One of the worst features of the Australian electoral system is group ticket voting for the Senate. More commonly called 'above the line' voting, it is a system that simplifies Senate voting and so should make it easier for voters to express their political preferences. Instead it has become a play thing of party politics, results engineered by labyrinthine preference deals only half understood by those who devise them and next to impossible for any average voter to understand.
Group ticket voting descended into farce at the 1999 NSW Legislative Council election when voters were forced to manipulate a 'tablecloth' ballot paper one metre wide by 700mm deep with 81 columns and 264 candidates. The array of front parties with attractive names designed to corral the preferences of unwary voters forced the state to change its electoral system.
The 2011 NSW election was the third to be held under a new system that retained the 'above the line' option but abolished inter-party preference deals. A single '1' above the line in NSW now only counts for the selected party. It cannot flow to another party as a preference. Instead a new form of above the line voting was introduced where voters could indicate their own preferences by numbering the party boxes above the line.
Disappointingly very few people are using the new voting option. Figures released by the NSW Electoral Commission show that only 15.6% of all ballot papers used the new above the line preferencing option. 2.2% of votes were below the line preferences and 82.2% were single '1' above the line votes.
For all its problems, group ticket voting was introduced for the best of reasons, to try and cut the scandalously high rate of informal voting caused by voters being forced to express as many as 70 preferences in an ordered sequence before their vote could count. Before group ticket voting was introduced in 1984, the national informal vote rate for the Senate was above 9% at every election from 1970 to 1983.
A simpler approach would have been to allow optional preferential voting, but that is still an option that terrifies Australia's major political parties.
Group ticket voting cut the Senate informal rate in half, under 4% since 1990, but an unintended consequence of the new '1' only Senate option was confusion with House voting. The number of House ballot papers with a single '1' surged. Where before 1984 the Senate always had a higher informal vote than the House, the House informal rate has been higher at eight of the 10 elections since group ticket voting was introduced. The same occurred in every state that introduced group ticket voting, except South Australia where a special lower house savings provision has kept the informal vote down.
But for all the nobility of acting to cut the informal vote, another selling point of group ticket voting to the major parties was giving them control over their preferences. Group ticket voting allowed the major parties to determine which minor parties won the final seat in each state. This was first demonstrated in 1984 when Labor and the Coalition acted to stop Peter Garrett entering the Senate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party. It also played a critical roll at the 1998 election in returning Australian Democrat rather than One Nation senators.
What hadn't been envisaged was the 'micro' parties would take advantage of the system. Group ticket voting allowed a multiplicity of parties to nominate and engage in preference corralling, a game of 'keepings off' by directing preferences through every other micro party on the ballot paper, whatever their political leanings, before reaching one of the traditional political parties. Nominating under these rules was like entering a lottery where a clever party name or strange arrangement of preferences might deliver you the prize of topping the pile of corralled preferences and winning a Senate seat and a place in the balance of power.
Since 1984, group ticket voting has been adopted for the Legislative Councils in South Australia (1985), New South Wales (1988), Western Australia (1989) and Victoria (2006). SA and NSW use staggered terms and state-wide quotas for election, WA and Victoria abandoned staggered terms and broke the state into regions.
NSW introduced ticket voting to a system that was based on limited preferential voting, and group ticket voting effectively increased the average number of preferences per ballot paper. Only Victoria acted to provide an easier 'below the line' voting option by abolishing compulsory preferences and requiring a voter to only indicate five preferences. Only a tiny minority of Victorian voters use this option.
Corralling as a phenomena was first seen at the 1987 Senate election when Robert Woods of the Nuclear Disarmament Party polled 1.5% in NSW, but corraled enough preferences from minor parties to pull ahead of the sixth Labor candidate and reach the 7.7% quota on Labor's preferences.
Next it was the turn of the unknown Alan Corbett from a party seductively called 'A Better Future For Our Children' to win election to the NSW Legislative Council from 1.3% of the vote. Winning election entitled him to public funding, but as under NSW public funding laws you can only claim for expenses, Corbett could only recover the $1,589 dollars he had spent. Not a bad investment for an eight year parliamentary salary and a life pension at the end. (Note: The figure originally used above was $10,000. It has been corrected based on correspondence from Mr Corbett.)
Next to win election from an improbably position was a little known South Australian campaigner against poker machines, Nick Xenophon. At the 1997 South Australian election, he polled just 2.9% of the vote, but with all the micro-parties playing 'keepings off' with their preferences, Xenophon easily reached the 8.3% quota. His ability to create publicity meant Xenophon didn't need to worry about quotas at future elections, polling 20.5% on re-election at the 2006 South Australian election and 14.8% on contesting the Senate at the 2007 commonwealth election.
South Australia has seen another micro-party elected from less than half a quota since Xenophon. Kelly Vincent of Dignity For Disability was elected from 1.2% of the vote in 2010.
The problem has also spread to the Senate. At the 2004 Senate election, Steve Fielding of Family First was elected from 1.9% of the vote when a Labor preference deal reversed when Fielding corralled enough preferences to be ahead of the third Labor candidate at a critical point in the count. In Victoria at the 2010 Senate election, the DLP's John Madigan polled 2.3% of the vote but corralled enough preferences to get ahead of the third Liberal candidate and win the final vacancy.
The DLP was also a beneficiary of the first Victorian election held using group ticket voting in 2006, Peter Kavanagh winning the last seat in Western Victoria from 2.7% of the vote thanks to a chain of minor party preferences and a strategic decision by Labor to put the DLP ahead of the Greens in Western Victoria.
But the most egregious abuse of group ticket voting was the 1999 NSW Legislative Council election. The size of the 'tablecloth' ballot paper required the Electoral Commission to widen voting partitions and created problems with the glue on declaration vote envelopes and the size of slots on ballot boxes. Heavy duty equipment had to be hired to deal with moving ballot papers around the counting centre and the management of the count was complicated further when a massive hail storm collapsed the roof of the storage area at the counting centre, creating an asbestos risk for staff.
The first 15 of the 21 vacancies in 1999 were filled by eight Labor, six Coalition and a One Nation MLC, but the 16th position went to Malcolm Jones of the Outdoor Recreation Party, leap-frogging 26 other parties to be elected despite polling just 0.2% of the vote, 0.05 quotas. Jones received preferences from 21 other parties including Marijuana Smokers Rights, the Gay and Lesbian Party, Elect the President, the Four Wheel Drive Party, Gun Owners and Sporting Hunters, the Marine Environment Conservation Party and Republic 2001. Many of these parties were related entities that engaged in an exotic preference swap ahead of every other party on the ballot paper. Two other parties, Unity and Reform the legal System, were elected despite polling only 1% of the vote.
For trivia buffs, the Gay and Lesbian Party was set up by a group of four-wheel drive activists and is not believed to have had an gay or lesbian members. A well known gay rights activist did set up a party, but it was called Stop Banks Exploiting Australians.
The response in NSW was to tighten the rules for registering parties. The number of members required to register a party was boosted from 200 to 750, annual reviews and a registration fee were introduced, over-lapping membership for registration banned, and parties were required to be registered 12 months before the election to prevent a repeat of the surge in party registrations before the 1995 and 1999 elections.
Group ticket preferences between parties were banned but 'above the line' voting retained. To meet the minimum 15 preferences on the ballot paper required by the constitution, parties were forced to nominate between 15 and 21 candidates. A single '1' above the line now only gave preferences to the candidates of that party and could not flow as preferences to another party on the ballot paper.
The changes cut the number of columns on the ballot paper, from 81 in 1999 to 16 in 2004, 20 in 2007 and 17 in 2011, though the requirement for parties to stand more candidates increased the number of candidates, from 264 in 1999 to 284 in 2003, 333 in 2007 and 311 in 2011.
However, on an amendment to the changes moved by the Greens, a new form of above the line voting was introduced where voters could direct their own preferences. For example, by voting '1' Green and '2' Labor, a ballot paper would be treated as having preferences for all Green candidates in order, and then all Labor candidates.
Yet as the table below shows, very few voters are taking advantage of the new above the line voting option. 82.2% of all ballot papers were single above the line (SATL) votes, only 15.6% of ballot papers being the new option of random above the line (RATL) votes. A further 1.6% of ballot papers gave a first preference to the number 1 candidate in a group, and only 0.6% of all ballot papers gave a preference to someone other than the lead candidate in a group.
|% of Group Vote by Type|
|Party (Group)||% Vote||SATL||RATL||No. 1||Other|
|Labor/Country Labor (H)||23.7||88.6||10.0||0.6||0.8|
|The Greens (I)||11.1||77.6||19.7||2.1||0.6|
|Shooters and Fishers (P)||3.7||82.6||15.8||1.3||0.3|
|Christian Democratic Party (F)||3.1||67.5||29.8||2.2||0.5|
|Ind - Pauline Hanson (J)||2.4||68.2||11.3||20.4||0.1|
|Family First (G)||1.5||78.1||19.4||1.9||0.7|
|Ind - John Hatton (C)||1.3||69.5||15.0||14.6||0.9|
|The Fishing Party (O)||1.3||80.2||18.2||1.2||0.4|
|No Parking Meters Party (B)||1.2||74.8||23.0||1.4||0.8|
|Outdoor Recreation Party (D)||0.8||76.7||21.4||1.0||0.9|
|Australian Democrats (L)||0.8||76.5||18.8||3.6||1.1|
|Restore the Worker's Rights (N)||0.4||80.2||17.7||1.2||0.9|
|Save Our State (E)||0.3||79.0||17.6||1.7||1.7|
|Socialist Alliance (K)||0.3||66.1||28.2||3.5||2.2|
|Building Australia (M)||0.2||79.7||17.1||1.4||1.7|
|All Formal Ballot Papers||..||82.2||15.6||1.6||0.6|
One of the few parties to actively encourage preferences on its how-to-vote material was the Christian Democratic Party, and 29.8% of the party's voters directed a preference above the line. The Greens did not direct preferences but still 19.7% of Green voters were aware enough to use the new system. Labor's rate was just 10%, reflecting its lack of effort in distributing how-to-votes, and also its decision in many seats not to show preferences on its how-to-votes.
The use of ticket voting has declined since 2003, the first time the system was used and when I undertook an analysis of the electronic ballot papers. In 2003 overall 19.6% used directed preferences. Then 25% of Labor voters used the ATL preference option as the party recommended preferences in every seat. The highest rate of ATL preferences in 2003 was 37.6% for the Christian Democrats followed by 31% for the Socialist Alliance. In 2003 only 9.7% of Coalition voters indicated ATL preference, a figure that has at least doubled in 2011.
What lessons are there from the NSW system? The most important is a warning to proponents of this system for the Senate. NSW elects 21 MLCs with a quota of 4.55%. In 2003 the Shooters Party won the final seat with 2% of the vote thanks to the high rate of exhausted preferences. In 2011, Pauline Hanson polled 2.4% and came very close to winning the final seat, defeated in the end by just enough ballot papers remaining in the count with preferences against her.
The Senate elects 6 Senators per state on a quota of 14.3%. If the Commonwealth was to adopt the NSW system, a high rate of exhausted preferences would make the filling of the final Senate seat in each state a regular lottery rather than the occasional lottery under the current group ticket voting system. A full preferential voting option of requiring all preferences to be shown above the line would just bring back the pre-1984 problem of informal voting.
To avoid rampant exhausted preferences, the Senate may require the retention of a limited form of group ticket voting, restricting the number of inter-party preferences to only two or three other parties on the ballot paper. This would force parties to direct preferences only to like minded parties, discouraging major parties from engaging in exotic preferencing deals and end the micro-party lottery created by preference corralling.
UPDATE: I'll qualify my comment on how the NSW system might apply to the Senate. The higher quota would make it much harder for minor parties to win the final seat as they do in NSW, as any Senate minor party would need more than 5% to still be in the count when exhausted preferences come into play.
However, the NSW system tends to act as a form of 'highest remainder' proportional representation. This means the race for the last seat ends up as a 'first past the post' contest. For example, if the three larger parties held 3.0, 2.5 and 0.5 quotas, minimal preferences means the last seat is a toss-up between the party with 2.5 quotas and the one with 0.5. That's why I suggest the Senate would probably work better with a minimum number of preferences, ensuring the last seat wasn't just a first past the post race, while not using the current full preferential system which allows preference corralling.