8.2 Voting System
Description
This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales with numerous contributions by others.
8.2 Voting System
* How to Vote
Each Australian citizen should be registered on the electoral rolls at
the age of 18. Voting in Australia is compulsory. In practice, this
means that you have to go to a voting station, receive voting papers
and get your name ticked off. You do not have to cast a valid vote.
Typically "informal" votes range from 5-10% of the vote.
People who were granted permanent resident status and were enrolled to
vote before 1984 may continue to do so. Those who neglected to enroll
to vote before 1984 cannot vote regardless of when they're permanent
residency was granted, unless they become citizens.
Votes usually cast their vote at a local polling station in their
electorate. If you are not in your electorate on the day of the vote,
you can go to any polling station and cast an "absentee" vote. If you
do not think you will be able to go to a polling station on the day,
you can cast a postal vote earlier.
To cast a postal vote overseas, write to the nearest embassy or
consulate, or call them. They will send you a form to fill in (which
has to be witnessed by an Australian citizen). They then send you the
postal vote slip, which you have to return by a date usually before
the election.
[SW] You can have yourself removed from the electoral rolls if you
intend to leave the country for in excess of 3 years.
* Electoral Structure and Voting System.
[I got several good summaries, so I've included them all for the
moment. The next FAQ maintainer might like to compress them. AN]
[PD, AN]
Australia is divided into 147 federal electorates. Each electorates
elects a member to the House of Representatives. The voting system is
compulsory preferential voting. "Preferential Voting System" is used
in all Lower Houses in Australia except Tasmania. Also used in the
Upper House (Legislative Council I think) in Victoria (whose upper
house is made of "super- electorates") Historically, it was brought in
(there is a little supposition here) because at the time of Federation,
Conservative politic was divided into two Parties; Free Traders and
Protectionists while the Left was only the Labour Party. The
Conservatives didn't want what occurs to the left in England now to
affect them; namely with a First past the post system, Labour could
have won office with, say, 40% of the vote.
Anyway, the philosophy behind it is that the most preferred candidate
is elected. (Or more precisely the least preferred candidate is not
elected!) When voting the elector must number all candidates from most
preferred to least preferred (ie say 1-4 for four candidates), i.e. not
put a cross next the name in a first past the post system. Primary
votes are counted, i.e. who got no 1. If there is not an absolute
majority of votes for some candidate (winner outright), then candidate
with least votes has their preferences distributed. To do this votes
of least popular candidate ONLY, are given in full to voters' 2nd
preference. If there is still not an absolute majority then 2nd least
popular candidate's next preferences are redistributed. In the worst
case, no candidate will get over 50% until there are only 2 candidates
remaining, by which stage there must be a winner. If there is a draw
between 2 candidates at the end (50% each) the winner is drawn "out of
the hat."
Example: round 1 (first preferences) (100 votes)
Fred 35 <- less than 50% Must distribute preferences
Jane 30
Paul 25
Bronie 10 <- least votes; eliminated; goto no 2's on
on ballot; Paul 7; Fred 2; Jane 1
Round 2
Fred 35+2 = 37
Jane 30+1 = 31 <- eliminated because of fewest votes
Paul 25+7 = 32
preferences (note if someone had Jane 1, Bronie 2, then
you would look at who they had 3!) Fred 12; Paul 19
Round 3
Fred 35+2+12=49
Paul 25+7+19=51 <- Paul elected (This example shows why
how the preferences are distributed and why the
political parties have scrutineers watching the vote
counting (ie to count how many preferences))
Most states have optional preferential voting, which is the same as
compulsory preferential except that if preferences are not marked then
those votes are eliminated from the count.
The federal Senate is elected with a proportional representation (PR)
voting system. Until the mid 80s, on the Senate ballot paper, the
electors had to fill out all boxes (usually of the order of 50 in
Victoria). Of course this led to a high incidence of invalid votes.
Since then, they changed the law so that the names of the political
affiliations of the candidates could be placed on all ballots papers.
(Previously, once you entered the polling booth, if you didn't know
who represented what, you had to guess.) This law enabled a
simplification of the Senate Ballot. Now, you have a choice; filling
in all 50+ boxes; or filling in one (and only one) box which signifies
a particular party (and not candidate). Then the preferences are
distributed as predetermined by the party. (They must inform voters
before the election how they will distribute their preferences!)
The idea of the proportional representation system is that the
candidates represent an equal cross-section of both the community and
the country (hence 6 Senators in each state per election no matter
what the population is; this was a compromise made to the smaller
states at Federation as they feared (probably quite rightly) that
they'd be "crushed" by Victoria and New South Wales.) Anyway the
system means that there is a "quota" of votes required to elect a
candidate. This quota is determined by the following formula
Total number of Votes/(no of positions +1) +1 = Quota.
---- (and rounded down)
Eg 100 votes, 6 seats -> 100/(6+1) + 1 = 15.3 Quota 15 votes. (Note
that if 6 candidates get 15 votes, a seventh candidate can only get
10. (It works better with bigger numbers)
Now the counting of votes works in part as with the preferential
system (ie lowest candidate eliminated and preferences distributed),
but there is a twist. If a candidate gets above the quota (ie quota
20; Jane get 25 votes, then her preferences are ALL distributed at a
reduced values (to the total of 5 votes) according to the formula
(Candidate Votes-Quota)/Candidate votes = Value of preferences
(25-20)/25 = 0.2
As you can see this makes for a hell of a lot of difficulty and is why
while HofR results are known quickly, Senate votes take of the order
of a month or more to be determined!
* State Systems
All the states except for Tassie use single member electorates for the
lower houses. Tasmania has 6 multimember electorates, same system as
the senate.
The upper houses in the States (except for Qld which doesn't have one)
are mainly single member electorates, universal sufferage, but it had
been property franchise up to 60's or 70's in some states. Upper
house electorates in some states still vary in number of electors by
huge margins in some states notably WA. Conservative upper house
gerrymander is very severe. There are as many systems in detail as
states. There is part of the house based on electorates and part on PR
in NSW [confirm? AN].
Continue to:
My Books
