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THE FATAL
FLAWS IN
"FIRST-PAST-THE-POST" ELECTORAL SYSTEMS INTRODUCTION: The First-past-the-post Concept: The term first-past-the-post
is synonymous with the terms relative
majority and plurality. It
refers to the basis on which votes are counted in order to determine who is
elected by those votes. Such systems can be used for the filling of a single
vacancy, or the filling of a number of vacancies as a group. A first-past-the-post electoral system
is one where ballots are not valid unless they have been marked by the voter
to indicate the candidate or candidates that the voter wishes to have
elected, but no more candidates can be indicated than the number of vacancies
to be filled, and the votes are counted as described under "Counting of
the Votes" below. The English common law electoral system is a first-past-the-post system, but it
allows ballots to indicate votes for fewer candidates than the number to be
elected if the voter so chooses, which allows for the traditional plumping by voters. More
recent variants of that system are: (a) the single
non-transferable vote, which was used for Japan’s Lower House until
it was replaced by a hybrid party-list
PR and single-member system (not the
same as New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional system) at the end
of the 20th Century, (b) the limited vote, and (c) the now discredited multiple
plurality system used for Australian Senate elections from 1903-17, which
is referred to below and arbitrarily required Form of
Ballot-papers: Traditionally,
ballot-papers for first-past-the-post
elections invite the voter to indicate his or her votes by means of marking a
cross (X) alongside the name of each of the candidates voted for, but more
recent practice in some jurisdictions, such as certain Queensland
local government polls and elections in certain Australian unions, has
allowed the voter to mark his or her preferences among the candidates in
order by marking the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. against their respective
names. In a country like Australia, where the predominant voting system is
preferential voting, a benign interpretation of that practice would be that
it was instituted to facilitate voting, although a less benign, but possibly
more accurate interpretation, would be that it conceals from the less
perceptive voters the nature of the system that applies. Counting
of the Votes: Where there are multiple
vacancies to be filled, the votes on each ballot-paper are counted as being
of equal value to each other, even though a voter might have a distinct order
of preference among the candidates, as there is no mechanism for such
preferences to be given effect to. Candidates are elected consecutively according to who receives
the largest number of votes. There is no pre-determined percentage of the
overall vote required to be gained before a candidate is elected (hence the
description "relative
majority"), so a candidate can be elected with a very much smaller
percentage of the vote than under any other electoral system if the votes are
spread very evenly among the candidates. In elections to fill a single
vacancy or elections by the plurality bloc
vote referred to below, all the successful candidates can be elected by the
votes of very much less than 50% of the voters, with well over 50% of the
voters having no effect on the outcome whatsoever, unlike preferential
voting, which ensures that a majority, or quota, as the case may be, of
voters decides the outcome for each vacancy. First-past-the-post voting systems for filling a single vacancy: These systems, for parliamentary and congressional elections,
are now largely confined to parts of the former British Empire such as the
United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, India and Pakistan,
although Australia, New Zealand, Eire, South Africa, Malta and Sri Lanka have
changed to other systems. These systems are badly flawed
because they allow members to be elected in each electorate with well below
50% of the vote, and allow splitting of the vote among candidates of similar
views to the benefit of more isolated candidates. Such systems are also used
for electing single office-bearers, such as the President
of France. The non-transferable nature of the votes cast is the main
fault there. Multiple First-past-the-post voting systems:
The PRSA History page
mentions the quite unfair and unreasonable electoral system used for the
election of the Australian Senate from 1903 to 1917. The system also applied,
by
default, to the first election in South
Australia for members of the House of Representatives in 1901. It is
variously referred to as a multiple "X" voting, a multiple relative
majority, a multiple or bloc first-past-the-post, a plurality
at large, a plurality bloc vote, or a
multiple plurality system.
If an electoral system is not specified in a constitution, the multiple plurality system is unfortunately the common law
default system. Under it a voter traditionally marked an "X"
against the name of each candidate voted for, with the proviso that the ballot
would be invalid if an "X" appeared against the names of more
candidates than there were vacancies to be filled. A later, even less
democratic variant, used for those 1903-17 Senate elections, arbitrarily
specified that the ballot would be invalid if the number of candidates voted
for was not equal to the number of vacancies, thus forestalling the
traditional option in plurality elections of plumping.
The term plurality refers to the largest vote gained by a candidate or candidate,
even if that candidate or candidates have failed to gain an absolute majority
of votes. The 3
systems used for Senate polls: For Australian Senate
elections, that unsatisfactory non-preferential voting system was replaced by
a multiple,
or bloc,
majority-preferential electoral system in 1919, which was in turn
replaced by the present
quota-preferential system of proportional representation (PR) in 1948.
Use of that unfortunate 1919-47 system is now confined to certain municipal
polls in the Northern
Territory. A routine outcome in Senate
elections before 1949 was that candidates of a single party, or point of
view, won all of the vacancies for a State,
and regularly, once in each of the first five decades of the Senate's
existence, for the whole of Australia,
as occurred in 1910,
in 1917,
in 1925,
in 1934
and finally in 1943.
The multiple plurality system in force prior to 1919 had similar effects, as
the 1910 and 1917 examples show, except that it also occasionally filled all
vacancies for a State with candidates from the same party that had
collectively failed to gain even 50% of the votes for that State. Preferential
systems predominating:
Preferential systems have generally replaced plurality systems in Australia
when the Commonwealth and all States except Queensland made that change
around 1920 but, some 90 years later, multiple plurality systems still
persist in some quarters. Prominent examples are elections for local
government in some rural parts of Queensland, for all of Australia's Anglican
Diocesan Synods except Melbourne's, which uses PR, and for the boards of the
National Roads and Motorists Association and the Royal Automobile Club of
Victoria. These motoring groups compound the flaws of the voting system they
use by allowing names of candidates that are retiring directors to be marked
on the ballot-paper with an asterisk (*). That has the effect of
concentrating establishment votes on those candidates alone. It allows other
votes to be dispersed among what is often a large field of candidates. No
means are provided for the voters to have their votes pass, in accordance
with preferences they indicate, from poorly supported candidates to better
supported candidates of their choosing, so that their votes are not wasted. DETAILS
OF THE FATAL FLAWS: Failure to ensure
representation of over 50%:
The plurality, relative majority, or "first-past-the-post"
idea ignores the fact that the candidate or candidates with the largest
number of votes does not necessarily gain the support of any predetermined
percentage of the votes. All that is required is that the winner's vote total
be higher than the rival totals, yet that total might be so low as to leave a
majority of voters completely unrepresented
by any of the multiple candidates elected. This objection applies even when
only one vacancy is to be filled. A
majority-preferential voting system (Senate 1919-48) requires that the views
of an absolute majority of voters, which is a number exceeding 50%, must be
given effect to. A quota-preferential PR system (Senate 1948-) gives effect
to well beyond 50% of the votes cast (all but a small percentage of unusable
votes). Splitting the votes of a group owing
to a proliferation of similar extra candidates: All
plurality systems suffer by leaving voters in a quandary if there is a
relative abundance of candidates with a particular viewpoint compared with
those of opposing viewpoints. A recent example was the first round of the 2002 French presidential
election, which resulted in even the strongest-polling candidate, the
outgoing President, Jacques Chirac, from the right, gaining less than 20% of
the vote. The left was also split, but slightly more so, with the result that
the second round, to choose between the two highest-polling candidates,
pitted the right against Jean-Marie Le Pen, rather than its realistic
opponents, the left. The result was a sham poll, where Chirac took nearly all
the votes, owing to the lack of a realistic opponent. Wasting the
votes of many of those voting for very strongly supported candidates: Plurality
systems being used to fill more than one vacancy as a group, whether by the
multiple plurality system described above, by cumulative voting, or by a
limited non-transferable vote suffer the flaw that very strongly supported
candidates can gain far more votes than they need for election, thus
depriving their supporters of the ability to have the magnitude of their vote
translated into an appropriate number of seats won, leaving many seats won by
very small numbers of votes left after a single, or a few winners have gained
most of the votes, with no provision for transferring those votes as happens
in the transfer of surplus votes in a quota-preferential
PR election. Unfairly forcing some voters to
support candidates they oppose: The
non-preferential nature of the multiple plurality system used in the
above examples is grossly unfair to voters that find the number of candidates
they consider to be acceptable is fewer than the number of vacancies to
be filled. Such voters are required, in order to cast a valid vote, to mark
the balance of their vote for candidates they oppose. The multiple plurality
system prevents voters indicating the ranking of their preferences for the
individual candidates, and forces voters to give them all equal weight. The
example in the table below shows how voters'
power to give effect to their priorities by marking preferences is
suppressed. Plumping: The last
flaw above does not apply when only one vacancy is to be filled, nor does it
apply to the traditional, common law, form of plurality voting, which allows
voters to vote for fewer than the number to be elected, a practice known as
"plumping", which allows voters to concentrate their voting
power on those they support, rather than being constrained to also vote for
those they oppose, in cases where those voters support fewer candidates than
the number to be elected. That traditional form was practised in British
elections prior to the general abolition of two-member geographical
electorates for the UK House of Commons in 1885, as it allowed a crude form
of representation of minority opinion where such minorities were large
enough. HOW AN 80% VOTE WINNER IS DEFEATED BY AN UNFAIR ELECTORAL
SYSTEM Multiple first-past-the-post
systems prevent voters implementing their priorities, by suppressing notional
preference votes.
* NOTE: To calculate this line, each of the notional
preferences (1-5) above has to be treated as just an "X". |
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