CATEGORIES OF
ELECTORAL SYSTEMS 1.
DIRECT ELECTION OF CANDIDATES versus INDIRECT ELECTION OF CANDIDATES This major and fundamental distinction between voting systems is discussed at www.vicnet.net.au/~prsa/history/direct_e.htm 2.
SINGLE VACANCIES versus MULTIPLE VACANCIES: The use of vote-counting systems to fill a single vacancy, such as the president of an organization, is a simpler operation than their use to fill the multiple vacancies required to be filled when the members of a representative body are to be elected, as there are fewer possibilities, and usually fewer candidates. Similar general approaches can be applied to both situations, but there are obviously more variations possible with the multiple vacancy situation. Proportional
representation is only
applicable to the election of a representative body, and provides full
and accurate representation of as many voters as possible. It requires
multi-member electorates for it to operate. Single-member electorate
systems do not soundly elect representative bodies, as they represent
barely half of all voters, and leave the remaining voters totally
unrepresented. 3.
TRANSFERABLE VOTE SYSTEMS versus NON-TRANSFERABLE VOTE SYSTEMS A useful resource for details of many of
these systems is the Wikipedia page on
Voting Systems. Single Vacancies: The earliest and simplest voting took place for single positions, such as the chairperson or presiding officer of an organization. When there were only two candidates for such a single position it was obvious that the candidate with most of the votes was the candidate that should be elected. When there were more than two candidates the assumption was made that the same "first-past-the-post" rule should apply there also, and that was widely done as it was not a difficult operation. Widespread long term use of such systems has led to their replacement in countries such as the UK and USA being resisted, although it was soon recognized that having three or more candidates could result in the candidate with the most votes of any candidate nevertheless not receiving most of the votes cast overall. A working solution to that anomaly arrived in the form of the single transferable vote in the 19th Century, which is the system now used in all the Lower Houses of Australia's Federal and mainland State Parliaments, but that was not adopted until 1919, when the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 - the present principal Act - was first used. That transferable vote ensures that the votes for the less strongly-supported candidates are successively transferred to the next most-preferred candidate until a candidate gains more votes than the remaining votes combined, whereupon that candidate is declared elected. The original
bill for the Commonwealth
Electoral Act 1902 provided for the single transferable vote
(preferential voting) for both houses of the Australian Parliament with
marking of second and later preferences being fully optional, but
that Bill, which was introduced by the Barton Government and passed by
the House of Representatives, was amended in the Senate to remove the
transferable element, leaving a "first-past-the-post" non-transferable
vote for the electors for both houses. The House of Representatives
passed the amended bill, which became Multiple Vacancies: With multiple vacancies
both transferable and non-transferable vote systems exist. The
non-transferable systems can be either proportional or winner-take-all
(majoritarian), as can the transferable systems. For example the first
and the second federally-enacted vote-counting systems at
Australian Senate elections were both winner-take-all systems:
By contrast the majority of countries on the
continent of 4. MULTIPLE VACANCY SPECTRUM:
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION to WINNER-TAKE-ALL The Proportional Representation End: At the proportional representation end of this spectrum are those systems, whether transferable vote or non-transferable vote systems that provide, in electoral districts electing five or more candidates as a group, for the election of candidates with a significant degree of diversity able to represent, collectively, some five-sixths of the total number of voters. This end of the spectrum includes
The Winner-take-all End: At the Winner-take-all end of the spectrum are those systems, mostly like the two different majoritorian systems used for Australian Senate elections from 1902 to 1946, where like the plurality system from 1902 to 1917 where the candidates that gained the largest single group of votes filled all the vacancies, or the majority-preferential system from 1919 to 1947, where the candidates that gained a bare absolute majority of votes filled all the positions. Intermediate Positions: Between those two ends of the spectrum of proportionality are systems that give a degree of proportionality, but tend to have some bias towards larger groups. Examples are quota-preferential systems where the number of persons to be elected is fewer than five, and non-preferential non-proportional systems that nevertheless enable some minority representation, such as the limited vote or the cumulative vote.
6. FEATURES OF SYSTEMS THAT EITHER STRENGTHEN OR WEAKEN VOTER CONTROL The Hare-Clark
system of proportional
representation used in By contrast, electoral systems in other parts of Australia and elsewhere have been overlaid with aspects that operate against voters being the real arbiters of whom is elected. Examples of such aspects include a degree of stage management where political parties are allowed to decide the order of candidates on ballot-papers, and the Group Voting Tickets used for other parliamentary PR polls in Australia. Those aspects allow voters to be readily persuaded to adopt a specific choice of candidates from a ticket lodged by their party of choice, and to tend largely to not bother distinguishing between the particular candidates, even though, unlike the case with party list systems, which are indirect electoral systems, there is provision for them to do so, although that is made harder for them than the easy method of donkey voting or ticking a Group Voting Ticket box. Representative bodies elected from
single-member electorates weaken voter control in the sense that,
unlike proportional representation systems, nearly half the voters in
each electorate, and hence overall, are unrepresented by the final
outcome. 7. DESCRIPTIONS OF A
WIDE RANGE OF VOTE-COUNTING SYSTEMS
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