1902 and the origins of preferential electoral systems in Australia

Australian Journal of Politics and History

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 155-167

  Farrell, David M ^a   Mcallister, Ian ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 20444507264     PISSN: 00049522     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8497.2005.00368.x     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. G. S. Reid and Martyn Forrest, Australia's Commonwealth Parliament, 1901-1988: Ten Perspectives (Carlton, Victoria, 1989), p. 99.
2. See also, Joan Rydon, "Electoral Methods and the Australian Party System 1910-1951", in Colin Hughes, ed., Readings in Australian Government (St. Lucia, Queensland, 1968);
3. lain McLean, "E. J. Nanson. Social Choice and Electoral Reform", Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 31 (1996), pp. 369-85.
4. B. D. Graham, "The Choice of Voting Methods in Federal Politics, 1902-1918", in Hughes, Readings in Australian Government;
5. John Uhr, "Why We Chose Proportional Representation", in Marian Sawer and Sarah Miskin, eds, Representation and Institutional Chance: 50 Years of Proportional Representation in the Senate (Canberra, 2000);
6. John Uhr, "Rules for Representation: Parliament and the Design of the Australian Electoral System" (Commonwealth of Australia, Department of the Parliamentary Library, Research Paper No. 29, 2000).
7. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: an Introduction", in idem, eds, Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York, 1967).
8. Andrew McLaren Carstairs, A Short History of Electoral Systems in Western Europe (London, 1980).
9. Indeed, there is evidence that Australia's first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, studied Belgium's PR system prior to the debate over the 1902 Commonwealth Electoral Act (see Graham, "The Choice of Voting Methods").
10. Vernon Bogdanor, The People and the Party System: The Referendum and Electoral Reform in British Politics (Cambridge, 1981);
11. David Butler, The Electoral System in Britain Since 1918, Second Edition (Oxford, 1963);
12. Shaun Bowler, Todd Donovan and David Farrell, "Party Strategy and Voter Organization under Cumulative Voting in Victorian England", Political Studies, Vol. XLVII (2000), pp. 906-17.
13. Arend Lijphart, "The Demise of the Last Westminster System? Comments on the Report of New Zealand's Royal Commission on the Electoral System", Electoral Studies, Vol. 6 (1987), pp. 97-103.
14. Thomas Hare, Treatise on the Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal (London, 1859);
15. Jennifer Hart, Proportional Representation: Critics of the British Electoral System, 1820-1945 (Oxford, 1992).
16. Ultimately, STV was introduced for electing MPs from four university seats.
17. David Farrell, Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction (London and New York, 2001).
18. See Carstairs, A Short History.
19. Queensland Parliamentary Debates (July 5, 1892), pp. 594-96.
20. For an excellent description of the contingent vote system and how it varies from AV, see Ben Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (Cambridge, 2001).
21. W. K. Hancock, Politics in Pitcairn: And Other Essays (London, 1947), p. 81.
22. For example, William Pemper Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand (London, 1902), p. 181.
23. Mention should also be made of the contribution by the Ashworth brothers (T.R. and H. P. C.), particularly by the publication of their book, Proportional Representation Applied to Party Government (Melbourne, 1900). This was an influential study, although, their proposed hybrid system (somewhat akin to a list system) was not taken very seriously. In essence, their principal role was to provide useful ammunition for critics of the electoral systems proposed in the 1902 Bill.
24. Notably, Marcus Haward and James Warden, eds, An Australian Democrat: The Life, Work, and Consequences of Andrew Inglis Clark. (Hobart, 1995);
25. Susan Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women: A Biography of Catherine Helen Spence (Sydney, 1985);
26. McLean, "E. J. Nanson"; Reid and Forrest, Australia's Commonwealth Parliament;
27. John Uhr, "Catherine Helen Spence and Australian Electoral Reform", Australasian Political Studies Association Jubilee Conference, ANU, Canberra, August 2002.
28. McLean, "E. J. Nanson".
29. Catherine Helen Spence, "What is Effective Voting and How is it to be Secured?" [1896] in Helen Thomson, ed., Catherine Helen Spence (St. Lucia, Queensland, 1987), p. 557.
30. Droop proposed a similar amendment in a paper published several years later (see lain McLean and Arnold Urken, "General Introduction", in idem, eds, Classics of Social Choice (Ann Arbor, 1995), p. 47).
31. Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women, p. 157.
32. J. B. Gregory (Melbourne) in the 1880s devised a scheme for transferring surplus votes involving the transfer of all the ballots at a fraction of their original value. This scheme removes the element of chance caused by transferring only surplus ballots at their full value. For further discussion, see David Farrell and Ian McAllister, "The 1983 Change in Surplus Vote Transfer Procedures for the Australian Senate and its Consequences for STV", Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 38 (2003), pp. 479-492.
33. Scott Bennett, '"These New Fangled Ideas': Hare-Clark 1896-1901", in Haward and Warden, An Australian Democrat, p. 146.
34. Scott Bennett, '"These New Fangled Ideas': Hare-Clark 1896-1901", p. 147;
35. Terry Newman, Hare-Clark in Tasmania: Representation of All Opinions (Hobart, 1992).
36. Bennett, "These New Fangled Ideas", pp. 157-8;
37. W. A. Townsley, "The Electoral System and the Constituencies", in F. C. Green, ed., Tasmania: A Century of Responsible Government, 1856-1956 (Hobart, 1956), p. 76.
38. Townsley, "The Electoral System", p. 76.
39. For alternative views, see Malcolm Mackerras, "The Operation and Significance of the Hare-Clark System", in Haward and Warden, An Australian Democrat; Newman, Hare-Clark in Tasmania.
40. Indeed, with the exception of Andrae's Danish experiments in 1855, this was the first use of STV in the world (see McLean and Urken, "General Introduction", pp. 46-47).
41. Uhr, "Why We Chose Proportional Representation", p. 27.
42. The quote is from Reid and Forrest, Australia's Commonwealth Parliament, p. 88.
43. On social choice perspectives, see McLean and Urken, "General Introduction".
44. McLean and Urken, "General Introduction".
45. E. J. Nanson, "Methods of Election", in McLean and Urken, Classics of Social Choice.
46. McLean, "E. J. Nanson", pp. 380,381;
47. Reid and Forrest, Australia's Commonwealth Parliament, p. 88.
48. Uhr, "Why We Chose Proportional Representation", p. 29.
49. Brian Galligan and James Warden, "The Design of the Senate", in Gregory Craven, ed., The Convention Debates, 1891-1898: Commentaries, Indices and Guide (Sydney, 1986), p. 110.
50. L. F. Crisp, The Parliamentary Government of the Commonwealth of Australia (London, 1949), p. 65.
51. Uhr, "Why We Chose Proportional Representation", pp. 21-22.
52. Matthew Clarke, Federal Convention Debates, Second Session (Sydney, 13 September 1897), p. 368. A few days after this comment, on 21 September, the Tasmanian delegation proposed an amendment to allow each state to determine its own method for electing Senators, but the move attracted no support.
53. See, for instance, the comments of Barton and Deakin, both on 15 April 1897, Federal Convention Debates, First Session, Adelaide, p. 673.
54. Also, see Deakin on 7 March 1898, Federal Convention Debates, Third Session, Melbourne, pp. 1925ff; on this occasion, Barton states (p. 1925) that this is a matter "for the future".
55. Dean Jaensch, Power Politics: Australia's Party System, Third Edition (St. Leonards, NSW, 1994);
56. P. Loveday, "The Federal Parties", in P. Loveday, A. W. Martin and R. S. Parker, eds, The Emergence of the Australian Party System (Sydney, 1977).
57. L. F. Crisp, The Australian Federal Labour Party, 1901-1951 (Sydney, 1978), pp. 214-17.
58. Graham, "The Choice of Voting Methods", p. 205.
59. We use the term "constituency" to refer to the electoral district in which a candidate is elected. In Australia it is common practice to refer to this as the "electorate".
60. McLean, "E. J. Nanson".
61. See Nanson's discussion on "bracketing" ("Methods of Election", pp. 354ff.). He stresses the importance of this in preventing voters from being able to plump for one or a small number of candidates, which is a danger with optional preference voting.
62. Commonwealth Electoral Bill (No. 45) read for the first time in the Senate, 24 January 1902, second schedule, rules 5-8.
63. Ibid., rule 3.
64. O'Connor, CPD (31 January 1902), p. 9534.
65. Nanson, "Methods of Election";
66. McLean, "E. J. Nanson", p. 378.
67. Comment by Lyne on introducing the Bill to the House of Representatives on 5 June 1902, CPD, p. 13353.
68. In the early years of the Commonwealth, it was quite common for bills to be initiated in the Senate. The Senate encouraged this as a means of establishing the principle that ministers could and should speak in both Houses, a break from British parliamentary practice (Crisp, The Parliamentary Government, p. 186).
69. One might have expected the issue to end there, and certainly this is the view of those scholars who have examined the parliamentary debate (Graham, "The Choice of Voting Methods";
70. John Uhr, Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament (Cambridge, 1998)).
71. Indeed, Reid and Forrest end their treatment of this debate by stating, incorrectly, that O'Connor's "amended clause was accepted without a division" (Australia's Commonwealth Parliament, p. 104).
72. In fact what ensued was a rearguard effort by O"Connor to introduce what, in essence, would have been a limited vote system, in which voters would be given the option of casting fewer votes than the number of seats to be filled, with the greater prospect of a semi-proportional result, which would be more favourable for the Protectionist government (for discussion of limited vote systems, see Richard L. Engstrom, "Minority Electoral Opportunities and Alternative Election Systems in the United States", in Mark E. Rush ed., Voting Rights and Redistricting in the United States (Westport, Connecticut, 1998);
73. Arend Lijphart, Rafael Lopez Pintor, Yasunori Sone, "The Limited Vote and the Single Non-Transferable Vote: Lessons from the Japanese and Spanish Examples", in Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart, eds, Electoral Laws and their Political Consequences (New York, 1986). O"Connor's subterfuge was unsuccessful and the Senate voted instead for the block vote system. Over the course of the following months, this clause ping-ponged through the two houses, with repeated efforts being made to replace the block vote with the limited vote (and with the governing party switching sides on regular occasions), and only when it looked if the entire Bill would be threatened by the parliamentary standoff did the opponents of the block vote finally give way.
74. CPD, 23 July 1902, p. 14613.
75. Crisp, The Australian Federal Party, p. 220;
76. Reid and Forrest, Australia's Commonwealth Parliament, p. 105.
77. Graham, "The Choice of Voting Methods", p. 206.
78. Colin Hughes, "STV in Australia", in Shaun Bowler and Bernard Grofman, eds, Elections in Australia, Ireland and Malta under the Single Transferable Vote (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), p. 161.
79. Uhr, "Rules for Representation", p. 11.
80. Graham, "The Choice of Voting Methods", p. 206.
81. Though Reid and Forrest (Australia's Commonwealth Parliament, p. 96) rightly single out Senator O'Connor for the "consummate skill" he showed in steering the passage of the Bill through the Senate
82. CPD, 6 March 1902, p. 10690.
83. CPD, 28 February 1902, p. 10496.
84. Robert Goodin, ed., The Theory of Institutional Design (Cambridge, 1996).
85. For more detail on the STV system introduced in 1948, see David Farrell and Ian McAllister, "Electoral Systems", in Ian McAllister, Steve Dorwick, Riaz Hassan, eds, The Cambridge Handbook of Social Sciences in Australia (Cambridge, 2003).