Following on from last month’s post, these were to be my final words on voting in the upcoming [4 September] Council election. Then we received the advice that the elections had been postponed, yet again, to 4 December 2021. But rather than break the flow of our discussion of the election process, and just as much because I didn’t really have anything else immediately at hand to write about, let’s carry on regardless.
Let me say up front that I am not seeking re-election in the upcoming elections, whenever they ultimately happen to be held, so none of my comments have anything to do with improving my chances of being elected.
There are two observations, coming out of an analysis of previous elections, that are worthy of consideration. These two observations may appear to be contradictory but one is actually a direct consequence of the other.
The first is as follows. In the first two Palerang elections, 2004 and 2008, eight of the nine candidates elected have been those with the most votes after the first preference count, and any distribution of surplus votes. Put another way, the first eight candidates have been effectively elected based on the first two preferences identified on ballot papers. The subsequent distribution of preferences did, however, determine the last candidate elected, although that race for 9th was still only between the candidates that were 9th and 10th after the first preference count.
More to the point, however, in the 2012 Palerang Council election, the 2008 and 2012 Queanbeyan City Council elections and the 2017 QPRC election, the distribution of preferences made no difference at all to the final result. The candidates that were ultimately elected were exactly those that were ahead after only first preference votes were counted.
The upshot of this observation is that when casting your vote, you should take care to identify candidates in the order you would like to see them elected. Don’t, for example, just casually mark 11 candidates that you think might make up a well-balanced Council, as some have confessed to have done in the past.
The second observation is the fact that in the 2017 QPRC election, for example, and this is not unusual, 2545 votes exhausted—they ran out of preferences before all candidates were elected. The last four successful candidates in that election were elected without making quota—they were the last candidates standing when all but 11 candidates had been eliminated from the count. None of them amassed more than 2500 votes. Put another way, “No Choice” actually made quota and would thus have been elected at position 8 if it had been an actual candidate!
What does that mean? Well, it means that 2545 voters did not mark enough preferences on their ballot paper for their vote to count. Their higher preferences will have gone to candidates who were eliminated at some point in the count, and any subsequent preferences, if any existed, did not identify anyone who was still in the count.
So here’s the second point. While 79% of the votes in the 2017 QPRC election effectively rested with their first preference, and a further 12.5% was distributed through preferences (although with no impact on the ultimate result), around 8.5% of the vote could have had a significant impact on the final result, had the voters in question nominated preferences deeply enough.
To summarise the above discussion then, to be sure that your vote counts on December 4 (or whenever the Council elections end up being held):
- Place the number “1” against the name of the candidate, or Group if voting above-the-line, that you would most like to see on Council, and allocate your preferences in a similar fashion. Based on the results of previous elections, for around 80% of the votes, the first two preferences are all that will count;
- Allocate preferences to every candidate, or Group if voting above-the-line, that you would be happy to see on Council, not just the minimum number. Based on the results of previous elections, for the remaining 20% of the votes, in a field of, say, 40 candidates vying for 11 seats, their twenty ninth preference could help determine the makeup of the new Council.