The Poll Bludger

Two opinion pieces in today’s papers give the thumbs down to major recommendations of the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. In The Age, Colin Hughes and Brian Costar concede that the report "contains much useful information about the electoral system and makes sensible recommendations about how to improve it", but argue that moves to eliminate the seven-day period between the issue of the writs and the closure of the electoral roll threaten "Australia’s well-earned reputation as a world leader in democratic practice":

The committee advanced two major justifications for abolishing the statutory period of grace. One was that by not keeping their enrolment up to date 284,110 souls were guilty of offences under the Electoral Act and should not be allowed any leeway. This excessive legalism runs counter to the sensible, long-established practice whereby the Australian Electoral Commission does not pursue prosecution for non-enrolment if the neglect is remedied.

The committee also claims that the current arrangements "present an opportunity for those who seek to manipulate the roll to do so at a time where little opportunity exists for the AEC to undertake the thorough checking required ensuring (sic) roll integrity". This argument fails on at least two counts. First, the AEC, in its submission to the inquiry, stated categorically that it applies its established procedures during the seven-day period after the writs are issued “with the same degree of rigour as it does in a non-election period”. Second, the committee itself admits that there is minimal evidence of actual roll fraud, but insists that it must take measures to prevent it occurring in the future.

This second assertion ignores the thorough review of the electoral roll conducted in 2002 by the Australian National Audit Office, which concluded "that, overall, the Australian electoral roll is one of high integrity, and can be relied on for electoral purposes". There are adequate safeguards in the current electoral laws and procedures to deal with any future attempts at fraud without stripping the vote from hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Before we all start stocking up on firearms and tins of baked beans, Hughes and Costar note that a potential constitutional loophole promises salvation for our cherished democratic freedoms, should state governments choose to make use of it:

This arises from the fact that the governor-general, on the advice of the prime minister, issues the writs for the House of Representatives and the four territory senators, but the state governors, acting on the advice of their premiers, issue the writs for Senate elections. The constitutional power clearly exists for one or more of the state premiers to advise their governors not to issue Senate writs for, say, seven days after the prime minister announces the election date, thereby keeping the rolls open in those states.

Writing in the Australian Financial Review (not available online), Malcolm Mackerras differs from Hughes and Costar in that his "overall reaction is hostile", because the recommendations are "relentless in their pursuit of the electoral interests of the Liberal Party". Restrictions of space compel him to limit his criticisms to the familiar matter of full preferential above-the-line voting for the Senate:

Such a change would massively drive up the informal vote. Why do we have this Faustian pact between the Liberal Party, the Democrats and the Greens? The Liberal Party wants to drive up the informal vote because that advances its electoral interests. The Democrats and the Greens are in the business of punishing Family First because, in their view, Steve Fielding won a seat in Victoria that they believe he should not have won. These politicians will vehemently deny my assessment …

Lack of space prevents me from a full explanation of why I call chapter nine a disgrace. I content myself with three points. First, the chapter (page 230) grotesquely mis-describes the system of "first past the post" in an attempt to justify the prejudices of many of our politicians. Second, the chapter (pages 208, 210, 214 and 226) commits a real howler in using the term single transferable vote in a way that is not only internally inconsistent but flies in the face of the international literature on electoral systems. Third, the chapter gives some objections to the current (reasonably sensible) system of group voting tickets and then (page 216) says: "The decision of the Family First party in some states to favour a preference distribution to other minor parties that advocated policies radically at variance with Family First’s declared core values, may be an example of this type of strategic behaviour, and its consequences."

No evidence is given. However, the main value of this sentence (not intended, of course) is that the politicians have given themselves away as to their target.

Mackerras seems unusually relaxed about Family First’s success in winning a seat with neglible support thanks to huge volumes of preferences from oblivious voters. I would be interested to know if this is because space prohibited him from advocating what seems to me the obvious solution, namely optional preferential voting. For much, much more on this topic, see the comments thread for this earlier post.

The fruitful Australian Parliamentary Library has come good with a beginner’s guide to compulsory voting issues, which comes equipped with the following panoply of amazing facts.

UPDATE (1/11/05): The figure quoted above regarding turnout at the 1964 United States presidential election, which the Australian Parliamentary Library sourced from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, raised a few eyebrows among commenters. David Walsh points to more detailed figures that suggest the 95.8 per cent figure was arrived at by dividing the number of votes by a sum of the states’ registration figures – even though the latter figure was zero for 11 states, and Ohio somehow had more voters than registrations (on this measure, its turnout was 105.7 per cent). IDEA’s page on methodology used says:

The user of this data base will notice that in some instances the registration rate (REG) for a country actually exceeds the estimated number of registered voters (VAP). The explanation for this apparent anomaly usually lies either in the inaccuracy of the electoral roll, or in the estimated number of eligible voters (VAP). In some countries, the roll is extremely difficult to keep up to date, and deaths or movements of elections from one district to another are not reflected in the roll, something which is a common problem facing electoral administrators around the world. On the other hand it is important to emphasise that the registration figures are, in most cases, more recently updated than population figures. The VAP is based on the most recent population census figure available, although not an exact figure, it is a reflection of the demographic trend and estimated population growth of a country.

The Poll Bludger’s position on four-year terms is simple: elections are good, so longer terms are bad. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has taken a different view and recommended their introduction, with consideration given to both a simple extension of the time-frame in which an election may be called, and to the Victorian/South Australian model where the first three years are fixed and an election may be called at any time in the final year. The proposal was predictably well received by politicians, who having gone to the trouble of being elected would like to remain that way for as long as possible, and by business groups, who find entrenched governments easier to influence than public opinion. In fairness, the cause has no shortage of more objective supporters. Glenn Milne typified the view of editorialists and the commentariat when he complained that "under the three-year system, apart from year one, governments are essentially on a constant campaign footing, and the national interest be buggered"; while Marion Sawer and Norm Kelly of Democratic Audit articulated the academic consensus in saying "four-year terms are generally seen as more appropriate for effective government".

All the pillars of the establishment are in line, but this is one issue where they must contend with an unfamiliar player – the electorate, whose consent is required for the necessary constitutional amendment. A poll conducted by Ipsos Mackay for Channel Ten suggests it won’t be forthcoming. Of the thousand voters surveyed, only 40 per cent said they would back it in a referendum, with 54 per cent opposed. Even more persuasive is the precedent of the 1988 referendum when four-year terms were among a package of four proposals that conspicuously failed to capture the public’s imagination, faring second worst out of the four with 32.9 per cent of the national vote. Scott Bennett of the Australian Parliamentary Library suggests that this failure was largely the fault of the Hawke Government, which "confused the issue by including in the proposed change a reduction of Senate terms to four years as well as a provision for simultaneous elections". This seems a little unfair since it fails to acknowledge that longer House terms inevitably raise problems for the Senate which have no obvious answer.

At present, Senators serve fixed six-year terms (provided there is no double dissolution) which are staggered so that half the Senate faces the electorate every three years, which must happen at some point in the final year of their term. In most circumstances this acts as a restraint on governments wishing to call early elections for the House, since voters are not like psephologists and do not see the charm of separate mid-term half-Senate elections. To maintain this system, four-year terms for the House would mean eight-year terms for Senators (JSCEM’s "Senate Option 1"), which voters will never wear. The alternatives are abandoning the assumption of synchronised House and Senate elections, which they will like even less; tying Senate terms to the variable terms for the House, so they will be between six and eight years ("Senate Option 2"); or the 1988 option, which actually looks pretty good when stacked up against the alternatives.

The real flaw of the 1988 referendum was not that it was tied to unavoidably contentious Senate proposals, but that it offered no concession to fixed terms. The spectacle of a race in which one of the contestants fires the starting gun at a time of their own convenience bothers voters far more than does relatively frequent elections. Scott Bennett’s paper quotes a paper written in 1980 by a trio of University of New South Wales academics (Donald Horne, Elaine Thompson and Sol Encel) which correctly diagnosed a simple extension of terms by one year as:

The worst of all possible worlds. It gives an extra year to a government without accountability to the people and yet the opportunity for a prime minister to call an early election at will still remains.

It is interesting that this was written when it was and where it was, because one year later voters in New South Wales agreed to do exactly what they warned against, backing four-year terms at a referendum with 69.0 per cent support. Thus began a dark age that continued until 1995 when another referendum introduced fixed quadrennial elections for the last Saturday in March, receiving 75.5 per cent of the vote. Queensland dodged the bullet in 1991 when the Goss Government’s attempt to deliver yet more power to every future Joh Bjelke-Petersen fell narrowly short of succeeding, with 49.1 per cent support. It is widely felt that it would have got up if Goss had the sense to conduct it concurrently with the state election the following year. Nevertheless, New South Wales is the only exception to the rule that there are three-year terms in jurisdictions where voters have had a say in the matter, and four-year terms where they haven’t.

To conclude, a perfect summation of my own views courtesy of Laurie Oakes:

The argument politicians put is that a three-year term is too short to allow governments to operate in the national interest. A government, they say, implements the hard decisions in the first year, beds them down in the second, and spends the third year trying to win re-election. But what is wrong with that? It sounds pretty efficient, in fact. How would four years be any better? Presumably it would enable a government to implement the hard decisions in year one, bed them down in year two, then have 12 months resting on its laurels and enjoying the comforts of incumbency before having to worry about the next election. It is easy to see how that would benefit parliamentarians, especially those in the governing party, but less easy to see how it would benefit voters.

All that time redesigning the site has prevented me making a timely entry into debate over the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The main headline-grabbers have been voluntary voting and four-year terms, which are respectively dead-on-arrival and likely to land in the too-hard basket due to the need for a referendum (at least on the current Prime Minister’s watch). Of greater significance is recommendation 37, "that compulsory preferential voting above the line be introduced for Senate elections, while retaining the option of compulsory preferential voting below the line". Antony Green has had a fair bit to say on this one:

A stinker of an electoral reform idea … a recipe for an informal rate of 20% or more. Sure you wouldn’t have had to fill in preferences for all 78 candidates below the line on the 2004 NSW Senate ballot paper, but you will have to fill in 29 preferences above the line. Whoopee! … Above all, the Committee’s mindless insistence on refusing to countenance any form of optional preferential voting is breathtaking. In his speech to the Sydney Institute last week, Senator Abetz stated that apart from the first five preferences, and perhaps the last five, voters don’t really care about their preference sequence and probably end up filling in the numbers randomly. If that’s the case, what exactly is the point of making voters fill in all their preferences?

Writing in yesterday’s Crikey email, Charles Richardson broadly agreed but noted that the abolition of preference tickets would mean an end to the use of dummy parties for preference harvesting, thus reducing the number of boxes to be numbered. The estimable Dr Graeme Orr of Griffith University Law School went so far as to dispute Antony’s basic premise, suggesting a requirement to number every box would bring the two houses’ systems into line and reduce "’1′ only" informal voting for the lower house. Antony has responded to both in typically persuasive fashion with another article in Crikey.

Ultimately, this is a disagreement about the second best system – all concerned agree that optional preferential voting for both houses is the best option. It is the only solution to the preference lottery that will not inflate the informal vote, and it will deliver the last two seats in any given Senate race to the candidates who come nearest a quota on the primary vote, as natural justice demands. The Coalition and the Democrats, and hence JSCEM (the committee includes five Liberal, one Democrat and four Labor members), have concluded otherwise. The Greens are not represented on the committee but they evidently concur – Bob Brown introduced a bill to the Senate earlier this year to require that all above-the-line boxes be numbered, with no provision for optional preferential voting.

It is clear why the Liberals and Nationals are not keen on OPV as their votes could no longer be relied upon to reinforce each other through preferences. This would compel them to avoid three-cornered contests in the House and run joint tickets in the Senate, provoking an eruption of turf wars they would prefer to avoid. Presumably the Democrats favour full distribution of preferences as it boosts the prospects of parties who underperform on the primary vote, which is the regrettable position in which they find themselves. The Greens’ wariness about OPV for the Senate (the House is a very different matter) makes less sense, as I argued in April.

An interesting observation was made at Palmer’s Oz Politics by "Sceptic", bearing in mind that anonymous blog comments should be treated with due caution:

The interesting side issue will be the attitude of the party administrations. I don’t think either (Liberal federal director) Brian Loughnane or (ALP national secretary) Tim Gartrell will be too impressed with changes to the ATL Senate voting. More informal votes lead to less public funding for the major parties. It is an open secret that Mr Loughnane leaned on John Howard to junk the option of voluntary voting for this very reason. Imagine if these reforms lead to a financial crisis for the major parties in the future. You would assume that the PM, a loyal party man, would consider this very carefully.

For this and other reasons, my expectation is that the Government will invoke concerns over the informal vote to justify the abandonment of recommendation 37, which will join voluntary voting and four-year terms in the graveyard of major reform proposals resulting from the committee inquiry.

Even before the Prime Minister formally scotched the idea, it was clear that Liberal Party advocates for voluntary voting should not have been holding their breath. The implacable opposition of the non-government parties would have required united Coalition support to get it through the Senate, but the Nationals (not to mention many Liberals) are no more keen on the idea than Labor. No doubt the National Party knows its own business, but I am puzzled by their apparent conviction that voluntary voting would damage them. It is true that much of their support comes from rural and small-town areas where incomes are no higher than in urban Labor seats, but it’s also true that voluntary council elections attract far higher turnouts on the National Party’s turf than in the cities. Why would federal elections be any different?

The Australian Election Study has been asking respondents if they would have voted if not compelled to since the survey after 1996 election, providing a one-to-five ranking from "definitely would have voted" (chosen by about 70 per cent of respondents) to "definitely not". Combining results from the four surveys from 1996 to 2004 allows us to cross-tabulate these responses with voting intention for nearly 7000 respondents, including 2976 who voted for the Liberal Party, 2607 for Labor, 333 for the Nationals, 332 for the Democrats and 305 for the Greens. The following table combines responses of "probably would have voted" and "might, might not" into a "maybe" category, and "probably not" and "definitely not" (the latter accounting for only 2.6 per cent in 2004) into "unlikely". The Democrats and Greens vote has also been combined because patterns for the two were very similar.

This makes it clear enough why Labor is united in opposition to voluntary voting, and bolsters Liberals who support it on the basis of realpolitik. But it doesn’t explain why the Nationals are less keen, since their own pattern is no different from the Liberals?. It’s also interesting to note that the Democrats and Greens appear to do well out of reluctant voters. This doesn’t surprise me, since minor parties have traditionally absorbed protest votes from the politically disengaged. However, it runs contrary to Bob Brown’s argument that his support for compulsory voting must be founded purely on principle since his party has "the highest proportion of tertiary-educated voters who are most likely to vote without compulsion". I might have marked that down as self-serving spin, but Antony Green also reckons that "the only party certain to benefit from voluntary voting would be the Greens, who have by far the highest ratio of members to voters of any Australian political party". I hesitate to say that an argument of Antony’s does not persuade me, but I still need to be sold on this one. While it is true that the party has a large activist support base, this does not preclude the possibility that just as many of its voters are alienated and disengaged, and that it receives relatively little support from those who fall in between.

One thing past experience makes clear is that electoral reform is governed by the law of unintended consequences, as demonstrated by the parties’ repeated failures to skew the system in their favour. Malcolm Mackerras notes in Crikey that the last two substantial changes to the system – the expansion of Parliament in 1984 and the introduction of semi-proportional representation to the Senate in 1948 (note the eerie Orwellian inversion of those two dates) – were introduced by Labor governments acting out of perceived self-interest, but they have resulted in fairly regular Senate majorities for the Coalition and none for Labor. By the same token, the conventional wisdom that Labor would suffer under voluntary voting might well be misplaced. Antony Green observes that turnout at this year’s British election was especially low in Labour strongholds, suggesting compulsory voting would have boosted their share of the national vote without having much effect on seat totals. By extension, voluntary voting in Australia could cut margins in safe Labor seats without having a substantial impact in marginals.

There are countless other imponderables, such as the impact it would have on the way parties operate. The need to mobilise voters might even compel Labor to re-engage with the world beyond its internal culture and the attendant bastardry and skulduggery that we’ve been hearing so much about lately.