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Submission to Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters

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Submission to Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Submission 131 Date Received: 31 March 2014 Submission to Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Chris Curtis March 2014 Submission to Joint Committee on Electoral Matters: Chris Curtis Summary The sudden triumph of the micro-parties has created consternation across the land and predictable calls to “reform” the system. Some are thoughtful, but most are knee-jerk reactions, oblivious to the democratic principles of the single transferable vote system, designed to advantage one particular party and/or deeply undemocratic. The issue is not that some candidates were elected with tiny initial votes. It is that the system discourages voting below the line. 1. The Constitution requires that senators be “directly chosen by the people”, thus ruling out party list systems. 2. The single transferable vote upholds this principle in a highly democratic way. 3. That the complaints about the results of the 2013 Senate election are motivated by hostility to those elected, not by any principle, is obvious from the silence in the far greater majority of cases in which candidates with tiny primary votes have been elected. 4. Setting a threshold for candidates to remain in the race is undemocratic. 5. Replacing below-the-line preferences with above-the-line preferences is unconstitutional, while allowing above-the-line optional preferences along with below-the-line preferences is undemocratic, irrational and likely to produce random results. 6. Group voting tickets are perfectly democratic. 7. The only change needed to the voting system is to make preferences below the line optional after a certain number. 8. The Australian Electoral Commission ought to provide assistance to voters to vote formally below the line via a website. 9. The Constitution should be amended to entrench the single transferable vote for Senate elections. 10. Tightening deposit requirements would reduce the clogging the ballot paper by candidates who cannot be elected. 11. Tightening party registration requirements would reduce the number of overnight parties with no base in the state that they are contesting. 1. Constitutional Principle The outrage at the 2013 Senate results is based on the assertion that someone with a very small vote has not got the right to be elected, a stance that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles and operations of the single transferable vote and a stance that was mentioned by no one on any of the pre-2004 occasions on which 2 Submission to Joint Committee on Electoral Matters: Chris Curtis someone with a very small vote got elected, these occasions being in every Senate election since the STV system was introduced in 1949. The first point to keep in mind is Section 7 the Australian Constitution: “7. The Senate shall be composed of senators for each State, directly chosen by the people of the State, voting, until the Parliament otherwise provides, as one electorate.” Senators cannot be “directly chosen by the people” unless the people have the option for voting for every candidate on the ballot paper. Party lists systems that compel a vote for the Number One candidate of a party and prevent a vote for the Number Two candidate of that party are unconstitutional because they interpose a party choice between the candidates and the voters’ rights. That would mean that senators are no longer “directly chosen by the people”. (This does not make group voting tickets or the option of above-the-line voting unconstitutional as neither of them compels a vote for particular candidates or prevents a vote for others: the voter retains the freedom to vote for any individual candidate on the ballot paper.) 2. The Single Transferable Vote The single transferable vote allows voters to vote for any candidate they wish in any order they wish. The above-the-line addition gives particular party-chosen sets of preferences an advantage over the millions of other possible sets of preferences possible, but every voter has the right to choose one of those non-party-chosen sets of preferences, even though few do so. The system upholds the Constitution, though the addition of above-the-line voting and group voting tickets makes the practical operation of the system similar to a party list system. The system means that at each stage of the count a choice is being made between those candidates with sufficient support to be left in the count. It is in effect a series of elections. It is the same as there being an election on one day among 100 candidates, followed by an election the next day among 99 candidates, followed the next day by an election among 98 candidates, followed the next day by an election among 97 candidates, and so on. At each election, the candidate with the least support drops out and the voters make a choice from the remaining candidates. Instead of having 99 days of elections, the STV system has one day and simply recounts the votes as each candidate drops out – just as in preferential voting in single-member seats. Another way of looking at it is to imagine 10,000 voters in a room, moving initially to the candidates they most prefer and then moving from the least supported candidate to the one they next support until it is clear which candidates have the support to be elected. At the end of the process, we have the candidates elected that have the most support and thus a Senate that is most representative of the people in each state and territory. 3 Submission to Joint Committee on Electoral Matters: Chris Curtis 3. The Irrational Complaints The widespread complaint after the 2013 Senate election was that candidates like Ricky Muir and Wayne Droplich had been elected on minuscule votes. Yet this complaint was not heard at all in elections before 2004 (in which Family First’s Steve Fielding won a seat on an initial 1.9 per cent of the vote) or in this election about major party senators also elected on minuscule votes. The outrage is not coming from the 23.5 per cent of Australians who voted for micro-party candidates. In 1949, Albert Reid of the Country Party was elected as a senator from NSW with 12,940 initial votes (0.5 percent); John Gorton of the Liberal Party was elected as a senator from Victoria with 1,510 initial votes (0.1 per cent); Archibald Benn of the ALP was elected as a senator from Queensland with 2,109 initial votes (0.3 per cent); Edmund Piesse of the Country Party was elected as a senator from WA with 12,197 initial votes (4.5 per cent); George McLeay of the Liberal Party was elected as a senator from SA with 4,108 initial votes (1.1 per cent); William Aylett of the ALP was elected as a senator from Tasmania with 9,345 initial votes (6.7 per cent) (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/, which gives percentage results to one decimal place). In 1980, Bruce Childs of the ALP (with 3,605 initial votes or 0.1 per cent), Douglas Scott of the National Country party (with 4,922 initial votes or 0.2 per cent) and Kerry Sibraa of the ALP (with 5,009 initial votes or 0.2 per cent) were all elected as senators from NSW. In 1993, Warwick Parer of the Liberal Party (with 631 initial votes or less than 0.1 per cent), Mal Colston of the ALP (with 1,053 initial votes or 0.1 per cent) and John Woodley of the Australian Democrats (with 128,993 initial votes or 7.0 per cent) were all elected as senators from Queensland. In 1993, Dee Margetts of the Greens (with 53,211 initial votes or 5.5 per cent), Christopher Evans of the ALP (with 643 initial votes or 0.1 per cent), Ian Campbell of the Liberal Party (with 1,153 initial votes or 0.1 per cent) and Chris Ellison of the Liberal Party (with 262 initial votes or less than 0.1 per cent) were all elected as senators from WA. In 2004, Stephen Conroy of the ALP (with 780 initial votes or 0.03 per cent), Julian McGauran of the National Party (with 1190 initial votes or 0.04 per cent) and Judith Troeth of the Liberal Party (with 829 initial votes or 0.03 per cent) were all elected as senators from Victoria. In 2007, Simon Birnmingham of the Liberal Party (with 653 initial votes or 0.06 per cent) and Penny Wong of the ALP (with 2,796 initial votes or 0.3 per cent) were both elected as senators from SA. In 2010, Stephen Conroy of the ALP (with 1,467 initial votes or 0.04 per cent) and Bridget McKenzie of the National Party (with 1045 initial votes or 0.03 per cent) were both elected as senators from Victoria. 4 Submission to Joint Committee on Electoral Matters: Chris Curtis There was no outcry to any of these candidates getting into the Senate on preferences. In 2013, Doug Cameron of the ALP was elected as a senator from NSW with 1,836 initial votes (0.04 per cent), yet the complaint seems to be about David Leyonhjelm of the LDP, who was elected with even more initial votes - 415,762 (or 9.5 per cent); Scott Ryan of the Liberal Party was elected as a senator from Victoria with 737 initial votes (0.02 per cent), yet the complaint seems to be about Ricky Muir of the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, who was elected with even more initial votes - 17,083 (or 0.5 per cent); James McGrath of the Liberal National Party was elected as a senator from Queensland with 505 initial votes (0.02 per cent), yet the complaint seems to be about Glenn Lazarus of the PUP, who was elected with even more initial votes – 258,119 (or 9.9 per cent); Michaelia Cash of the Liberal Party was elected as a senator from WA with 349 initial votes (0.03 per cent), yet the complaint seems to be about Wayne Dropulich of the Australian Sports Party, who was elected with even more initial votes – 2,974 (or 0.2 per cent); Simon Birmingham of the Liberal Party was elected as a senator from SA with 1,013 initial votes (0.09 per cent), yet the complaint seems to be about Bob Day of Family First, who was elected with even more initial votes – 38,909 (or 3.8 per cent); Catrina Bylik of the ALP was elected as a senator from Tasmania with 819 initial votes (0.2 per cent), yet the complaint seems to be about Jacqui Lampe of the PUP, who was elected with even more initial votes - 1,974 (or 6.4 per cent).
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