Why The BCCA Was Right To Disallow Above the Line Voting
Antony Hodgson
Leslie Cannold
December 16, 2006
IT TURNED out to be a storm in a teacup. In response to calls for a
recount from a Victorian ALP confident the Democratic Labor Party's
number two man had cheated its own candidate of victory, the Victorian
Electoral Commission ran the figures again. On Thursday, the elevation
of a third Greens candidate to the upper house was announced.
Paul Austin (Opinion, 14/12) derided those who feared a second DLP berth
would unleash the same sort of horse-trading that federal Family First
senator Steve Fielding has made an art form. But Austin is mistaken. It
is true that the DLP would have been only one of three minor parties
with whom Labor could have done deals to pass contested legislation in
the upper house.
However, the known reluctance of socially conservative Premier Steve
Bracks to allow a vote on the decriminalisation of abortion, and the
implied willingness of the DLP to unquestioningly stand as one with the
Government if it shelved plans to bring the issue to a vote, made the
party a real threat to progress on this and other women's reproductive
health issues.
Indeed, it is possible that the elected DLP member, Peter Kavanagh,
retains the power to blackmail the Government into steering clear of the
abortion debate, given the necessity of his vote for the opposition
parties to call the Government to account through the inquiry and
committee process.
There are two conclusions to be drawn from the DLP seat that might have
been. The first is that sadly, state party functionaries appear
incapable of learning from the glacial mistakes of their federal
counterparts. Despite the election of Fielding to the Australian Senate
in 2004 on preference deals (the party had just under 2 per cent of the
primary vote), Victorian party apparatchiks adopted similarly misguided
tactics in their preferencing of the DLP. Hopefully, it won't require an
entire electoral cycle of monorail-minded horse-trading of votes on key
national issues in exchange for misogynist health policy and a bit of
verbal gay-bashing, to prompt wiser choices next time around.
Which brings me to the second point: the sobering fact that about 98 per
cent of Victorians in federal elections, and 95 per cent in state ones,
vote above the line. Such electors chose only the party that gets their
primary vote. That party then decides — according to prevailing
priorities, beliefs, relationships, threats and patronage promises — how
their vote will be redistributed in the event its candidate fails to get
over the line.
The cynicism Australians feel about their political leaders makes this
an odd choice. Why give those you neither trust nor respect critical
control over who wields the reins of power? On the other hand,
reservoirs of contempt may have nowhere to flow but to seas of
indifference. This is certainly the view of the experts who, in the
absence of hard data, speculate that a strong desire for voting to be
quick and painless motivates many to vote above the line. Above-the-line
voting is quick, and reduces the stress surrounding additional
decision-making beyond who we like best.
However, laziness and indifference may not entirely explain our voting
behaviour. Despite the newness of procedures surrounding the election of
the upper house last month, approximately 3 per cent more Victorians
voted below the line than had done in the 2004 federal election. This
may be because the new ballot paper makes below-the-line voting easier,
requiring voters to rank just five candidates rather than the
approximately 65 needing to be ordered when voting federally.
I wonder if voters who are better informed about what their preferred
party intends to do with their vote may be less inclined to hand over
control. While the Victorian Electoral Act requires group voting tickets
to be "prominently displayed" at polling booths, the VEC does little
more than post preference deals on its website and signpost the
manager's possession of this information at voting centres. In the
future, it might be hoped that the Bracks Government's laudatory march
towards a state-of-the-art electoral system would see electronic voting
offered to all Victorians, not just the vision-impaired. I fantasise
about a computer interface that would respond to an above-the-line vote
with an information screen explaining the nature of this choice, the
preference arrangements of the party selected, and a "complete your
vote" and "change your vote" option.
It is unfair to attribute the Family First fiasco and DLP debacle to the
single transferable vote and the resulting system of proportional
representation. Proportional representation introduces valuable elements
of sharing, disbursing and limiting power into Australian democracy,
which concentrates significant power in the hands of the majority.
Instead, the refusal of the overwhelming majority of Australian electors
to take full responsibility for the power of their vote may be behind
the elevation of fringe candidates that few would choose — in the thick
sense of the term — to represent us.
Leslie Cannold is a Melbourne-based academic.