JSCEM Report 2013 Australian Federal Election

JSCEM Final report of the 2013 Federal Election has been published.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2013_General_Election/Final_Report

Missing is the much needed review of the method of counting the senate election.

The need for

1. A Weighted Surplus Transfer system.
2. A reiterative system of distribution of preferences from excluded candidates where the count is reset and restarted on each candidate(s) exclusion
3. The scraping of the Droop quota and the adoption of a pure proportional representative model (x/y)
4. The retention of Above-the-line (ATL) Group voting with the allocation of ATL voting to be equally distributed to each candidate within the group. The group maintaining the right to determine the order of exclusion within the group.

The guiding principle being

“That votes from excluded candidates should be redistributed and counted as if the excluded candidate(s) had not stood

The current system is disproportionate and favours minor parties/Candidates and does not reflect the voters intentions.

A full value vote should always be allocated to the first available continuing candidate without skipping and jumping.

A reiterative counting system would also allow of the adjustment of the quota for election on each iteration, facilitating optional preferential voting..

The current outdated system of counting the vote was designed to facilitate a manual count.

With the use of computer based technology there is no excuse or justification to maintain the outdated flawed system of counting the Senate vote.

Preliminary Analysis shows that the ALP fell short by one percent of the quota.

In a good example that demonstrates the distortion in the way the VEC counts the vote Preliminary analysis of Western Metropolitan vote shows that had a more accurate and proportional counting system been used Greens candidate Colleen Hartland would have won the seat with three votes above quota and the ALP falling short by one percent of quote just over 700 votes.

This is a stark contrast with the method used by the Victorian Electoral Commission as outlined in the legislation which at best can only be described as semi-proportional.

In our analysis we used the Wright system which included a weighted value method to calculating the surplus transfer value and on every exclusion the ballot was reset and the count restarted and votes redistributed as if the excluded candidates had not nominated. The quota for election was adjusted to accommodate votes that existed throughout the count. The Weight system uses a single transaction without segmentation and only surplus votes are distributed in a single iteration of the count. The process of iteration continues until all vacant positions are elected. ION analysis of Western Metro the vote progressed until there were only six candidates remaining in the final iteration count.

Similar results were shown using the Meek method of counting.

what this demonstrates yet again the need for the state government to abandon the outdated distorted and accurate system currently in use. Had the number of voters not exhausted their ballot papers or Victoria had retained a full preferential voting system the outcome of the election may have been different.

In 2007 the Queensland Senate election which uses the same flawed system of segmentation as exists in Victoria Greens candidate Larissa Waters missed out in being elected. Had a reiterative counting system been used instead Larissa Waters would have been elected.

The current system was designed to facilitate a manual count and with the use of computer based technology is no longer warranted or justified.

Wright System Reiterative Count - Value based Surplus Transfer - Single transaction per candidate Final Iteration  422588 Ballot papers minus 1205 ballots which exhausted with-out value expressing no preference for any continuing candidate
ID	Candidate	Group	01-001 Primary	01-002 Surplus PAKULA, Martin	01-003 Surplus FINN, Bernie	01-004 Surplus EIDEH, Khalil	01-005 Surplus ELSBURY, Andrew	01-006 Elected HARTLAND, Colleen
3	PAKULA, Martin	ALP	196632	70229	70229	70229	70229	70229
4	EIDEH, Khalil	ALP	1242	126653	126653	70229	70229	70229
5	SMITH, Bob	ALP	1411	1736	1761	57929	69419	69419
15	HARTLAND, Colleen	GREENS	69582	69987	70124	70181	70237	70237
20	FINN, Bernie	LIBERAL	151299	151299	70229	70229	70229	70229
21	ELSBURY, Andrew	LIBERAL	1217	1250	82015	82015	70229	70229
	Sum		421383	421154	421011	420812	420572	420572
	Quota		70229
	Exhausted	with value		229	372	571	811	811

Optional Preferential ballot paper. VEC Instructions misleading

The instructions on Victoria's upper-house ballot paper may have mislead voters by encouraging voters to not complete all of the below the line preference data.  This may end up effecting the outcome of Western Metropolitan Region

The instructions for below-the-line voting encourages voters to just place the numbers 1-5 in the boxes below.  This minimises the effectiveness and value of the voter's ballot as many below-the-line votes will exhaust and end up on the Votes-without-value pile.

Instead of advising voters to place the number 1 to 5 to indicate the candidate of your choice the VEC should have said "Indicate in order of preference a minimum of 5 candidates of your choice.  In order to maximise your vote you should number each square sequentially in the order of your choice corresponding to each candidate" or something similar.

The instructions given give the impression that you should only number 5 boxes.

There is no logic to support placing a minimum number of five on a ballot paper.  If your going to adopt optional preferential you might as well introduce optional voting as opposed to compulsory voter registration.

Many parties, knowing that they could not elect all, nominate five candidates per group.  This not only has the effect of inflating the number of candidates but it also devalues the vote as many voters will just choose the group they wish to support and their vote will stop there and never go beyond. This has the effect of turning our preferential voting system into a de-facto party list system

If we are to continue to maintain an optional preferential ballot then we will have to consider adopting a reiterative counting system, such as the Wright system, that takes into consideration exhausted ballots and recalculates the quota on each iteration. A reiterative counting system would do way with the distortion that arises from the segmentation of the ballot and more accurately reflect the voters intentions.  On exclusion of candidates from the count the ballot is reset and votes distributed as if the excluded candidate(s) had not stood.  Each iteration will only include distribution of primary votes and surplus votes.  The process of iteration continues until all vacant positions are elected in a single iteration. One transaction per candidate. One vote one value.