Australian electoral system

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. This article deals with elections to the Australian Parliament. Different systems are used for the states and territories.

The House of Representatives

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

Related Topics:
Australian House of Representatives - Australian electorates - 1992

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This is because of what appears to be a uniquely Australian institution, the How-to-Vote Card. On election day, volunteers from all the political parties stand outside every polling place in the country, handing every voter 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 will take the Liberal How-to-Vote Card and follow its instructions very carefully. Australian voters show a high degree of party loyalty in following their party's Card.

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The challenge of numbering the ballot paper leads a certain number of voters to simply number the candidates from 1 to 10 (or whatever) straight down the ballot paper. This is called the donkey vote. It gives some advantage (perhaps 1 or 2%) to the candidate at the top of the ballot paper. Before 1984, candidates appeared in alphabetical order, which led to a profusion of Aaronses and Abbotts contesting elections. (The most famous example of this was the 1937 election, in which the Labor Senate ticket in New South Wales consisted of candidates named Armour, Ashley, Armstrong and Arthur: all were elected.) Since 1984 ballot paper order has been decided by lot.

Related Topics:
Donkey vote - 1984 - 1937 - New South Wales - Armour - Ashley - Armstrong - Arthur

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The House Count

The form of preferential voting used in the House of Representatives is technically known as instant runoff voting, IRV or the alternative ballot. These terms are not used in Australia.

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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. If one of the candidates has more than 50% of the vote, then she or he is declared elected. Australian politics are influenced by social and economic demographics, though the correlation between "class" and voting is not always simple http://elecpress.monash.edu.au/pnp/free/pnpv4n4/bettcl.htm. Typically, the Labor Party will poll higher in strongly working-class seats, the Liberal party in middle-class seats, and the National Party in rural seats. In a strong seat, the elected party might win up to 80% of the two-party preferred vote. In the 2004 Federal Election, the highest winning margin in a seat was 25.1% http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/results/latest.htm, with most seats marginal by less than 10%.

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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:

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White (Democrat) 6,000 06.0%

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Smith (Labor) 45,000 45.0%

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Jones (Liberal) 35,000 35.0%

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Johnson (Green) 10,000 10.0%

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Davies (Ind) 4,000 04.0%

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In this case, 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 allocated to the remaining candidates according to which candidate received the number 2 vote on their ballot papers. Suppose Davies's preferences split 50/50 between Smith and Jones. Smith would then have 47% and Jones 37%. 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.

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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 drawn ahead of Newell and won on his preferences.

Related Topics:
1990 - Charles Blunt - National Party of Australia - New South Wales - Helen Caldicott - Labor - Neville Newell

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RICHMOND, NSW 73,794 enrolled, 70,571 (95.6%) voted

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North Coast NSW: Byron Bay, Lismore, Murwillumbah, Tweed Heads

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