FLOATING MEMBERS AND TWO MEMBER ELECTORATES - BASIS OF A BETTER ELECTION SYSTEM?

Revised: 21 March 2013

In the 2010 Australian federal election* there was no clear result at the end of vote counting despite the ALP winning the two party preferred (2PP) vote.  In the end, an ALP minority government was formed after post election negotiations with the Greens and independents.  The LNP could have quite easily ended up as the government despite losing the 2PP vote.

 

By contrast, in the 2012 Queensland state election, the LNP gained a very clear majority of seats after clearly winning the 2PP vote.  The problem here was that the ALP won only 8 % of the seats (7 members) despite having 27% of the primary vote.  As a result, the ALP is struggling to hold the government to account let alone provide a credible alternative at the next election. Not a good outcome for the state.  (The LNP won 88% of the parliamentary seats despite winning less than 50% of the primary vote.)

The common link between both these problems is that single member electorates were used to decide who will become members of parliament.  The above are not the only problems associated with single member electorates.

In this article it is argued that a specific system based on two member electorates would overcome the problems that are a feature of systems based on single member electorates.

(*Definitions of the terms used here are included at the end of the article.)

INTRODUCTION:

Two electoral systems are used in Australia for state and federal parliaments. For all lower houses of parliament except Tasmania systems based on single member electorates using some form of simple preference counting are used. For the Australian Senate and some state upper houses, systems based on multiple member electorates using some form of proportional preference counting are used. (The lower houses determine who the government will be while the upper houses act as houses of review with the power to reject most legislation.)

Single Member Electorate Systems:

The Queensland state 2012 election results highlight some of the problems associated with single member electorates. Table 1 provides the key results:

TABLE 1: RESULTS OF QLD 2012 ELECTION

PARTY	RESULTS QLD 2012 ELECTION
	% OF PRIMARY VOTE        (@ 2 April 2012)	SEATS WITH PARTY LEADING PRIMARY VOTE	MEMBERS ELECTED (Actual Result)	% OF MEMBERS
LNP	49.7	78	78	87.7
ALP	26.7	7	7	7.9
KAP	11.5	2	2	2.2
GREENS	7.4	0	0	0
FAMILY FIRST	1.4	0	0	0
ONE NATION	0.1	0	0	0
INDEPENDENTS	3.2	2	2	2.2
TOTAL	100.0		89	100.0

(Details of the Qld electoral system and the 2012 election results can be found at the Wikapedia and Qld electoral commision websites.)

A good result in the sense that the party that won the 2PP vote was able to form government with a workable majority.  A bad result in the sense that the main opposition party (ALP) will struggle to provide an effective opposition or to be seen as a credible alternative at the next election because it only won 8% of the seats.   Bad too in that the minor parties only won 2% of the seats despite winning 20% of the primary vote between them.

The disturbing thing is that the outcome could have been quite different even if every voter had voted exactly the same.  Consider an extreme example: If the ALP had been able to locate all of its supporters in electorates where the ALP vote was slightly above 50%, the ALP would have won 48 seats and formed government without needing any preferences.  At the other extreme, if the distribution of votes had been identical for all electorates, the LNP would have won all the seats after distribution of preferences.  Other changes in the geographical distribution of supporters could have seen minor parties and/or independents holding the balance of power.  Table 1 and these examples demonstrate why systems based on single member electorates:

1.          Provide no guarantee that the party that wins the 2PP vote will form government. 

2.          Can have results distorted by the location of electoral boundaries or geographical distribution of supporters.

3.          Tend to give the parties with high primary votes a disproportionate share of the members.

 There are a number of other problems with single member electorates including:

1.          Voters in marginal electorates have far more influence than those in safe electorates.

2.          Not all voters will be represented by a member of the government.  This can make it harder for these voters to influence government decisions.

3.          Incumbent members have an advantage over challengers.

The only real attraction of single member electorates is that each voter shares “their” member with fewer other voters.

Large Multi-member Electorate Systems:

Compared with single member electorates, multi-member electorates combined with the use of proportional preference voting result in the percentage of members elected for each party being closer to the percentage of votes received.  However:

1.          There is an increased risk of minor parties and/or independents holding the balance of power.  In this case, who forms government will be decided by negotiations held after the election, not the voters. 

2.          It may be harder for independents running on local issues to be elected.

3.          Each member will have to look after far more voters.

4.          It will still be possible for a party that didn’t win the 2PP vote to form government.

5.          The location of electorate boundaries and geographic distribution of party supporters can still distort results unless the whole country/state becomes a single electorate.

The combination of large multi-party electorates with proportional preference voting is good for houses of review (where it is desirable to avoid the house being dominated by one party) but not appropriate for lower houses that have to decide which party is to form government.

Two Member Electorates:

Systems based on two member electorates have the potential to resolve many of the problems listed above.  What is described below is one system that could realize this potential:

Key features of the proposed system:

1.          The government will be formed by the party* that wins the overall 2PP vote*. (The voters decide directly who will be the government.)

2.          Each electorate will have one member belonging to the government party.

3.          The second member for each electorate will be elected from non-government candidates.

4.          In addition, there will be a number of “floating members” who do not represent any electorate.  The division of these floating seats between the parties will aim at bringing the number of members for each party closer to what they would have won if the whole state was a single a multi-member electorate using proportional preference voting. 

5.          The use of this floating member system means that governments will rarely have a majority.  To avoid instability and ensure governments have enough money to do their job, a two thirds majority will be required to:

a.           Pass a vote of no confidence.

b.          Block supply.

c.           Block the setting up of a government loan

d.          Remove a tax. or government charge.

e.           Prevent the government changing an existing government charge the rate for an existing tax.

6.          Apart from the above exceptions, a simple majority of MP's  will have the power to reject proposed legislation as well as initiate and pass legislation.   (A limit on the time between passing legislation and signing it into law would be required to ensure governments cannot use procrastination as a defacto veto.)
7.     Vacancies will normally be filled by the nominee of the party the departed member was a candidate for at the time of the last election (or the nominated successor of an independent.)  By-elections will only be held if it is not clear who the replacement should be.

The above will allow a single house parliamentary system to provide both government stability and the checks and balances that we get from the federal Senate.

*NOTES: 

1. In this section, the term “party” includes coalitions registered before the election.
2. A party that were not in the final 2PP count may challenge the result.  The challenging party would form government if it can beat all interested parties in a one on one 2PP count.  

The following vote counting procedure could be used to achieve the key features:

1.          Step 1: Reduce the number of candidates for each party to one:  If a party has more than one candidate for an electorate, the normal preference vote counting procedure will be used to determine which candidate will represent the party. (Only ballot papers that gave their first preference vote to the relevant party will be part of this count.) The preferences of losing candidates will then be distributed and these losing candidates excluded from the rest of the count.

2.          Step 2: Do the overall 2PP count to determine which party will govern.

a.           Preferences of independents will be distributed first.

b.          The party (not individual) with the least number of total votes for the state will then be eliminated and their preferences distributed.

c.           Count will proceed until only two parties are left.  The party with the most votes at this stage will win the 2PP vote and form government.

3.          Step 3: Determine who the non-government member for each electorate will be:

a.           Exclude from this count all ballot papers that gave their first preference to the government party.

b.           Use the normal single electorate preference counting method to determine who the second members will be.

4.          Step 4: Determine who the floating members will be:

a.           Do a proportional preference count for the whole state to determine how many members each party would have got under this system.

b.          For each party calculate the difference between the proportional number and the numbers calculated in steps 2 and 3.

c.           Allocate to the government the number of seats required to bring total government seats up to what the government would have got under the proportional preference count.

d.          Allocate another floating seat to the government to compensate for having to supply the speaker.  (Only if the government does supply speaker.)

e.           Allocate one floating member to the non government parties.

                             i.                Eliminate parties that already have all the members they would get under proportional preference voting.

                           ii.                Allocate one floating member to the party requiring the largest number of extra members.

                          iii.                Allocate one floating member to the party requiring the next largest number of extra members.  Continue this process until all the parties requiring extra members have received one extra member or all the floating member vacancies have been filled.

                         iv.                Repeat steps i to iii until al the floating vacancies have been filled.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS:

The two member electorate system proposed here reduces most of the problems associated with Australia’s single member electorate systems.  In particular, the new system guarantees that:

1.          The party that wins the 2PP will form a stable government on its own with the power to raise the funds it needs to do the job.

2.          The system will provide Senate style checks and balances unless the government has a majority in its own right.  This would only happen if there had been a very strong vote in the government's favour (such as occurred in the 2012 Qld election.) 

3.          There will be a viable opposition.

4.          The result will be fairer to minor parties.

5.          Independents with strong local support can still become members.

6.          Each electorate will have one government and one non-government member.

7.          The votes in every seat are equally important

Most important of all, the location of electoral boundaries and the geographical distribution of party supporters have no effect on who wins government and a limited effect on the number of seats won by each of the non-government parties. 

Table 2 compares the actual result of the 2012 Qld election with estimated results if the proposed system had been used with 29 floating seats.

TABLE 2: COMPARISON EXISTING AND PROPOSED SYSTEM

PARTY	RESULTS QLD 2012 ELECTION		ESTIMATED MEMBERS USING PROPORTIONAL PREFERENCE (WHOLE STATE A SINGLE ELECTORATE)	ESTIMATE PROPOSED SYSTEM
	% OF PRIMARY VOTE        (@ 2 April 2012)	MEMBERS (Actual Result)		FLOATING MEMBERS	TOTAL MEMBERS
LNP	49.7	78	46	17	47
ALP	26.7	7	24	0	25
KAP	11.5	2	10	6	8
GREENS	7.4	0	6	3	6
FAMILY FIRST	1.4	0	1	1	1
ONE NATION	0.1	0	0	0	0
IND	3.2	2	2	0	2
TOTAL	100.0	89	89	29	89

*NOTES:

1.          The Qld parliament had 89 members after the 2012 election..

2.          Estimates are based on primary votes only, not on a detailed analysis of the 2012 result.

3.          It is unusual for a government to get as high as 49.7 % of the primary vote.  The LNP would have lost its parliamentary majority if their primary vote dropped to 47.4%.
4.    Qld has 30 federal electorates, the same as the number of shared electorates assumed for the table 2.

There are numerous variations on what is proposed here. Consideration might be given to:

1.          Allowing parties that were not in the final 2PP count to challenge the result.  The challenging party would form government if it can beat all other interested parties in a one on one 2PP count.  (The challenging party wins because a majority of voters prefer it to any other individual party – Could quite easily happen if the smaller party is a center party that receives most of the preferences of other parties.)  Parties with primary votes  below some cut-off might be excluded from this challenge process.

2.          Guarantee that total members for the main opposition party will be at least the same as the number of electorates.  This would help this party compete against the government in the next election by being able to allocate a member to each electorate. Other non-government parties may lose members to allow this to be done unless the extra main opposition party members were additional, non-voting members of parliament.  

The crucial features of any good system will be:

1.          Government is formed by the party (or registered coalition) that wins the overall 2PP vote.

2.          Each electorate ends up with a government and non-government member.

DEFINITIONS:

Ballot paper: Voters record their vote on their ballot paper and place it in a ballot box for counting.

Coalition: An alliance between two or more political parties.

Federal government: The national government.

Incumbent: A candidate who was the member for the seat before the election.

Independent: A candidate who is not the official candidate of a political party. 

Lower house: The house of parliament that decides which party/coalition forms government.  Both upper and lower houses have the right to initiate legislation.

Upper House: This is a house of review that should act as a check and balance. With the possible exception of some money bills legislation needs to be passed by both houses of parliament.  Queensland has no upper house.

Preference voting: The system used for all government elections in Australia. It allows voters to show their support for minor parties without losing their right to vote for their preferred major party.  Voters put number one next to the name of their preferred candidate (first preference), two next to their second preference etc.  (Some states allow symbols other than numbers to be used.)

Primary vote: This is the total number of first preferences received by a candidate or party. 

Counting preference votes for single member electorates: The number of first preference votes received by each candidate are counted.  If no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and the second preferences of this candidate are added to the votes of the surviving candidates. This process continues until one candidate gets more than 50% of the votes.  For more details see Counting for the Federal House of Representatives.

Proportional preference systems: These systems are used for counting preference votes in multimember electorates such as those used for the Australian Senate. For details see How the Senate Votes are Counted

Two party preferred vote (2PP): This count can be done for both individual electorates or the overall vote.  For the overall vote: At the start of this count all candidates who are not party candidates will be eliminated and their preferences distributed.  The candidates for the party with the least number of votes in the overall count will then be eliminated and their preferences distributed.  This procedure will continue until there are only two parties left. The 2PP vote is the votes (including received preferences that the surviving two parties have at this stage.)

Major parties: These are the parties that have a real chance of forming government. For many years, control at national and state level has alternated between the ALP and a stable coalition of the Liberal and National parties.  In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties merged to form the LNP before the 2012 election. 

Minority government: A term used to describe a government that depends on independents or minor parties to retain power.

Safe seats: Seats that one party wins every election. 

Working majority: A majority large for the government to get its legislation passed. A government needs at least one more members than the combined non-government members to have a working majority. One government member usually becomes the parliamentary speaker. The speaker only has a casting vote