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Filling Casual Vacancies after a
PR Election |
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Ensuring Voters Directly Elect All
the Representatives: The PRSA
recommends that the important principle of direct election by the
electors of all the representatives, as also specified in Sections
7 and 24 of the
Australian Constitution for general and periodic elections, but unfortunately
not for filling Senate casual vacancies, whose filling is determined by
Section 15, be maintained
in the filling of casual vacancies by a prescribed re-examination of the
ballots cast at the election at which the vacating representatives were
elected. It is necessary for this that either the ballot-papers (manual
count) or the ballot files (computer count) be securely retained until the
next general or periodic election, and that expressions of interest in
filling the vacancy, and serving for the remainder of the vacating
representative's term, be invited from all the candidates at the last
election that were unelected and still remain eligible for election. The
candidates that accept that invitation and meet those criteria are termed
continuing candidates. Two approaches exist for conducting that
re-examination.
The approach recommended here by the PRSA is the countback approach as prescribed for
House of Assembly and muncipal council elections
in Tasmania, any PR municipal council elections
in Victoria, and Legislative Assembly
elections in the Australian Capital Territory. That approach
always results in the election of a candidate of the same political party as
the vacating candidate, unless the voters have specifically voted otherwise.
In a countback only the quota
of votes that elected the vacating representative is examined. Where the
re-examination shows a continuing candidate that gained, at that election, an
absolute majority of the next available preference votes after the
preferences of the vacating candidate at that election, that continuing
candidate is declared elected to fill that vacancy.
The alternative approach, which is more time-consuming for
manual counts, but is simple and straightforward for computer-based counts,
is that all the votes cast at the
election are examined, as
is prescribed for Legislative Council
elections in Western Australia, and for elections to the General
Synod of the Church of England in the UK since the 1920s. The only
preferences that are passed over are those for the vacating candidate. A
"savings provision" in the prescription for this approach states
that any non-vacating already-elected candidate cannot be displaced by this
recount. For manual counts this full recount approach is more time-consuming
than countback by a factor similar to the number of candidates, and is
less likely to maintain the complexion and balance in the spectrum of views
mentioned above. ---------- |
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