While much of last weekend’s Victorian election was focused
on the return of Labor after ousting a one-term Liberal government, not a lot
was said about the results in the Legislative Council (upper house). In fact, I'm
sure that most wouldn't have the slightest clue as to who was elected to the
house of review, with the vast majority of coverage focused solely upon the Legislative
Assembly (lower house).
Much could be speculated as to the root cause for this lack
of interest – for one, the fact that voters were largely disengaged with this
election (myself included, admittedly) right up until a couple of days
beforehand. There is not much that can be done about this disengagement, given
the increasing decentralisation of power away from the states (and towards the
federal government), as well as the lack of motivational or inspirational party
leaders. However, my main concern is how the general population’s disengagement
teams up with the more serious issue at hand here – that is, the farcical
nature of the upper-house election process.
The simple fact is that the current upper house ballot
procedure doesn't work. Voters are given a ridiculously long piece of ballot
paper, on which is listed senate candidates from the main political parties as
well as candidates from a myriad of micro parties. These micro parties, listed
here, often focus on capturing the vote of a highly specific segment of the
population. For example, animal rights activists in the case of the Animal
Justice Party, cyclists in the case of the Australian Cyclists Party,
conspiracy theorists in the case of the No Smart Meter party (seriously, read
their policies… they’re pretty out-there), or xenophobes in the case of the
Rise Up Australia party. I'm not arguing that these parties don’t have a right
to be heard – on the contrary, people should be able to vote along the lines of
whoever they believe best represents their own interests. Where I take issue is
when someone’s vote is transferred under a “preference deal” to another party
at the discretion of the party they voted for.
In essence, the system of voting 1 above the line is
intended to reduce the chance of informal voting due to a tedious voting
process. However, putting such a system in place become tedious in and of
itself once it gets to the counting of votes, and people’s votes are incorrectly attributed to parties due to the delegation of preferences.
The alternative to these dodgy preference-shifting deals is
to number the boxes below the line in order of individual candidate preference
(all boxes in the case of Federal elections, or 1-to-5 at least in the case of
the Victorian election). This is such a daunting task that only a small
percentage of voters ever do so – most don’t have the time/interest to investigate
each candidate and sort out some sort of preferential ranking.
The end result of such a flawed system is the likes of which
we saw in the 2013 election – the election of a Ricky Muir, a motoring (and
Kangaroo faeces) enthusiast.
A similar result looks likely in the recent Victorian
election, with the likely election of multiple Shooters & Fishers senators,
as well as representatives from the Country Alliance, Sex Party, DLP and of
course the major parties. For further details, see here.
While I am no expert in the design of elections, it is plain
to see that the current system is flawed. By simply allowing for more than one
preference to be allocated above the line, these back-room preference deals
would be able to be rendered ineffective. This would also allow for voters to
who usually vote below the line to vote based on policy, rather than on random
name selection amongst the candidate lists of parties. Surely, any system would
be better than the current one, which is just inherently bad for democracy.
In many ways, this problem is a self-fulfilling prophecy;
the more the upper house becomes less representative of the broader population,
the more voters become disengaged from the political process. Consequently, the
more disengaged voters become, the more likely it is that these radical parties
gain disproportionate representation in our democratic structures. By
facilitating such a system, it allows the mandate of the majority to be used in
order to make decisions in the interests of the minority. This process simply
can’t be allowed to continue unquestioned.
#J.Nic#
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