This view expressed by one of my colleagues the other day ignored Tom Stoppard’s pearl of wisdom: “”Democracy does not lie in the voting, but in the counting.” I explained to him that the seven-crosses system was used for the Senate before World War II with ridiculous results. Inevitably, one party got all the seats. Say you have 100,000 voters and 55 per cent vote Liberal. They all put seven crosses by seven Liberal candidates. The remaining 45,000 vote Labor and they all put seven crosses by seven Labor candidates. The result is that each Liberal candidate has 55,000 crosses and each Labor candidate has 45,000 votes. Seven Liberals are elected and no Labor. Whereas, electoral justice in those circumstances would demand say 4 Liberal and 3 Labor. “”Point taken,” said my colleague. “”So how do all these quotas and preferences work?” A simple system does not mean a fair system. Similarly a system that is difficult to understand is not necessarily unfair or should be done away with.
The Hare-Clark system is complex and fair _ if you define fair as providing seats in reasonable proportion to votes and at the same time giving some geographical representation. The ACT has been divided into three electorates: Ginninderra, based on Belconnen, with five seats; Brindabella, based on Tuggeranong, also with five seats and Molonglo, based in the centre, with seven seats. In the five-seat electorates a candidate needs one sixth of the vote plus one to get elected.
This is because if five people got this, the most a remaining candidate could get would be one sixth of the vote minus five votes. So practically one sixth or 16.6 per cent is enough to get elected. In Molonglo it is one-eighth or 12.5 per cent. It means a solid independent or minor-party candidate has a chance, but it does not allow a range of very small minors and independents in as with a pure proportional system with 17 seats elected ACT-wide. The Hare-Clark system is also preferential. This means that if a candidate gets more than a quota, the balance is distributed according to preferences. One of the most important features of Hare-Clark is that it is not a party-based system. Candidates can group themselves in party columns, but voters cannot vote for parties. Also, the party cannot determine the order its candidates appear on the ballot paper. This is done by what is called Robson rotation. Robson rotation is best explained by an example. Say the Labor Party pre-selects five candidates in Ginninderra in the following order: Berry, McRae, Wilson, Grassby, and Shae.
The ballot papers, however, are printed in batches. One fifth of papers will have Berry at the top of the Labor list; one fifth will have McRae; one fifth Wilson and so on. So I might go to vote tomorrow and my ballot paper will have the Labor order as: Wilson, Grassby, McRae, Berry, Shae. The next person in the queue gets a ballot paper with the Labor candidates’ order as: Shae, McRae, Berry, Wilson, Grassby. And the next voter gets something else again. It means, therefore, that voters have to select which candidates they want. Further, there is no requirement for voters to stay within one party’s box. A voter can vote, say, 1 McRae and then go over to the Liberal column and mark 2 Stefaniak and then 3 for an independent and then back to the Labor column.
Tasmanian experience shows that voters often reject the party’s order and choose the candidate they know or like best. It also means voters can still give first preference to the party of their choice but can relegate an especially detested candidate of that party by not giving a preference to him or her or giving a preference after going to other parties or independents. In one election in the 1980s for example a half of the MLAs in Tasmania were not re-elected, yet the party make-up of the House remained roughly the same. The drones and party hacks were thrown out. Fresh blood was brought in. Conversely, Hare-Clark favours _ at least initially _ the well-known. During election campaigns it can result in individuals promoting themselves more than their party or party colleagues. We saw this with the Liberals’ Lucinda Spier in Molonglo.
The counting of the vote is complex, but fair. If you struggle through this explanation following the table, you will get the gist of it. The table gives an example of a three-seat system (it would take too much space to do a five seat example but the principle is the same. All first preferences are counted and in doing so the total number of formal votes is determined. In this case 24,000. In a three-seat electorate the quota is one fourth plus one, or 6001. (In a five-seat electorate the quota would be one sixth plus one or 4001.) On our example, Follett has 10000 votes, which is 3999 over the quota.
That over-quota amount has to be transferred, but you cannot randomly select 3999 ballot papers and count the preferences. Instead all the preferences are counted and transferred at a discounted transfer value to take account of the fact that 6001 votes have already gone to elect the candidate. The formula is the number of votes obtained minus the quota, divided by the number of ballot papers. In this case 10,000 minus 6001 divided by 10,000. This comes to 0.3999. So when all the second preferences of this elected candidate are distributed, they are distributed at a discount of 0.3999. In the table, the 10,000 second preferences from Follett go 6000 to Carnell and 4000 to Grey.
These get added to Carnell and Grey vote after they have been multiplied by 0.3999 and appear in the second line of the right-hand side of the table as 2399 and 1599. After the distribution of all the preferences of people who get quotas a check is run to see if any other candidate gets a quota. If not, the lowest candidate is excluded and his or her preferences are distributed at full value. (In the table Chipp at line 4 on the right.) If someone gets a quota down the track on preferences, that candidate’s surplus is distributed by using only the preferences that took him over the quota, with an appropriate discount. In our example, the 1500 votes from Grey took Carnell over the line (at line six in the right-hand table). Carnell’s original 4899 sit tight and on Grey’s exclusion the 1500 are distributed at Count 6 on the left-hand side.
The discount rate is 6399 (at line seven on the right-hand table) minus the quota 6001 _ this equals 398 (at the second last line of the right-hand table) divided by the number of ballots being distributed which is 1500. This comes to 0.2653. This is multiplied by the preferences at Count 6 on the left hand side giving 331 for Moore and 66 for Green which appear on the second-last line on the right-hand side. It causes Moore to go over the quota and get the last seat. It’s complex but the voters’ wishes are transcribed in detail.