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Voting matters - Issue 16, February 2003
STV in Tasmania
P Dean
Peter Dean has been involved with ERS for many years.
In his article in Voting matters[1], Philip Kestelman raises
the issue of positional voting bias. In Tasmania, there has been a
continuous process of changing some details of the STV voting system to make
it fairer. The problem of positional voting bias was addressed in 1979 and
first used in 1980.
A summary of STV in Tasmania from Newman[2] is as follows:
- 1897 First experimental use of STV.
- 1903 Women given the vote.
- 1909 First state-wide election by STV.
- 1917 By-elections and vacancies filled by a recount of the original
ballots. First used in 1922.
- 1921 Women allowed to stand as candidates.
- 1922 Deposit lost if less than 20% of the quota if excluded or at the
end of the count.
- 1930 Compulsory vote, previously 63-67% turnout, up to 82% in 1928.
- 1941 Grouping by party labels.
- 1954 Parliamentary term reduced from 5 to 3 years.
- 1955 Speaker to be chosen from party with the lower statewide vote.
- 1957 Assembly of 35 instead of 30 to overcome potential deadlock.
- 1972 Term changed to 5 years, and 4 years thereafter.
- 1973 Voters required to make 7 choices instead of 3. Previously 90% of
electors restricted their choice to a single party. Franchise reduced to 18.
- 1976 Draw for ballot position, and position within party list.
- 1980 first use of rotated ballot. The printer must issue equal numbers of
papers showing different names in the favoured position, starting with the
first name alphabetically. Thus with a columnar ballot paper 2, 8, 3 and 7
members in the 4 columns, 16 different printings are made.
A 1957 Select committee reported that it provided the Tasmanian elector with
a wider freedom of choice, and a more effective vote than any other method
of Parliamentary election in the world.
References
- P Kestelman. Positional Voting Bias Revised. Voting matters, Issue
15, pp 2-5. June 2002.
- Terry Newman. Hare-Clark in Tasmania. Joint Library Committee of
the Parliament of Tasmania, Parliament House. Hobart. 1992.
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