Victorian Electoral Reform-the problem, and what can be done

This post, like the previous one, is one on fairly parochial matters.

In my last post, I dealt with the issue of electoral reform in South Australia. While the reform proposed had its flaws, the South Australian state government is to be commended for at least making efforts to change the electoral system. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the state government of Victoria.

Victoria, like South Australia and Western Australia at present and the Federal Parliament up until this year, uses group tickets combined with the single transferable vote to elect its upper house of forty members. The criticisms I and others have made of group tickets in other jurisdictions apply for the most part here, though the rules in Victoria are somewhat different. In Victoria, each district, of which there are eight, elects five members for a four-year term. Votes above the line count as acceptance of that party's group ticket, and if voters wish to express their own preferences, they must vote below the line, for individual candidates. Victoria, unlike the other jurisdictions that use this system, allows voters to only number five boxes below the line.

Nonetheless, relatively few voters exercise this option. While the 8% rate is higher than that implemented at the federal level at recent elections, it is low enough to have little impact on the distribution of seats; while some might say that this reflects active voter support for party preference dealings, it does contrast notably with low follow rates for how-to-vote cards under the new system for the federal Senate. This suggests that voters may not be actively accepting the party deals, but perhaps rather being confused by the message from the federal Electoral Commission, still being promoted up to the last state election, that voters must number every box below the line.

In Victoria, the problem initially appeared less acute. At the first Legislative Council election under the aforementioned system, one member of the Democratic Labour Party was elected off 2.6% of the first preference vote from Labor, National, Family First and Country Alliance votes. The 2010 election saw this member defeated, with the lowest primary vote a party received a seat from being 11.7% for the Greens in Western Metropolitan.

However, at the most recent election, a total of nineteen parties contested at least one district, creating ample opportunities for preference swapping. This resulted in the election of several members with low initial support, as can be seen below.

District	Member	Party affiliation	Primary vote
Eastern Victoria	Jeffrey Bourman	Shooters and Fishers	2.44%
Northern Metropolitan	Fiona Patten	Sex Party	2.87%
Northern Victoria	Daniel Young	Shooters and Fishers	3.49%
Western Metropolitan	Rachel Carling-Jenkins	Democratic Labour	2.57%
Western Victoria	James Purcell	Vote 1 Local Jobs	1.29%

The above list shows the members elected with less than 25% of a quota (that is to say, less than about 4.15%). 

No personal judgement on these MPs should be considered when evaluating this system. It is safe to say that it is a relatively wide ideological cross-section. The issue here is whether they were fairly elected. 

Below is a list of where these candidates received their group ticket preferences from.

Member	Party	Group ticket votes from
Jeffrey Bourman	Shooters and Fishers	Australian Cyclists Party People Power Victoria/No Smart Meters Rise Up Australia Democratic Labour Party Australian Christians Family First Palmer United Party Sex Party Liberal Democrats
Fiona Patten	Sex Party	Voluntary Euthanasia Party Shooters and Fishers Liberal Democrats The Basics Rock’n’Roll Party Australian Greens Animal Justice Party Australian Cyclists Party
Daniel Young	Shooters and Fishers	People Power Victoria/No Smart Meters Palmer United Party Sex Party Australian Cyclists Party Liberal/National Coalition
Rachel Carling-Jenkins	Democratic Labour	Country Alliance Rise Up Australia Shooters and Fishers Party Australian Christians Voice for the West People Power Victoria/No Smart Meters Family First Liberal Democrats Liberal Party
James Purcell	Vote 1 Local Jobs	Country Alliance Family First Liberal/National Coalition Sex Party Democratic Labour Rise Up Australia People Power Victoria/No Smart Meters Australian Christians Liberal Democrats Shooters and Fishers

Some of these preference decisions may seem sufficiently democratic, like the libertarian Liberal Democrats, whose leader strongly supports liberalisation of gun laws, preferencing the Shooters and Fishers, or the Voluntary Euthanasia Party preferencing the Sex Party, which supports legalisation of euthanasia.

Others, however, are more questionable. For example, do voters for the Sex Party, which supports the legalisation of marijuana for recreational purposes, really want a Legislative Councillor from the Shooters and Fishers, whose NSW policy statement on the matter states that they want "increased education and information about the harmful effects of drugs together with police powers". The same preference decision was made for voters for the Cyclist Party. Or do voters from the Liberal Democrats want a Legislative Councillor from the Democratic Labour Party? These two parties have a whole host of policy differences, from free trade to same-sex marriage to foreign ownership of land. And yet the preferences of one went to the other.

The real question here is not whether these are the "right" decisions as determined by me. It is whether they are decisions that reflect the wishes of voters. Perhaps there are Liberal Democrats out there who want their next preferences to go to the Greens, or Sex Party voters who want their votes to go to the Shooters and Fishers. The current system, however, lets parties make these decisions through the group ticket system. 

A change to the federal system, where an above-the-line preference counts as only a preference for that party and where voters may cast as many or as few above-the-line preferences as they wish, would give this power back to the voters. If voters wish to make strange decisions, that is their prerogative, and that could result in members being elected with low primary vote shares. However, it is far less likely that this will happen under the new system, given that these artificially strong preference flows would not exist. 

Opponents of this change may argue that the federal system allows above-the-line votes to exhaust, if voters do not cast a preference for all candidates in the count. Nonetheless, the federal campaign to encourage voters to number at least six boxes worked successfully, suggesting that voters will cast preferences for more than one party. It is also worth noting that a vote exhausting may be a deliberate act; a voter may genuinely have no preference between further candidates.

Opponents may also argue that second candidates of parties are elected with low vote totals are regularly elected with low primary votes. Nonetheless, in terms of voter consent for the election of these members, this is a quite different matter. A person voting above-the-line for the Labor Party under the federal Senate system can clearly see exactly the candidates to which that vote will go; if the group ticket system is used, they would have to consult the long and complex list of group ticket preferences in order to determine where that vote will go. Hence a candidate elected on intraparty preferences under the federal Senate system has greater consent than one elected on interparty group tickets.

What can you do?

This is very much a section for Victorian consumption only.

The Andrews Government does not appear to have made public statements or introduced any legislation in support of repealing group ticket voting for any sort of replacement. This may reflect apparent ideological opposition to the change, as demonstrated by federal Labor, or mere unwillingness to irritate members of the crossbench required to pass legislation. Nonetheless, the South Australian Labor Party's proposal halfway through their term suggests that it can be done.

International Elections does not normally encourage readers to engage in political activity. But if you've read what I've written, and want to show your support for a change to the electoral system, there are a couple of things you can do. You can contact your MP (a tool for finding your electorate and contact details for MPs is here, click on your district than 'View Member' to see contact details) to show your concern and support for change. I have written a basic template for such a communication here.

It is worth noting that if you have limited time, the most important MPs to contact on such an issue would be from the Labor Party, given that their support is necessary to pass a bill through the lower house. A personal email to my local Australian Greens MLC has established their support for change, so you don't really have to bother with them.

If you wish to take this further, I am circulating a petition to the Legislative Council, that I hope to present through an MP. A copy of this petition is available here; if you wish to circulate it for signatures, please contact me (on Twitter, or by email in my Blogger profile on the sidebar) for details of where you can return it. Please note that signatures may only be presented if they are physically on the specific paper template, thanks to the antiquated rules the Victorian Parliament sets out for presentation of the petition.