PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA
	Tel  +613 9589 1802	Tel  +61429176725	18 Anita Street	BEAUMARIS VIC 3193
	info@prsa.org.au	www.prsa.org.au		2009-06-24

Inadvisability of Imposing Constraints in

Proportional Representation Elections

Constraints on Numbers of Electable Candidates: The practice in some electoral arrangements of prescribing that only a certain number of persons with particular attributes can be elected is an attempt to overcome some of the unrepresentative character of winner-take-all vote-counting systems, and is an unnecessary and undesirable provision to be applied in a quota-preferential proportional representation system, as such PR systems inherently provide a diversity of representation commensurate with the various degrees of support for different points of view. Some constitutions that prescribe the use of quota-preferential proportional representation nevertheless follow the example of those winner-take-all systems and impose such constraints, which amounts to constraining voters in the free implementation of their preferences in favour of a pre-determined and arbitrary outcome.

Examples of Imposition of Constraints: An early example of a constraint applied to override and distort a winner-take-all outcome is the provision in the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that requires that an elector is constrained in his or her votes for President and Vice-President by having to vote, in at least one of those ballots, for a candidate that is resident in a state other than the one in which he or she is resident. More recent examples include the constraint that Section 28(a) of the Constitution of the Liberal Party of Australia places on the sex of the two Vice-Presidents of its Federal Council, whereby one must be a male and one a female. The Australian Labor Party also has fixed a minimum percentage of safe parliamentary seats for which female candidates must be endorsed. As elections also include the nomination process, constraints on voters' wishes also appear there in the form of the term limits, fortunately not favoured in Australia, imposed by the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Confusion about What Constitutes Representation: There is, possibly based on the secondary rather than the primary dictionary definition of the word "representation", an unfortunate confusion between the representation of voters' opinions and the representation of their definable characteristics. That confusion leads to a  belief in some quarters that the outcome of an election should be more predetermined than it would be if it were left to the voters to the greatest extent possible. This confusion leads to proposals for a requirement that there should be an equal number of males and females in parliaments despite voters having other priorities, as evidenced by their votes. This attitude of constraining voters completely overlooks the fact that, in some circumstances, or for a particular election, a large number of male voters might prefer to have females as their representatives.

Preferable Means of Encouraging Diversity: A far fairer way of encouraging diversity in a representative body is to couple the maximum use of a quota-preferential system of proportional representation with the minimum use of devices like those, which the history of Australian Senate ballot-paper designs demonstrates, attempt to arbitrarily or subtly distort voters' preferences. This includes Group Voting Tickets, and unnecessary formality provisions for the full marking of all preferences rather than a requirement that a minimum number of preferences equal to the number of positions to be filled is required. There is great benefit in positive measures for voter-controlled diversity such as Robson Rotation, and the provision on ballot-papers of even-handed information such as the requirement of Section 74(3B)(b) of Victoria's Electoral Act 2002 for Legislative Council proportional representation elections for printing on the ballot-paper against each candidate's name the locality at which each candidate is enrolled. It is desirable that ballot-papers should also include a statement of the vote-counting system to be used in determining the result of the vote, so that voters are made aware of how their vote is translated into seats.

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