EMC Submission No. 103 Received 9 September 2019 Submission to the Victorian Parliament's Electoral Matters Committee Inquiry into the Conduct of the 2018 Victorian State Election By Antony Green Election Analyst Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Background on Preferential Voting ..................................................................................................... 3 The Introduction of PR-STV in Australia.............................................................................................. 5 Further Developments with Hare-Clark .............................................................................................. 5 The Development of the Senate's Electoral System ........................................................................... 6 Electoral Changes at the 2016 Election .............................................................................................. 9 How Voters Reacted to the New Senate System in 2016 ................................................................. 10 Changes to Nominations under the Senate's New Electoral System ............................................... 12 Turning Votes into Seats Under the Senate's New Electoral System ............................................... 13 Lessons for Victorian Legislative Council Elections from the Senate Experience ............................ 16 A Note on Victorian Informal Voting ................................................................................................ 19 Discussion on Options ....................................................................................................................... 20 Recommendations ............................................................................................................................ 22 Appendix 1: Hare-Clark Ballot Paper Examples – ACT ...................................................................... 23 Appendix 2: Sample Senate Ballot Paper (Post 2016 changes) ........................................................ 24 Appendix 3: Ireland Ballot Paper Example ........................................................................................ 25 Appendix 4: Sample PR-STV How-to-Vote recommendation from 1922 NSW Election ................... 26 Appendix 5: 1974 NSW Senate Election – Labor How-to-Vote......................................................... 27 Appendix 6: 1999 NSW Legislative Council Ballot Paper (the 'tablecloth') ...................................... 28 Introduction When Victoria introduced proportional representation for Legislative Council elections in 2006, it adopted most of the features of the electoral system then used to elect the Senate and all other mainland Legislative Councils. As shown in Table 1, there has been a pattern for Australian state parliaments to follow the Commonwealth's path in upper house electoral reform, first with the use of proportional representation, then with the adoption of a divided ballot paper and group voting tickets. Table 1 - Following the Senate Example Year of Election where rules first applied Introduction of Introduction of Divided Ballot Paper Proportional and Group Voting Abolition of Group Jurisdiction Representation Tickets Voting Tickets Senate 1949 1984 2016 New South Wales 1978 1988 2003 Victoria 2006 2006 .. Western Australia 1989 1989 .. South Australia 1975 1985 2018 Note: The Queensland Legislative Council was abolished in 1922. The Tasmanian Parliament uses proportional representation in the lower house and single member electorates in the Legislative Council. The ACT uses proportional representation for its one chamber while the Northern Territory uses single member electorates. Majoritarian voting in the Senate was abandoned for proportional representation in 1949. The upper house proportional model was followed by South Australia in 1975 (it used a form of D'Hondt proportional representation initially), and by NSW when popular election for the Legislative Council was introduced in 1978. Western Australia abandoned majoritarian voting in favour of proportional representation in 1989, followed by Victoria in 2006. As will be explained later, a divided ballot paper with group voting tickets was adopted for the Senate in 1984, largely as a solution to high rate of informal voting. South Australia in 1985 and NSW in 1988 incorporated the Senate changes into their existing proportional systems, while Western Australia and Victoria introduced proportional representation and the Senate electoral system at the same time. Introduced at a time when there were fewer political parties, group voting tickets essentially institutionalised party how-to-votes. It was not anticipated that new parties would form entirely to use group voting tickets. Over three decades, parties learnt to 'game' the system with tickets, to engage in exotic preference swaps that became known as 'preference harvesting'. The number of groups on state Senate ballots rose from an average 7.7 in 1984 to 33.7 in 2013. The proportionality of party representation was increasingly distorted compared to the proportionality of party vote. The problems created by group voting tickets were exposed by the 1999 NSW Legislative Council election. Voters were presented with what has become known as the 'tablecloth', a triple-decked ballot paper one metre wide by 700mm deep with 81 columns, 27 per row, and 264 candidates. (See Appendix 6). South Australia experienced similar problems after 2002. 2 Antony Green – Victorian EMC Submission After the 1999 fiasco, NSW abolished group voting tickets for the 2003 Legislative Council election. The divided ballot paper was retained, voters given a new voting option to indicate preferences for parties above the line. The system was first used at the 2003 NSW election, and along with reform of party registration rules, it reduced the number of groups on the ballot paper from 81 to 16. The NSW problems have been repeated in other jurisdictions, but none adopted the NSW solution until the Commonwealth abandoned Senate group voting tickets in 2016. South Australia followed in 2018. Only Victoria and Western Australia retain group voting tickets as part of their electoral systems. As this submission explains, Victorian Legislative Council results are following the same path to electoral distortion played out previously at Senate elections. In particular, the 2018 Victorian Legislative Council election displayed the same electoral distortions as the 2013 Senate election, a result that led to reform of the Senate's electoral system. In this submission I will outline the problems that developed at Senate elections in the three decades after the introduction of group voting tickets in 1984. I will then compare results of the 2013 Senate election under group voting tickets with 2019 election results under the new electoral system. The comparison shows how the new system produces a more proportional result with fewer distortions produced by exotic preference deals. It is best to start by outlining some basic features of preferential voting in multi-member electorates. This will categorise types of preferences in multi-members systems, and how ballot paper designs have enhanced or diminished the ability of voters and parties to control preferences. Background on Preferential Voting Preferential voting is the dominant method of voting in Australia, used for federal, state, territory and most local government elections. Preferential voting is used to elect representatives from both single member and multi-member districts. Very few countries other than Australia use preferential voting. Preferential voting in single-member electorates is usually referred to in academic literature as the alternative vote. In recent years it has seen a revival in the United States where it is often called instant run-off voting. In Australia single member preferential voting has three variants. By far the most common form is full preferential voting where voters must number all squares. Optional preferential voting is used in New South Wales, until recently in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and is the dominant form in other countries where preferential voting is used. In Tasmania and the ACT, limited preferential voting is used, voters being asked to indicate a minimum number of preferences. Multi-member preferential voting is known in the academic literature as proportional representation by single transferrable vote, shortened to PR-STV or just STV. In Australia, PR-STV can be divided into two broad categories based on ballot paper structure. • Hare-Clark ballots - used to elect the governing lower house in Tasmania and the ACT. Hare- Clark uses a ballot paper where votes must be cast for candidates. Sample Hare-Clark ballot papers are provided in Appendix 1. • Divided ballots - used to elect upper houses at elections for the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Victorian, Western Australian and South Australian parliaments. Voters have the Antony Green – Victorian EMC Submission 3 option to vote for parties 'above the line' or for individual candidates 'below the line'. An example of a divided ballot paper is provided in Appendix 2. Recent developments in Australian electoral systems suggest that the Divided Ballot category should be sub-divided into two further categories based on how much control over preferences voters have when using 'above the line' party voting