Tierney * 13 (00.0) 1,454 00.0
Macdonald * 1 (00.0) 1,690 00.0
Fierravanti-Wells 1 (00.0) 856 00.0
Ridgeway 278 (00.0) 272,579 07.3
Baird 5 (00.0) 462 00.0
Reddy 3 (00.0) 2,166 00.1
Mendelssohn 4 (00.0) 813 00.0
Sutton 66 (00.0) 80,139 02.1
Moore 2 (00.0) 750 00.0
Rhiannon 1 (00.0) 250 00.0
Russell 0 542 00.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
909,698 3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
It will be seen that virtually all of Hutchins's surplus votes went to Faulkner, the second candidate on the Labor ticket, who was then elected. This is because all those voters who voted for the Labor party "above the line" had their second preferences automatically allocated to the second Labor candidate. All parties lodge a copy of their How-to-Vote Card with the Electoral Commission, and the Commission follows this card in allocating the preferences of those who vote "above the line." If a voter wished to vote, for example, Hutchins 1 and Heffernan 2, they would need to vote "below the line" by numbering each of the 69 candidates.
In the third count, Heffernan's surplus was distributed and these votes elected Tierney. Faulkner's surplus was then distributed, but these were insufficient to elect Forshaw. Likewise, Tierney's surplus was insufficient to elect McDonald.
After this stage of the count, the remaining candidates in contention (that is, the leading candidates in the major party tickets) were in the following position:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUTCHINS 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 1
FAULKNER * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 3
Forshaw * 375,587 10.0
Oldfield 360,263 09.6
HEFFERNAN * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 2
Tierney * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 4
Macdonald * 300,313 08.0
Ridgeway 273,109 07.3
Sutton 80,186 02.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
All the other candidates were then eliminated one by one, starting with the candidates with the smallest number of votes, and their votes were distributed among the candidates remaining in contention in accordance with the preferences expressed on their ballot papers. After this process was completed, the remaining candidates were in the following position:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
HUTCHINS 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 1
FAULKNER * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 3
Forshaw * 450,446 12.0
Oldfield 402,154 10.7
HEFFERNAN * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 2
Tierney * 536,533 14.3 ELECTED 4
Macdonald * 357,572 09.5
Ridgeway 286,157 07.6
Sutton 112,602 03.0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
3,755,725
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sutton was then eliminated. 80% of Sutton's preferences went to Ridgeway, giving Ridgeway more votes than McDonald. McDonald was then eliminated, and 93% of his preferences went to Ridgeway, thus giving him a quota and the fifth Senate seat. Ridgeway's surplus was then distributed, and 96% of his votes went to Forshaw, thus giving him a quota and the sixth seat. Oldfield was the last remaining unsuccessful candidate.
A final point needs to be explained. It was noted above that when a candidate polls more votes than the quota, their surplus vote is distributed to other candidates. Thus, in the example given above, Hutchins's surplus was 909,698, or 1,446,231 (his primary vote) minus 536,533 (the quota). It may be asked: which 909,698 of Hutchins's 1,446,231 primary votes are distributed? Are they chosen at random from among his votes? In fact they are all distributed, but at less than their full value. Since 909,698 is 62.9% of 1,446,231, each of Hutchins's votes is transferred to other candidates as 62.9% of a vote: each vote is said to have a transfer value of 0.629. This avoids any possibility of an unrepresentative sample of his votes being transferred. After each count the candidate's progressive total is rounded down to the nearest whole number. This means that a small number of votes are lost by fractionation in the final count.
When a person is appointed Divisional Returning Officer for a seat, his electoral enrolment will be transferred from the electorate where he lives to the one he administers. Normally he will be precluded from voting at an election, but instead will have two special powers; these are:
1. If during the count there are two candidates with equal lowest votes, he can decide which will be excluded.
2. If at the end of the count the two candidates left have an equal number of votes, he will get to vote in the election by giving a casting vote to the candidate he prefers. This is his personal vote, just like any other elector's, and is awarded at his sole discretion.
Casual vacancies
If a senator's seat becomes vacant mid-term, whether through resignation, death or some other possible reasons, the parliament of the relevant state or the legislative assembly of the relevant territory chooses a replacement senator. Further details are at Casual vacancies in the Australian Parliament.Double dissolutions
Under the Australian ConstitutionConstitution of Australia
The Constitution of Australia is the supreme law under which the Australian Commonwealth Government operates. It consists of several documents. The most important is the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia...
, the House of Representatives and the Senate generally have equal legislative powers (the only exception being that appropriation (supply) bills must originate in the House of Representatives). This means that a government formed in the House of Representatives can be seriously frustrated by a Senate majority determined to reject its legislation.
In these circumstances, Section 57 of the Constitution allows the Governor-General to dissolve the House of Representatives and the entire Senate – this is called a "double dissolution" – and issue writs for an election in which every seat in the Parliament is contested. A governor-general would usually take such action only on the advice of the Prime Minister.