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The Fatal Flaws in Plurality (First-Past-the Post) Electoral
Systems INTRODUCTION: The
Plurality Concept: The term plurality
is synonymous with the terms first-past-the-post,
and relative majority. It
refers to the basis on which votes are counted in order to determine who is
elected by those votes. Such systems can, as shown below, be used for the
filling of a single vacancy, or the filling of a number of vacancies as a group. A plurality electoral
system is one where ballots are normally not valid unless they have been
marked by the voter [traditionally with a cross (X) marked against the name
of each candidates voted for] 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. Ballots are counted as described
under “Counting of the Votes” below. The American term plurality for
this crude and primitive counting system is preferable to the British
synonyms above, as first-past-the-post,
which uses a racing term to beg the question as to what the “post” is,
describes a quite different operation from judging which single candidate, in
the simple case of a single position to be filled, should most appropriately
represent a large number of voters. The racing jargon begs the question as to
what the “post” is, by assuming that it is necessarily the largest number of
first preference votes. Its proponents choose to ignore the fact that
a much sounder and much more absolute “post” is the target of determining, as
Australia’s majority-preferential system used in single-member electoral
districts has reliably done, since 1918, which of the two remaining candidates
polling highest - after the candidates receiving the fewest first preferences
have been successively excluded from the count and their ballot-papers
transferred to the remaining candidates - has received an absolute majority
of votes. An absolute majority of votes is gained when one of the two
remaining candidates gains more ballot-papers than the other. Relative
majority uses the ambiguous term, majority, to mean
what can be a minority of the total first preference vote if that is less
than 50% of the total vote. The system for marking and counting
ballot-papers in polls in Queensland for those of its municipalities that have only a
single electoral district, where plurality counting still applies, now
differs by requiring the voter to mark a sequence of numerals rather than
crosses. Many voters there might be misled by that and not realize that their
marking of such numerals is not given effect to as a transferable vote, but
has the effect of allowing the Returning Officer to treat the number of
numerals marked on a ballot-paper - up to the number of positions to be
filled – each as a separate valid vote, and to disregard further such
numerals that might be marked beyond the required number. That change has
removed a longstanding difficulty with multiple plurality systems of voters
marking more crosses than there are positions to be filled, leading to high
rates of invalid ballots. A referendum in the
United Kingdom in 2011 allowed voters to choose between that country’s longstanding
plurality system in single-member electoral districts used to elect the
members of the House of Commons, and the “alternative vote”, which is the
system of optional preferential voting
used to elect the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales. Just over
two-thirds of voters agreed with the Conservative Party in preferring the
UK’s existing system. The English common law electoral system is a
plurality 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 that a valid
ballot had to show exactly the same number of votes for candidates as there
are vacancies to fill, which thus prevented plumping. Form of Ballot-papers: Traditionally, ballot-papers for plurality
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 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. Plurality 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 plurality systems are badly flawed as 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 Plurality 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", a multiple relative majority, a multiple
first-past-the-post, a plurality at large, a block
vote, or a multiple plurality
vote. If an electoral system is not specified in a constitution, the multiple
plurality system
is unfortunately the common law default system. See the example of the ACF,
a major Australian organization that replaced its multiple plurality system
with PR in 1974. 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. An unsatisfactory and unnecessarily onerous alternative to
marking an “X” against the name of each candidate, which is still used by
some groups, was the rule, for the first election of senators
for NSW, that voters had to - in order to cast a valid vote -
strike out the names of all the candidates they were not
voting for, so that exactly the number of candidates
they were voting for would remain (this
was the only Senate polling day where the State electoral rules
still applied, so plumping was not prohibited). There
were fifty candidates for those six positions, so it is not surprising that 17.5%
of the ballots cast were ruled to be informal (invalid). The 3 systems
used for Senate polls: For Australian
Senate elections, once a uniform system applied after the first election of
senators, the three systems used, worked examples of which appear here,
were: ·
from 1903 to
1917, that unsatisfactory multiple plurality
system, ·
from 1919 to 1947,
a multiple
majority-preferential electoral system, and ·
from 1948 onwards, the present quota-preferential
system of proportional representation (PR). The system for marking and counting
ballot-papers in polls in Queensland for those of its municipalities that have only a
single electoral district - where that multiple plurality counting used for
Senate polls in1903-17 still applies - now differs by requiring the voter to
mark a sequence of numerals rather than crosses. Many voters there might be
misled by that and not realize that their marking of such numerals is not
given effect to as a transferable vote, as elsewhere in Australian public
polls, but has the effect of allowing the Returning Officer to treat the
number of numerals marked on a ballot-paper - up to the number of positions
to be filled – each as a separate valid vote, and to disregard further such
numerals that might be marked beyond the required number. That change
conceals the crude plurality system actually used, by giving it a
preferential appearance, but it has removed a longstanding difficulty with
multiple plurality systems of voters marking more crosses than there are
positions to be filled, leading to high rates of invalid ballots. Use of the unfortunate 1919-47 system is now confined to
certain municipal polls in New South Wales
and the Northern Territory.
A routine outcome of the winner-take-all 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: The Commonwealth Electoral Bill 1902 proposed the use of majority-preferential
voting in the single-member divisions proposed for the House of
Representatives, and quota-preferential voting in the States, each of which
was to form a single multi-member electoral district, for the Senate, but the
Senate successfully amended the Bill to provide for plurality voting in each
House. Provision for the type of preferential system that
generally replaced plurality systems in Australia, when the
Commonwealth and all States except Queensland made that change around 1920,
first appeared, In Tasmania, in multi-member electorates for its House of
Assembly in 1896 and its single-member Legislative
Council electoral districts in 1907 but, some 90 years later, multiple
plurality systems still persist in some quarters. Prominent examples of plurality systems persisting are
elections for: ·
WA municipal councils, where plurality systems have been
restored for the second time, ·
local government in some rural parts of ·
committees
elected by all of ·
the National
Committee of the Australian Republican Movement, ·
the board of the
National Roads and Motorists Association (NRMA), and ·
the board of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV). Flagging Incumbent Candidates: The NRMA and the RACV
compound the flaws of the multiple plurality
electoral system they use by having ballot rules that require that the names
of candidates that are retiring directors be singled out and highlighted on
the ballot-papers, and on the candidate statements, with an asterisk (*), rather than letting such
candidates include that fact in the candidate statements they lodge. That
institutionalized "helping hand" has the effect of concentrating
establishment votes on those candidates alone, and there are, by definition,
never more of such candidates than the number of positions to be filled. This inequitable ballot rule can make it more likely that
votes for other than incumbents will be dispersed, or split, among the field of non-incumbent candidates, which is
often larger than the field of incumbent candidates, as the field of
incumbent candidates is obviously limited to the
number of places available, whereas the others are not. No means are provided
for the voters to have their votes transferred, 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 an absolute 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".
Plumping occurs when voters
limit their votes to those candidates 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, or when they estimate
that they are not supporters of the slate of candidates that are likely to be
supported by the largest group of voters and that their only hope of any
representation is to limit their vote to candidates that voters other than
the largest single group of voters supporting a number of candidates equal to
the full number to be elected are expected to support. Plumping was the
subject of a rather confused Hobart City Council debate
in 1916. 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.
It is a crude form because there is no predictable quota as in PR counting so
– depending on the size of the vote for the more strongly supported
candidates – a minority vote can elect one or more candidates with an unduly
low vote, or it can elect one or more candidates but have a wasted surplus
vote that is not large enough to elect a further candidate. In that latter
alternative those surplus votes are wasted, and the more strongly supported
candidates can be elected with a lower vote than they otherwise would
require, by the removal of the competition that surplus should give. HOW AN 80% VOTE WINNER IS DEFEATED BY AN UNFAIR ELECTORAL SYSTEM Multiple plurality systems that prohibit plumping prevent voters implementing their priorities, by arbitrarily suppressing notional preference
votes. Even where plumping is allowed, voters often
fail to understand its value, as they cannot be sure – as they could with quota-preferential proportional representation – that their votes
will not be over-concentrated on too few candidates.
* 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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