The QPR Blog

I jumped the gun a bit last time I broached this subject, but who could have foreseen what was about to happen back then? Regardless, here we are, with the revised NSW Council election date [4 September 2021] now squarely on the horizon. I’ll have a bit more to say about the election process in the coming months, but I thought that, first up, I might deal with some of the not-so-obvious ‘rules of engagement’ that might help to inform any decision to nominate as a candidate.

I’ll take for granted that any prospective candidate has at least attended a Council meeting or two and has some idea about what might be involved in the ‘job’. Mind you, I know of a first-time candidate in a neighbouring Local Government Area (LGA) who was elected Mayor at the first meeting of the new Council without ever having previously attended a Council meeting, so ‘experience’ is not actually a prerequisite.

Either way, let’s take a look at the election process, the ballot paper in particular. To some extent, the order in which candidates are listed on the ballot paper is, quite literally, a lottery. But there is a little more to it than that.

The voting system used for NSW local government elections allows a candidate to stand either as an individual candidate or as a member of a Group of candidates. The voting system also makes a significant distinction between candidates listed as individuals on a ballot paper and those listed within such a Group.

I will note from the outset that it is a distinct advantage to be listed high up in a Group, and almost impossible to be elected as an individual candidate, in the QPRC LGA at least. While much of this has to do with voter behaviour, the structure of the ballot paper has a direct influence on the result.

The ballot paper ultimately lists all of the Groups that have nominated, across the paper, from left to right, in an order determined by lottery. Candidates who have chosen to stand as ‘individuals’, are listed in the last ‘group’ on the ballot paper, but within that ‘group’ in an order also determined by lottery. Here is the next distinction between grouped and ungrouped candidates—the order in which ungrouped candidates are listed on the ballot paper is determined by lottery, but the order in which Grouped individual candidates are listed within their Group is chosen by the Group, automatically bestowing a preference on the leader of the Group for every vote cast in favour of that Group.

It is also evident that being listed first on any ballot paper in a system where voting is compulsory, as it is in Australia, conveys an advantage. Historically, first place on the ballot paper in a Council election can be worth as much as a whole quota of votes (i.e. the donkey vote can be as high as 10%, arbitrarily guaranteeing the election of the first candidate listed, or an extra candidate from the Group lucky enough to be listed first).

The final piece of the Group voting ‘puzzle’ arises as a result of the fact that Groups of candidates can choose—and they invariably do so choose—to be allocated a ‘Group Voting Square’. Group identifiers and Group voting squares appear above a solid horizontal line on the ballot paper, while the names of individual candidates and their individual voting squares, are listed below this line, under their respective Group identifiers. To cast a valid vote, voters can either number Group voting squares (at least one) above-the-line, or the voting squares for individual candidates (at least half the number of councillors to be elected—in the case of QPRC, that’s six) below-the-line. Note that, as there is no (above-the-line) Group voting square for ungrouped candidates, an above-the-line vote automatically excludes all ungrouped candidates from any subsequent voting preference distribution. Given that, historically, 80-90% of votes are cast above-the-line (where this option is provided), this makes it very difficult for an individually listed candidate to be successful in the presence of Groups and above-the-line voting.

The point of this discussion is simply that, if you were considering nominating as a candidate in the upcoming Council election, quite apart from any other matters that might be relevant, like experience (or not…), you really need to be nominating as a member of a Group. If you’re really serious about being elected, as distinct from just supporting the efforts of the lead candidate in your Group, you need to be that lead candidate. If the Group is sponsored by one of the major political parties, if the lead candidate within a Group has an established public profile, or if the Group is lucky enough to score first slot on the ballot paper, being the second or third candidate in that Group might be enough to get elected, but historically, only rarely are more than two candidates elected from within any one Group in a regional Council election.