Optional preferential voting in Redlands

 

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In an earlier comment on the Redland City election, I made the point that two factors would determine whether Richardson or Williams would be the eventual winner. These were

• What proportion of those who voted for Curtin voters allocated a preference
• What is the distribution of preferences (i.e. what proportion of those who voted for Curtin have voted 2 Richardson and what proportion have voted 2 Williams).

The final outcome

The final result from the Queensland Electoral Commission is:

Candidate	Count	Percentage
RICHARDSON, Claire	38,241	49.11%
Declared: WILLIAMS, Karen	39,634	50.89%

Congratulations are due to the re-elected Mayor and sympathies to candidate Richardson who was only 1,393 votes behind after the distribution of preferences on the exclusion of David Curtin from the count. The ECQ table below shows first preference votes and the distribution of preferences.

Preference Distribution	RICHARDSON, Claire	CURTIN, David Allan	WILLIAMS, Karen	Exhausted	Votes Remaining in Count	Total Formal Votes
First Preference	35,037	12,428	38,488		85,953	85,953
CURTIN, David Allan excluded	3,204		1,146	8,078	4,350	12,428
Total	38,241		39,634	8,078	77,875	85,953

The critical matters are

• 8,078 of the Curtin votes were exhausted as they had not stated any preferences.
• 35% of Curtin voters (4,350) indicated a preference.
• The exhaustion of the 8,078 votes that gave no preference meant in the second round of counting the majority was 50% + 1 of 77,875 and not 50% + 1 of the 85,953 formal votes cast.
• 74% of the 4,350 Curtin voters who gave a preference put Richardson at 2; these 3,204 votes are shown in the third row of the table . The 1,146 that went to Williams are also shown in this row.
• The low number of Curtin votes giving a preference is the major mathematical factor in explaining the outcome.
• With the same 74/26 split in preferences, Richardson would have been the winner if 58% of the Curtin votes had given a preference.

Suffice to say that the workings of the optional preferential system mean that Karen Williams was re-elected as Mayor with just 46.1% of the total formal votes cast in this election. This is not a comment on the Mayor but on the skewing that arises from the use of optional preferential voting and the need for ‘third party’ candidates to give more thought to what they are doing.

Preferential voting

The principle of preferential voting is that the winning candidate must get an absolute majority – that is at least 50% + 1 of all votes cast. This compares with ‘first past the post’ where the winner is the candidate with the most votes irrespective of the proportion of votes cast. It is possible to be elected with just a little over 25% of the vote in a first past the post system with four candidates. Multi-round, ‘run-off’ ballots are another way of requiring the winner of an election to get an absolute majority. They are used, for example, in Presidential elections in more than 40 countries including Austria, East Timor, France, Indonesia and Russia. They are also used by some political parties (including the LNP) for internal votes. If no candidate has an absolute majority on the first ballot, a further ballot or ballots are held. There are minor variations as to whether only a second ballot is held between the two candidates who gained the most votes or there is successive elimination of the candidate with the lowest number of votes. An essential characteristic is that all voters can vote in the second or subsequent round. Australia’s preferential voting is effectively a form of instantaneous run-off ballot. In a compulsory preferential system (such as that used for Federal and State elections), all voters have a say in who gets an absolute majority through their primary vote and their preferences.

Peculiarities of Optional Preferential Voting

This is not the case with an optional preferential voting system. Those voters who do not allocate preferences to ‘third party’ candidates forgo their say in determining who wins the election if preferences have to be distributed. As evident in the 2020 Redland City mayoral election, a candidates can win an election with a minority of the valid votes. As such, the optional preferential voting system is not meeting the principle of absolute majorities. Optional preferential voting delivered the same lack of absolute majority in some Brisbane Council wards.

Howard Guille

Howard Guille is a resident of Mooloomba who has written extensively on politics and economics including two monographs for the TJ Ryan Foundation on the performance of the current State Government.  

Redlands2030 – 19 April 2020