How Unfair Voting Systems Help Labo(u)r!!
The United Kingdom election had a terribly unfair voting system which meant that while Farage’s Reform Party received 14.3% of the vote but only ended up with five seats. This is because the UK uses a simple majority system, which is often referred to as first past the post.
The great advantage of the simple majority is that it’s simple enough that even Rowan Dean can understand it; the great disadvantage is that it can throw up some strange results when you have candidates with similar views all contesting the same seat. For example, if you had a vote between the best PM in the past ten years your choices would be between Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and Albanese. Obviously, while some Labor voters may not choose Albanese, the Liberal vote is going to be split between the other three meaning that a figure as low as 32% might be enough to get him over the line…
If, on the other hand, it was a preferential system like we have in Australia, then assuming the same 32% for Albanese wouldn’t be enough to get him elected. We’d eliminate the candidate with the lowest number and distribute his preferences. If no candidate had more than fifty percent after that, we’d keep going until that happened.
While this would appear to be a fairer system to all those – like Andrew Bolt – who were outraged that the simple majority system delivered Labour a landslide victory, this is not as simple as it first appears, because we DO have a preferential system in Australia and, if you remember the 2022 election, this was also unfair because Labor were elected with only 32% of the first preferences meaning that most people voted for somebody else. From this, many commentators concluded that if most people voted for somebody else, then somebody else should be the government and not Labor.
Yes, it would seem that they support a simple majority in Australia because preferences led to Labor being elected, many of the same people argue that a simple majority is unfair because it led to Labour being elected in the UK.
I guess a better system would be proportional representation which is how the Senate is elected. The problem here, of course, is not that this gets Labor senators elected… Although that is a big problem… The problem is that people are sometimes elected when they get less first preferences than words in this paragraph.
So it seems that no system of voting is ever going to be perfect and not just because it enables Labo(u)r governments. Every system will throw up anomalies and the best we can do is to be aware of them and try to ensure that people vote with full awareness of the likely consequences. When the results don’t go the way we want, however, there’s very little point in complaining about the system if you haven’t spent any time trying to improve it BEFORE the election. That just looks like you’re throwing your toys out of the cot because things didn’t go your way.
Speaking of Peter Dutton, have you noticed that the Coalition have suddenly forgotten all their Voice rhetoric about how we shouldn’t enshrine race in the Constitution because it is imperative that we treat all people equally? Suddenly they’re jumping a report to argue that the cashless welfare card needs to be brought back into Indigenous communities because there’s been an increase in poor behaviour. The report didn’t exactly put this down to the removal of income management, but don’t ever let the facts get in the way of what you want to argue. I mean, the fact that the Coalition always argue that taxation is bad because people should get a choice over how they spend their money can be ignored when they decide it’s appropriate.
I guess consistency is too much to ask. It would be nice if people who complain about cancel culture didn’t turn around and call for a boycott of Woolworths. It would be nice if the people who argued for the presumption of innocence in various other situations where a person was accused of a crime didn’t refer to dropped charges of rape against Julian Assange as though only people they agreed with had this innocent until proven guilty thing. It would be nice if people who chanted “Lock her up” about Hillary Clinton didn’t react with outrage that someone they voted for should actually go to court and be convicted. It would be nice if people who complained about their freedom being stifled didn’t go around banning books or insisting that woke ideology shouldn’t be allowed. It would be nice if…
It would be nice if people could just accept that while not everyone will agree with them, they should at least find a way that they at least agree with the position they had just a few days ago.
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13 comments
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ROY EDWARDS -
Phil Pryor -
Sully of Tuross Head -
Terence Mills -
Andrew Smith -
corvusboreus -
B Sullivan -
Arnd -
Tellem their dreamin -
Bert -
Bert -
corvusboreus -
wam
Return to home pageWhen I lived in England up to 1971, it was always spoken that voting was always on a Saturday purely because the ‘working class’ worked on Saturdays to make up for poor wages and often the polls closed or they were too tired or could not be bothered to then queue up to vote. This is course favoured the Conservative Party rather than Labour.
Just a thought.
Roy, this election was on a Thursday. I was in the U K in 2010 and the election was on a Thursday. In any case, there are glaring unfairness problems with this first past the post ancient untrustworthy system. I have the figures and Labour got a lower vote, yet a huge landslide, than it had half a century ago at times. Thatcher never got a majority of the vote.
Strange, the Tories here have long wished for a first past the post system thinking only well to do people would bother to vote, and this would mean, most votes would go to them.
I bet we don’t hear that squawk from them now. For a while at least!
I remember the 1951 election in Britain : that dates me !
I was at school in Southern England and our form master was like a raging bull after the Conservatives won and he raged about the corruption, as he saw it, in the system.
labour got 48.8 % of the popular vote or a total of 13,948,883 whereas the Conservatives received 48.0% which translated into 13,717,850. This as it turned out gave the Conservatives 321 seats and Labour 295 so the Conservatives won office with Winston Churchill as prime minister.
So Labour had got more votes and a greater share of the votes but insufficient seats to win. Our form master was a Labour man and was like a grumpy bear for weeks after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_United_Kingdom_general_election
In the UK there was tactical voting to ensure the Tories were kicked out, while their FPTP system is suboptimal, one is not sure why there are calls for PR, except if a minority party.
Not only can PR create some chaotic development and break up of coalitions, UK media ignore (quelle surprise) the Oz system i.e. PR in the upper house or Senate, then preferential in the lower house.
One would think that the unelected House of Lords needs urgent democratic voting reform when it resembles a GOP like ‘job shop’ for faithful apparatchiks, aides, promoters and grifters, with nice titles and formal wear?
The House of Lords.
(aka ‘The right honourable the Lords spiritual and temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in parliament assembled’).
The term ‘lord designates a sovereign, prince or feudal superior.
Currently there 782 sitting HoL members (+36 on leave, disqualified or suspended), making it the 2nd largest legislative body on the planet.
Membership is a lifetime sinecured, and the body is comprised of a mix of hereditary legacy, quotas from the clergy and political appointees from outgoing administrations.
The HoL gathers to propose and pass legislation, and on formal occasions they like to dress up like a bunch of shopping centre Santas.
https://images.app.goo.gl/2CZ54Ac2umBULmhd9
Yeah, probably a house in need of some foundational renovation.
Preferential voting is a con used to disguise how utterly undemocratic and unrepresentative the Australian electoral system actually is. Compulsory voting is fine, but being compelled to indicate preferences when the voter does not wish to endorse an alternative is wrong. Personally I would rather have no representative in parliament than to be misrepresented by a member of the contemptible Labor or Liberal/National parties. There is no box on the ballot paper to tick that says no other preference. We are forced to endorse parties who are hostile to our interests or else have our ballots declared invalid. Only the primary vote indicates the real democratic will of the people. Compulsory preferential voting denies and obscures that democratic will. Proportional representation is the only guarantee of a truly representative democracy, delivering equality to everybody who votes with the fair representation they deserve.
In Australia the five per cent of the electorate that want to be represented by the National Party should only be entitled to be represented by five per cent of the seats in parliament. Then when the Greens Party gets two or even three times as many votes than the Nats they should be entitled to receive two or three times proportionally more seats than the Nats in parliament, not less as they do now in our disgustingly unfair undemocratic system.
B Sullivan,
Germany has proportional representation. Alas, that does not make German Labo(u)r – the “Spezialdemokraten”, as we called them during my days in the then W.- German Socialist Youth, back in the 70s – any less insufferable.
Ditto for the German Greens, who did attain government in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, and who promptly conspired to dish out huge government subsidies to industrial giants like Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, headquartered in the capital Stuttgart.
Proportional representation does not prevent the AfD from accumulating rather unwholesome influence at state, federal and European level. Nor does it prompt either Christian Democrats or Liberal Democrats to develop any kind of useful political agenda.
Whether this is despite or because of proportional representation, but German politics is an enduring omnishambles, and has been for a long time.
Arguments have been made in support of replacing, either partially or wholly, the electoral mechanics of representational preference aggregation with those of sortition – check out government by jury.
It could be a start – but ultimately I don’t think there is any way around true individual and collective self-determination, anarchist-style.
On proportional representation in the Australian Senate – why not eliminate all parties, groups, individuals who get less than 5% of the vote. This would put the preference whisperer Drurery out of business. It would make the Senate a more workable legislative body which might mean it would make a positive contribution rather than being, as it is now, a platform for grandstanding, blocking and headline grabbing.
There is a case to abolish the Senate which has never been a “States House” and has always been the place where the unelectable get rewarded with the party tickets headed by a charismatic person with the dregs coatailing along for the ride. Abolition would require a referendum that would be opposed by the opportunist opposition and be doomed to fail.
Ah well, one can dream
The preferential voting system actually produces a fairer result than first past the post, in that the voter gets to have a second vote, f my first choice doesn’t get in and there is no clear winner with 50% plus 1 vote, me second, third preferences can work toward an outcome.
In other jurisdictions, as we saw in France in the last two weeks, if there is no clear winner, (50% plus one as a minimum) there is a run off between the highest contenders, meaning voters head to the polls twice for the same election.
Of all the voting systems employed throughout the democratic world. I suggest that the preferential system used in Australia is one of the fairest. None are perfect.
I guess for the closest to perfect we need to visit ancient Athens where all those eligible to vote gathered at the forum to debate and vote on the proposed laws. In that case, all men who were land owners. Mmmm. I wonder how that would work today?
On the Senate, as a states house, when the form of parliament was established it was to ensure that the smaller states, those with less population and hence less representatives in the lower house would ensure their interests were not ignored.
Tasmania with a population of just over 500,000 has equal representation in the senate with NSW which has a population of over 8 million. In the lower house, out of 151 seats, Tasmania has 3 while NSW has 47.
The political party system has to some extent made that redundant, that party loyalty will win out. That actually seems to validate the need for smaller parties to have a voice in the law making system, even on a tiny vote tally.
The influence of both far right, as in Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and on the left, the Greens have a voice which is much harder to get in the lower house, and those voices need to be party to the debate, and if some special interest group get lucky then so be it. If the marijuana party gets a seat, it will be one voice …. and if we look at the number of pot heads, it probably is worthy of a seat (We have an alleged Cocaine sniffer nominated for a Liberal seat in the WA state election to be held next year, no doubt the other cocaine sniffers will be glad to have a voice in parliament).
Bert,
Legalise Cannabis took a large step up in credibility when the dropped the slang term ‘marijuana’ and employed the correct scientific genus.
Cannabis (or hemp) is more than a recreational drug, it is one of the most useful plants on the planet in terms of utilitarian versatility, every part bar the roots have some value or virtue.
Fibres, oils (edible & industrial), medicinal extracts, bioplastics, all sourced from an annual herb.
Apart from liberalisation of drug laws, Legalise Cannabis also aim at opening up closed-minded societal attitudes towards this incredibly useful genus of two species, which could be a very helpful tool as we seek solutions towards some kind of sustainable future.
This is probably part of the reason why LC got such a respectable primary vote in the last federal election (over 3% in most states, over 5% in Qld)
The preferential system is the only fair way of getting more than 50% of the valid votes indicating one candidate..
However, I now lean towards most votes is the winner.
It is ridiculous to have only one vote when there are 6 or, in DD, 12 senators to elect. Voting above the line should be abolished and we have the same number of first votes as the number to be elected. The candidates are listed by votes. The top 1 or 6 or 12 are elected in both houses. If someone retires or gets run over by a bus, the seat stays vacant till the next election.