This post is along similar lines to my last one on preferential voting, but it seems worth specifically addressing some issues that are arising in discussions about the upcoming Victorian State Election.

Optional Preferential Voting in the Legislative Council

The Legislative Council is an upper house like the Senate in Federal Elections. In Victoria you vote for candidates in your region, with a total of five being elected, so it is is very similar to voting for senators for your state in a federal election. Just as with the senate there is the option to vote above or below the line. When you vote above the line you vote just for one party, and your preferences are allocated according to a group voting ticket submitted by the party to the electoral commision. If you vote below the line you choose the preferences yourself. There is one important difference between Victorian and federal elections, Victoria uses optional preferential voting for voting below the line in state elections. This means you only need to fill in 5 candidates rather than all of them to cast a valid vote.

Should I Vote Above Or Below The Line?

It’s up to you. Above the line is perfectly fine as long as you agree with the preferences of whoever you wish to vote for. If this is the case then it makes voting easy. These preferences are not secret, they have been published by the Victorian Electoral Commission, though the best place to view them is at Antony Green’s site. If you don’t agree with the preferences of the candidate you want to give your number 1 vote to, then you should fill in your own preferences below the line.

Preference Deals

There is a lot written about preference deals. As all parties are required to submit a preference ticket then they have to decide on how to preference all other candidates. This is sometimes determined by deals they do with each other. If you vote above the line then your preferences will be distributed according to the ticket, which may be the results of deals, however be aware that it is always distributed according to the ticket which is already published in advance – it’s not that they trade votes backwards and forwards after the election. If you are happy with the published voting ticket then any deals involved in determining it are irrelevant. If you are not happy then you can vote below the line.

Preference Harvesting

One issue with preference deals is that because most people vote above the line, large blocks of votes are distributed in the same way en masse, in such a way that would not occur if there were no above the line votes as individual’s preferences would be much more varied. This can results in a candidate with a small initial vote picking up lots of preferences and winning a place in the election. The fact that a candidate can win with a small vote is not itself a problem if it is based on voters genuine preferences, but with above the line voting this is not the case and the whole process is often criticised as being like a lottery.

Voting below the line helps to beat preference harvesting, but even though it is only required to number five preferences, by letting your vote exhaust then you are giving more power to the preference deals. This is because if votes below the line exhaust then the remaining places are predominately determined by the above the line votes which follow the preference tickets. If you are worried about the effect of preference deals then it is worth voting for as many candidates as you can, not just five.

Get the Maximum Value From Your Vote

Consider a ballot which numbers only five candidates, and another with starts with exactly the same five candidates but then goes on to preference every other as well. These two ballots count exactly the same up until the point when all of those first five have been elected or eliminated. If one of those five is a candidate left with part of the unused quota at the end, then in fact the effect of these two ballots is indistinguishable from each other. Otherwise, the only difference is once those five are out. At this point the first ballot is exhausted, there are still other candidates to be elected but this voter has no say whatsoever. The second ballot continues to affect the outcome until the election is over, the second voter has gained more value from their vote, have given more information and had a greater say. In particular, by allocating extra preferences the second voter in no way weakens their vote for the first five candidates.

But I Don’t Want My Vote To End Up With …

A common comment is something like “I don’t want my vote to end up with the Liberals” or “I don’t want my vote to end up with Labor” or something similar. The objection here is purely psychological, not rational. If you allocate preferences in the genuine order in which you prefer candidates then there can be no problem, the only way your vote can count for a candidate is against one lower in your preference order, which is necessarily a good thing, even if you don’t like that candidate. If your vote had already exhausted then one of them still is going to win at this point due to the votes of everybody else, but it might be the one you like less. The outcome can only be worse for you, by preferencing you can only help the party you don’t like against someone you like even less, but by not preferencing the only possible different outcome is to effectively help the party you like less.

Splitting the Vote

It’s also important to realise that if everyone just votes for the minimum number of candidates then the election is approximately the same as one decided by first past the post. This allows vote splitting, which means that the votes of a group of people with broadly similar interests can be split between many candidates, while a less popular position might be represented by one candidate who then wins. Such situations are open to manipulation by people organising front parties to take away votes from their opponents. If preferences only take those votes back to the opponents then there is no motivation to do this.

The Right and Wrong Reasons For Wanting Optional Preferencing

The right reasons for optional preferencing:

• It makes voting easier and reduces informal votes
• For an election with a large number of candidates it can be hard for people to meaningfully preference all of them so it’s better if they don’t have to.
• It can encourage below the line voting, though I would be much more in favour if it was used to do away with above the line voting altogether.

The wrong reasons:

• It doesn’t necessarily reduce the power of preference deals, when above the line is still an option, then it can result in lots of below the line votes being exhausted and giving more weighting to preferences determined by deals.
• To avoid your vote ending up with a particular party. As explained above, this is not actually a problem, and in fact exhausting your vote will only ever lead to the same or a worse outcome.

In summary, only having to vote for five candidates means that below the line voting shouldn’t be intimidating, but make the most of your vote by preferencing as many candidates that you can (ideally the only blank spots should be anyone who is equally last or that you know nothing about), including ones you don’t like as long as they are only ahead of ones you like less.

Finally note that the lower house is a different story, you have to preference all candidates, but the same principle applies, your vote will only ever count for someone against someone else you preference lower, so putting a number against every candidate, even those you don’t like, is not a problem.

 

 

 

This post is about why full preferential voting is good thing, why in an optional preferential voting system you should preference as many candidates as you reasonably can, and why preferencing someone you don’t like is not always a bad thing.

Mostly I am talking here about the system that applies to the lower house in Australian federal and state elections, in which one candidate is elected to represent an electorate. I’ll comment on upper house elections, which involve proportional representation, towards the end.

Basics – how does preferential voting work?

All of the first preferences are counted. If someone had over 50% of the vote they win. If not, the candidate with the least number of votes is excluded and the second preferences on their ballots are counted and their votes reassigned to those candidates. Once again if some one has 50% they win, if not the next candidate is excluded. At each stage the redistribution is based on what voters have filled in on their ballots, the candidates (or parties) have no say. If the next preference on a ballot is for someone already excluded then it just moves on to the next preference for a candidate who is still in the running.

An example: Suppose an election has five candidates A,B,C,D,E and 100 voters. A candidate requires 51 votes to be declared the winner. On first preferences the votes are

A: 39, B:35, C:16, D: 7, E:3

Nobody has 51 so the 3 votes from E are redistributed.

A:39, B: 35+2=37, C: 16+1=17, D:7

Next D is eliminated, and their preferences distributed, any with a second preference for E just move on to the next one

A:39, B:37+7=44, C:17

Now C is eliminated

A: 39+10=49, B: 44+7=51

Note that even though it looks like it is C that pushes B over the line to be the winner, some of the 7 votes B gets at this stage could well be votes that were initially for D and E, so you couldn’t just say that B won because of C’s preferences without looking at the details.

In Federal elections a valid ballot must have preference for all candidates, in some states there is optional preferential which means that votes can exhaust if no further preferences are given, at which point a winner requires 50%+1 of the remaining votes.

Why have preferences?

A first past the post system, where you just take the candidate with the largest vote, is easily seen to be unfair. Two similar candidates can split the vote, for example if A and B have policies that are generally more popular with the electorate than those of C, then with A and B both running the vote might be A:30 B:30 C:40, but if only A and C ran then it might be A:60 C:40. This election is too easily open to manipulation and does not give a fair outcome. It also tends to result in strategic voting, meaning that voters are forced to speculate on who is likely to win and perhaps vote for someone who is not their preferred candidate to get a better outcome. There are numerous alternatives to first past the post, and none are perfect (a perfect system is mathematically impossible), but preferential systems are in general much fairer.

The Two Party Preferred Vote

Often the outcome of an election is expressed in a two party preferred vote, either for a particular electorate or the overall result for all electorates. This is just the result of distributing all preferences until two major party candidates are left. It is a way of viewing the overall outcome, but is not part of the count that determines the winner. In the example above, the winner was not decided until only two candidates were left however this doesn’t have to be the case. In an election with 10 candidates where one of them gets 51% of first preferences they are declared winner with no preferences being distributed. To determine the two party preferred vote you would distribute preferences until only two major party candidates remain but this has no effect on the outcome, and just gives an overall view of the popularity of the two major parties given that they have most of the seats. If people voted in more candidates not from the major parties, then this would not be done as it would no longer be a useful measure of anything.

There is also the two candidate preferred count, used to compare the popularity of the top two candidates in an electorate , once again this isn’t the official count to determine the winner, it just gives a away of measuring the margin of the victor over the next most popular candidate. It does not mean it was predetermined that one of those candidates must win.  There is a common misconception that somehow the two party/candidate preferred count gives a built in bias towards the major parties in the electoral system but it is not part of the system, just a way of viewing the outcome, and it mostly involves the major parties because they get most of the votes. In the Federal electorate of Melbourne the two candidate count is between The Greens and Labor, and in the recent Vasse by-election in WA it was between the Liberals and Nationals.

[edited to clarify party/candidate distinction]

 

Preferences don’t make Labor and Liberal win

Often people complain that their preferences end of with Labor and Liberal and so they always win. Nothing about preferential voting favours Labor and Liberal. There are other factors such as single member electorates which do have an effect, but the major parties do not win because of the preferences of people who vote for other parties – they win because most people give first preferences to one of them. In many cases one of them gets over 50% of first preferences so no preferences are distributed. In other cases the preferences of people who voted for others are used to decide between the two major parties, but in this situation the winner is guaranteed to be one of the major because most people voted for them, when your preference gets distributed to them they have already won, your vote isn’t making that happen, but it is helping to decide which one wins. Once again they haven’t already won because of the system, it was because most people voted for them.

For example, consider my electorate of Hindmarsh. At the last Federal election, the results were (in percentages)

Greens – 8.84
Liberal – 46.17
PUP      – 2.47
DLP     – 0.88
Katter  – 0.63
Labor   – 37.95
Family First – 3.05

The distribution of preferences can be seen here http://results.aec.gov.au/17496/Website/HouseDivisionDop-17496-185.htm but it isn’t hard to see that one of Labor or Liberal is going to win and preferences only serve to decide which one because neither has over 50% on first count. As it turns out most people who didn’t vote for a major preferred Labor, but not enough to get them over 50%, in this case all preferences had to be distributed before the Liberal candidate gets over the line.

Why you should allocate as many preferences as possible

In a Federal election, and some states, you have to allocate preferences to all candidates, however in some states (and other elections such as local council) there is optional preferential voting, which means you can number as many as you like. In such a system you should still preference all candidates if possible, even the ones you don’t like. The reason is simple, not allocating a preference to someone does nothing to stop them winning, only a preference for another candidate can actively work against them. If at least one of the candidates you like is popular with others as well, then they won’t be eliminated and your vote will stay with them until either they win or lose out to the eventual winner.

Suppose though that none of your favoured candidates survive to the decisive count. This has happened because of how everyone else has voted, there is nothing you can do about it, this is democracy. However if your vote exhausts you have no further say over the election, so this only makes sense if you really genuinely don’t care who wins out of the remaining candidates. Let’s say an election has a great candidate, a mediocre candidate, a bad candidate and an awful candidate. If you vote only for the great candidate, you are potentially letting a bad or awful candidate beat the mediocre one. Many people instead would vote 1 great, 2 mediocre and that’s it. This is still not a good idea though, because this means that if they get eliminated then you have no say between bad and awful. If you really think the awful candidate is much worse than the bad one then you must vote 3 bad.

It might not feel right giving a preference to someone you don’t like but the only way your vote can count for them is if all your preferred candidates have been eliminated (because not enough other people liked them, which you can do nothing about), and you are helping them to beat someone you like even less.

There is no need to guess in advance which candidates will be popular, your vote only transfers when someone is eliminated, if the great or mediocre candidates are popular enough (or if the awful one gets eliminated early) then your vote will never transfer to the bad candidate.
On the other hand what is the impact of not preferencing, i.e. let’s say you vote 1 great only, instead of allocating 3 preferences?

• If Great wins – then it makes no difference, your extra preferences would never have been counted.
• If Mediocre wins – then it makes no difference, either your vote would have stayed with Great until they lose the final stage, or would have transferred to Mediocre and helped them win. Either way your vote couldn’t have changed the outcome.
• If Bad wins – If they beat Great or Awful at the last count, there is no difference, but if they beat Mediocre at the last count then your vote could have helped stop them. That is, they are more likely to win in the scenario when you use fewer preferences.
• If Awful wins – Then if at the last stage they beat either Mediocre or Bad then you may have been able to stop them, but you can’t by voting only 1. So they are more likely to win if you don’t preference.

So failing to allocate preferences can only improve the chances of candidates you don’t like, whereas preferencing candidate you particularly want to win can only help them to win against candidates you like even less, which is a good thing.

Thus the rational choice is to preference as many candidates as possible, so you should only leave the very least favoured one blank, or any which you know nothing about (but even better is to make sure you do find out who they are). Some of your preferences will be for candidates that seem highly unlikely to win, but that doesn’t matter, if eliminated your vote just moves on to the next candidate.

Just remember that in a full preferential election you should not leave any blank.

A Disclaimer
I have glossed over the implications of Arrow’s Theorem, but with good reason. A perfect voting system is mathematically impossible. This means that it is possible to devise situations where ordering your preferences in a way which does not reflect your actual preferences can achieve a more desirable outcome. For practical purposes there is not much you can do, since manipulating the outcome requires a very specific set of circumstances and good information on how everybody else will vote. It only really comes into play when there are 3 or more candidates with a reasonable chance at winning, so it doesn’t come up so often in the sort of elections I’m talking about. As such I would say that preferencing as many candidates as you reasonably can in the order which you like them is an optimal strategy, but not perfect, in that for most possible configurations of votes it will achieve the best possible outcome however it is not always guaranteed.

The Senate and other Upper Houses
For proportional representation elections with preferential voting the principal is basically the same despite the extra complications. Some states (and quite possibly in the Senate in the future) have optional preferencing. Once again it is best to preference as many candidates as possible, including ones you don’t like if it means you get to put them ahead of ones you like even less. The main difference is that there could be a very large number of candidates so it may well be the case that there are many you know nothing about so it is reasonable to not allocate preferences to them.

The basic message is that by preferencing as many candidates as possible then you equip your vote with as much information as possible and it has the potential to achieve more for you. Putting a preference next to someone isn’t saying you approve of them, it only says you prefer them to whoever is lower in your preferences. Letting a ballot exhaust cannot achieve a better outcome than if you had kept preferencing, only the same or worse, and only makes sense if you genuinely have no preference at all between the remaining candidates. Most of all preferential voting is good thing and should be defended against those who take simplistic views like “it helps the major parties”, “it’s a scam”, “it should be one person one vote” because they are demonstrably wrong.

 

 

 

I’ve posted about senate voting reforms before and everything I wrote there still applies, in particular I’m still in broad agreement with Antony Green who has posted about the latest proposals here. Basically the proposal is to do away with group voting tickets, and instead allow optional preferential voting both above and below the line, as well there are some extra conditions on party registration.

I think the proposals are fine. While I prefer full preferential to optional preferential, it is less of an issue in multi-member electorates. I would perhaps prefer a minimum number of votes to be formal but this does complicate things (especially as to what that number would be for above or below, and whether it’s fixed or depends on the total number), so it’s reasonable not to have it. I’m not entirely sure that above the line is still needed if you allow optional preferencing of all candidates anyway (though I think in that case you really would need a minimum number or there could be serious problems). The additional requirement on registration is to have 1500 rather than 500 unique members. I’m not completely sold on this being necessary but I don’t think it’s a particular problem either, a serious party should have no problem with this. Independents can still contest as well.

These reforms should be effective in stopping the virtual lottery that the senate election has become, where preference harvesting effectively elects candidates with very little support in the community. Furthermore this has encouraged lots of people to register parties to “enter the lottery” which only makes the vote more complicated through having massive ballot papers that further discourage people from voting below the line (and also can lead to the sort of confusion where Liberal votes vote LDP and Labor voters vote DLP, a factor which has helped both get elected). It does not stop new parties, if they have enough votes they can still get elected. On the plus side also they did not add extra costs, so a movement with genuine support has no obstacle to forming a party.

There were some proposals which I considered poor which I’m glad to see weren’t recommended. There is no minimum threshold of first preferences to get elected. This is good, because as I pointed out in the previous post, people getting elected off a small first preference isn’t the problem, the problem was preference harvesting which made this happen more often when it wasn’t really deserved. A scenario where a candidate is not the first prefence of many, but is preferred by a large number of voters who’s higher preferences get eliminated can still get elected (provided they have enough support to stay in the count). The difference now is that they win because people genuinely preferenced them, not because of preference deals.

There are many comments on this article at the Guardian complaining about the proposals. I think partly this is because the Guardian have framed it as the major parties ganging up on the micros, and lots of people just don’t understand preferences. Now of course the fact that all the large parties are in agreement rightly would raise suspicions about their motives, but claims that this is undemocratic are unsupportable. Some are accusing the Greens of selling out on this, which is crazy given that it’s bascially everyone else coming around to what are essentially proposals the Greens have been making for years. It takes the allocation of preferences away from the parties and leaves it up to voters. It gets rid of the random “lottery”, preference harvesting and the power of “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery. It removes any point to setting up fake parties to divert voters away due to a single issue.

This isn’t to say that Labor and Liberal aren’t doing this out of self-interest, but it just so happens that sometimes the self-interest of those in power happens to intersect with what is the right thing to do – after all this is how we ended up with most good features of our voting system, such as preferential voting.

Update: A couple of things I forgot to mention

– some people are claiming this is all about “maintaining the duopoly”. Rubbish. The reason most senators are Labor or Liberal is that most first preferences are for those parties, if enough people vote for other candidates they get elected (Greens, PUP, LDP, Xenophon would still have been elected in the new system, though with LDP there’s a chance that the smaller paper would mean more people would find the actual party they meant to vote for).

– It would be nice if they fixed the Inclusive Gregory issue for surpluses as well. This is a fairly technical point mostly of interest to voting nerds, but basically the way surpluses are allocated is less than ideal because they needed to simplify it when they were counted by hand, now that should not be an issue.

The SA 2014 election has now been decided with the return of the ALP government with the support of Independent Geoff Brock. The final result for seats in the lower house was 23 ALP, 22 LIB, 2IND, with 24 needed for a majority.

There has been much complaining from both Liberal supporters and figures within the party that this is unfair given that the Liberals won the two party preferred (2PP) vote. Some comments on this:

• The 2PP is an artificial construct that plays no official role in our electoral system.
• It is a fact of mathematics that even in a simplified situation with only two parties in a first past the post election, a result based on electorates does not necessarily agree with a simple majority of the whole population, for example, take 3 equal electorates A,B,C. Suppose party P puts all their effort into A &B and win 51% of the vote, but do not contest C. Then P win the election but the other party wins the 2PP with 66%. There is no cheating, this is the system. If it were any different then no doubt P would put effort into winning votes in C.
• Accusations of a gerrymander are pathetic, particularly coming from supporters of a party which kept in power for many years with an actual gerrymander (i.e. engineering electoral boundaries to maintain an unfair advantage). The SA electorates are redistributed between electorates by law, this is done by the neutral electoral commission and is available for public consultation. The Liberals had a chance to have input and had some changes made in their favour (in particular in Bright). Part of the complication is that they are failing to gain swings in marginal seats, it is questionable that the electoral commission should compensate for this.

Now we are starting to see the attacks on the Independent Geoff Brock.

• In deciding whether to support a minority government an independent is under no obligation to consider the 2pp vote for their state or whether their electorate is “naturally conservative”.
• If you do want to make guesses about the voters of Frome, it’s worth noting from Antony Green’s analysis of the redistribution that “On paper (the redistribution) reverses the two-party preferred margin in Frome, the Labor two-party majority of 0.1% in 2010 becoming an estimated Liberal margin of 1.7%.” The way some people are talking makes it sound like a safe conservative seat where it is very marginal. Given that the Liberal vote was almost 36% percent then it appears that a large majority of the people who voted for Brock would prefer the ALP, and while it is quite possible that the full preference distribution will show more preferred LIB to ALP it is unlikely to be any great majority. The fact is that if people in Frome wanted a Lib government they could have voted Lib.
• There is all sorts of insinuation that he is selling out for personal gain. Once again, his electorate is marginal and his base is Port Pirie, where is was formerly mayor, a strong ALP area in the electorate. I suspect that his parliamentary voting record would show much agreement with the ALP in the previous term. When first elected he had how to vote cards putting Labor above Liberal. This isn’t some sort of about face, it would seem more surprising were he to support the Liberals. He has accepted a ministry for regional development, but still can vote independently on any issue in parliament, this is surely the best way to represent the people who voted for him.

 

 

In South Australia we are 1 week away from a state election, as usual I’ve noticed the question “Who are you giving your prefences to” asked of candidates and will no doubt get the question when handing out how to vote cards on election day.

The problem is there is no easy answer to that question. If the person is asking it of a lower house candidate then it doesn’t make sense because they do not allocate preferences. As in federal elections, to cast a formal vote the voter must number all boxes themselves (* slight disclaimer below), candidates or parties have no say in what happens to your preference apart from giving recommendations on how to vote cards which you are free to ignore.

If the question is about the upper house then there is still no sensible answer. The most accurate answer I could give is that everyone preferences everyone else because they are required to by law. This is not a helpful answer but that’s because the question is not clear. How else could you answer? You could say who is next on your preference list after your own candidates, but is this really what they want to know? Quite often the very next candidate is already eliminated by the time your preference is distributed anyway.  Instead it could be who is higher out of Labor or Liberal, but this might not be helpful either, perhaps another candidate who does have a realistic chance of being elected is higher then both of those in your list. You could try to just give the order of candidates who might be elected but this is impossible, as we saw in the federal election it is impossible to predict who might have a realistic chance of being elected.

So here is what you need to know about preferences:

• In the lower house a formal vote requires you to fill in all preferences yourself, in which case nobody else will allocate your preferences in any way.
• In the upper house you can either allocate preferences to all candidates yourself (this site could help www.clueyvoter.com/) or you can vote for a party or group above the line meaning your preferences are distributed according to their ticket. You are choosing to let someone allocate your preferences.
• The preference tickets are not secret. They are available right now, Antony Green has posted them here www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-03/sa-group-voting-tickets/5294444.
• My recommendation is to decide who you want to vote for in the upper house, and look at their preference ticket. If you agree with it then there is no problem voting above the line. If not, then choose your own preference. Don’t try to predict who is likely to win or where your preference will end up, this is impossible and unnecessary, and advantage of a preferential system is that you are free to put who you like in the order your like without having to predict their chances of winning.
• You can see examples of how preferences work with Antony Green’s calculator www.abc.net.au/news/sa-election-2014/legislative-council/

Finally some examples – what happened to your vote in the 2010 election if you voted above the line? These aren’t necessarily indicative of what will happen this election, they mostly show that preference flows actually did very little at that election.

If you voted Green – your vote elected Green candidate Tammy Franks and then a very small surplus helped to elect Dignity for the Disabled candidate Kelly Vincent over a Liberal candidate (though the Greens surplus was so small as to not really make a difference at this point.)

If you Voted Labor – Your vote helped elect the top 4 Labor candidates and the surplus put Kelly Vincent ahead of the Liberals for the last spot.

If you Voted Liberal – Your vote helped elect the top 4 Liberal candidates and was not distributed any further.

If you voted for Dignity for the Disabled – your vote elected their top candidate at the last stage so no preferences were distributed.

If you voted Family First – Your vote elected their top candidate, a very tiny surplus was distributed to Dignity For the Disabled though they would easily have beaten the liberals for the last spot anyway due to ALP preferences.

If you voted Nationals – your candidate was excluded, your vote moved on to Fair Land Tax party, and when they were excluded it passed to the liberals and was with them when they lost the final spot.

In 2010 Nick Xenophon did not run a group in the state election, however his 2006 result is of interest. His vote was high enough to elect both himself and Anne Bressington, and with a left over quota which looked to put him in the running for a third candidate for a while. In the end his ticket votes were exhausted in the final race between his third candidate and the Greens’ Mark Parnell. Note that Xenophon himself is not contesting this election as he quit his seat to run for the Senate instead, but he is supporting John Darley who replaced him. He is not supporting Bressington who he got elected in 2006 and she is not running for re-election.

Where are ticket votes likely to end up this time? Keeping in mind that accurate predictions are impossible I can still outline some possible outcomes.

Greens – most likely to be used in the attempt to re-elect Mark Parnell. Chances are if he isn’t re-elected it would be at the last stage and your preference would not be distributed, if he is re-elected a distributed surplus is likely to be very small and would most likely go to Dignity for Disabilty (DfD), Xenophon Team or perhaps Labor (at which point it would likely be them against Liberals or Family First).

Labor – It’s very hard to predict how many preference might be distributed from a major party vote, but after elected a number of Labor candidate any Labor preferences would help the Greens and if distributed further could end up with DfD or Family First (i.e. the could conceivably help FF beat Xenophon or Liberal candidate for a spot). With the majors there’s always a fair chance that the preference won’t be distributed at all as well, it can end up in a losing battle for the last spot.

Liberal – once again hard to know how big an effect the preferences will have and there is good chance the preferences will not be distributed at all as in 2010 but if they are they are most likely to elect Family First, with Palmer United and Xenophon Group as other possibilities.

Xenophon – I have no idea what sort of vote the Xenophon group is likely to get without the man himself as a candidate, but due to their split ticket any preferences are likely to help DfD, and then even split between Labor and Liberal if they flow beyond there. If you want to vote Xenophon and you strongly prefer one of Labor or Liberal to the other, or someone else to both of those then a vote below the line would be recommended.

Family First – If preferences flow they could help Palmer United, and most likely would end up with the Liberals if they go any further. They do filter through a lot of right wing microparties on the way though so if there is any big preference harvest (a la Sports or Motor Enthusiasts in the Senate election) then the FF vote could play a big part in it.

Dignity for Disability – If they get elected they won’t have much surplus, but if they fall short I expect they would have a big preference flow that could decide one of the last positions, in which case they are most likely to help Greens, Xenophon, or Labor (in that order so they would help Greens in Greens vs Labor, or Labor in Labor vs Liberal and so on).

Palmer United – prefences are most likely to flow to FF or Lib, though also a number of micro parties such as Shooter & Fishers could benefit.

Shooters & Fishers – Filters through every small party there is but likely to end up with FF or finally the Libs if they are up against Lab or Green at a late stage in the count.

Fishing & Lifestyle – presumably for people who like fishing but not so into shooting. Prefences go straight to Family First. Could end up with DfD or Libs at a later stage.

Multicultural Party – Don’t know much about them, like many micros their preferences go through lots of others so could get caught up in a preference harvest, otherwise likely to end up with DfD or FF. In fight between the bigger parties their preferences end up with Labor (i.e they would support them against Greens or Libs).

For all the others I’ll point out their top amongst the most likely to win spots (based on who has won previously and done well in recent Federal election) – ALP, Lib, Green, Xenophon, FF, DfD, Palmer. Also I’ll show who they have last, i.e. a ticket vote for them means any of the other big parties will be supported against the last one, and I’ll show who they’d support between ALP vs Lib

F.R.E.E Australia Party – top FF, bottom X, Lib
Liberal Democratic – top DfD, bottom Greens, Lib
Stop Population Growth – top Greens, bottom ALP/Lib, ALP/Lib (split ticket)
Nationals – top FF, bottom Greens, Lib
Katter – top FF, bottom Greens, Lib
Joseph Masika – top DfD, bottom X, Lib
Environment Education Disability – their preferences are complicated with lots of lower candidates on party tickets placed higher, I think the top leading candidate is Green, last Palmer, their ALP & Lib prefs are mixed around amongst individual candidates to the extent that you can’t really say who they’d support, it depends on which individual candidates would be left in the count.
Powerful Communities – top Greens, bottom FF, ALP
No Domestic Violence- top ALP, bottom Palmer, ALP
Legal Voluntary Euthanasia – top ALP, bottom FF, ALP
Mark Aldridge Alliance – top Palmer, bottom X, Lib (slightly mixed up between individual candidates but favouring Lib)
Animal Justice – top Green, bottom X, ALP
Your Voice Matters – top DfD, bottom X, ALP/Lib split

 

 

* technical point: as I understand it SA elections differ slightly from federal ones in that candidates are required to submit preference tickets for the lower house which are used to save votes which would otherwise be informal by not numbering enough boxes. If you follow the instructions and submit a formal vote this can have no effect on you whatsoever.

In the wake of the (still to be finalised) recent election results there has been quite a bit of commentary about making changes to the senate. I’m in fairly broad agreement with the opinions given by Antony Green here, but do have a few comments of my own to add.

So what is the problem? The main motivation for changes seems to be that candidates with very small primary votes are looking like winning seats. I would suggest that this on its own is not necessarily a problem. For example consider an election for 6 senators (so a quota of about 14%) where 30% vote Labor, 30% Liberal, 16% Green and the remaining 24% of the vote is spread roughly evenly between 12 candidates. Clearly 2 Labor, 2 Liberal and 1 Green would be immediately elected but then each has a surplus of 2% to go towards their next candidate and there are another 12 each with about 2% so you have at that point 15 different candidates each with about 2%. Who should the last candidate be? There is no obvious winner without distributing preferences, but if the 24% who voted for small parties predominately prefer that anyone except the big three get elected, then a perfectly democratic outcome would be for one of the candidates with a very small primary of about 2% to win. Now suppose a similar setup, but with one of the 12, candidate A, quite popular with 8% and the remaining 16% shared between 11 candidates, so after electing 5 senators we have 3 bigger parties on 2%, 1 on 10% and 11 with 16% between them (let’s say none bigger than 2%). Then it appears that candidate A should win, but suppose that all of the other small parties have similar interests but don’t like candidate A, and the big parties don’t like them either. Then of the remaining 28% or so (there is a rounding error that stops it from adding up precisely here) of votes, 8% like candidate A but 20% would prefer for any of the other candidates to win, so it is perfectly reasonable for a candidate with about 2% to beat the candidate with 8%. So a candidate getting up to win with a small vote is not necessarily bad. To some extent this is what has happened in the current election, many people have voted for small parties and do not want senators from larger parties, quite often the biggest of these votes are for the likes of the Sex Party or Family First, but most people voting for one of these do not like the other, however they, and various other small party voters, would prefer the likes of the Motor Enthusiasts or the Sports party to the larger ones. It is not completely unreasonable that such candidates are the preferred choice of this large constituency disillusioned with the more established parties.

The real problem is that the preferences as allocated might not reflect people’s true preferences due to Above The Line (ATL) voting. In principle every voter should give a full choice of preferences for all candidates, in practice this tended to result in a level of informal voting deemed to be unacceptable so the alternative was to vote for one party above the line, with your full vote then coinciding to a preference ticket provided by the party to the AEC. Some people are rather misguided in raging against secret deals and complaining that their votes have been traded around by the parties. This is not how it works, the parties must provide their preference tickets in advance, they are published before the election and are available to view at polling booths, they are not secret. You still have full control over your vote if you choose to vote below the line. I don’t think any individual has reasonable grounds to complain about what happened to their own vote, however if lots of people aren’t aware of these things and some preferences are allocated in unusual ways this is something that one can reasonably be concerned about when taking an overall view of the outcome. For example there is the possibility of parties being formed with a name to appeal to certain voters which then channels their votes to someone they wouldn’t normally preference.

Tied in with this is the problem that ballots are becoming very large and difficult to deal with, with a disincentive to vote below the line due to the time taken and higher possibility of failing to number it correctly and rendering it informal.

So how to deal with this issue? Some people think that preferences themselves are inherently the problem and are unfair, they take a simplistic view that if only each voter had just one vote then it would be fair. This is very, very wrong. First past the post is one of the worst voting systems and would lead to less democratic outcomes.

Another suggestion is to have a minimum quota of first preferences for someone to be elected, but as I pointed out above, people being elected on small votes isn’t really the problem, so I don’t see this as the solution.

The real problem is above the line voting.

The simplest way around this is to allow for preferences above the line. A voter would have the choice of either numbering every party above the line or every candidate below the line. This would make the count more complicated but I think would be worthwhile.

Something else often suggested is allowing optional preferential voting. I tend to prefer full preferential voting, but in an election for multiple candidates such as in the senate, then optional preferential with a reasonable minimum number of preferences required would be acceptable. My problem with optional preferential is that it allows for many votes to exhaust, so at later stages of the count candidates can be elected from a much smaller subset of voters. This is balanced by the problem that in the senate there are so many candidates that voters know very little about, so it is not necessarily meaningful for them to rank them in order of preference.

I do think that lots of people want optional preferential for the wrong reasons, for example someone might resent that they have to number the Liberal candidates because they are a Labor or Greens voter, but leaving a number blank is not a vote against someone, it just means that once all the ones you do number are elected or eliminated you’ve given up your right to have a say. With optional preferences I would still allocate a preference to the Liberals even though I don’t like them because there are others I like less, for example, if it ended up coming down to a choice between Liberal and One Nation then I’d certainly still want to have my say and would happily prefer the Liberal. In such a scenario those who exhausted their preferences might be quite happy to say they didn’t vote for either, but they could effectively be helping One Nation to win the seat. By allocating as many preferences as possible you don’t have to make guesses as to who might realistically have a chance at each stage of the count, you get to express preferences regardless of what happens. Something like this is happening in the current Tasmanian count, after the Greens candidate is elected there is a surplus to be distributed and the remaining candidates are Liberal, Palmer United, and Liberal Democrats. Most Greens voters probably don’t like any of them, but at this stage one of them has to be elected, not because of the distribution of Greens surplus, but because the vast majority of other voters who are still being counted like one of them. In such a situation, I would rather choose between three options I don’t particularly like then say nothing at all.

So basically, I think that a combination of above the line preferencing, and optional preferential but with a high enough minimum number to stop too many votes exhausting would be a reasonable reform.

A further reform to help keep ballot size reasonable and to stop people trying to exploit the system with ‘front’ parties would be some tightening of the rules for candidature. It would seem reasonable to require parties to be registered for longer before an election and to stop the same people registering numerous parties. I think the required number of party members should be counted for a single party only as well (i.e. parties can still allow dual membership but their submitted list of members to qualify for party status on the ballot cannot include members counted for another party). I would be wary of setting the bar too high though (particularly with regard to monetary cost) so as not to make it too difficult for genuine new parties to contest elections.

 

A “Langer” vote, named after Albert Langer is a method for casting an optional preferential vote which is not normally formal in our voting system. Lately I’ve seen a few comments around the place from people advocating this kind of vote, I think that it is not a good idea since mostly it only serves to deal with a non-existant problem and may achieve an outcome that is not what you actually want. I’ll explain why below, but first I want to make it clear that this is not a criticism of Langer, he simply advocated a way of effectively doing optional preferential voting, I do not condone his imprisonment or have any problem with people talking about this type of vote, I just think there are good reasons not to use it. Note that this is only being discussed with regard to the Senate, this method no longer gives a valid vote for the House of Representatives. Even with the Senate I’m not entirely sure it counts, and an error could easily result in it being counted as informal.

• Optional Preferential Voting (OPV). Our voting system is full preferential (FPV) in both houses, meaning that to cast a formal vote you must preference all candidates. By contrast, in an optional preferential system you do not need to preference all candidates, most commonly you can preference as many as you want, though conceivably there could be systems involving a minimum required number of preferences. OPV is used in some state elections. In a previous post I described why I think preferential voting is better than first past the post (FPP). OPV lies in between these two extremes. If everyone decided to preference every candidate then it is indistinguishable from FPV, and if everyone decides to only allocate a first preference then it gives the FPP outcome. At the most basic level I dislike it because it pushes along the continuum from FPV which is good, towards FPP which is bad. In more detail, the advantage of FPV is that everyone gives the maximum amount of information about their preferences for the candidates. In OPV, once people stop allocating preferences then their votes exhaust, so potentially the final candidates are elected from preferences of a subset of the electorate rather than everyone, I believe that this is less democratic, it is better for everyone to have their say at every stage.
• FPV does not help the major parties. The reason given by many people who want OPV is that they think that FPV only helps the major parties. The major parties do not win because people who vote for other parties have to allocate lower preferences to them, they win because of all the people who give them their first preference. It’s that simple, they win because people vote for them. If you don’t like them, then at the point when your preference goes to one of them, everyone you do like has been elected or eliminated – taking out your vote at this stage does not make them any less likely to win, unless they are going to lose to someone else you didn’t preference. The only way your exhausted vote can stop the major parties being elected is by allowing someone you like even less to be elected instead. By exhausting your vote you don’t get to say you like the majors better than say Australia First, or One Nation for example. You might not like the Liberals, but if it comes down to a race between the Liberals and One Nation then by exhausting your preferences you’ve just decided to sit that one out, you have no opinion. You have to ask yourself whether that truly is the case. Keep in mind that for the Senate it is very difficult to know for sure who has a realistic chance of being elected. Instead I suggest it is much better to have your say over who you prefer at every stage when your vote might still be counted.
• OPV does not stop candidates being elected on a small vote. There are numerous instances of candidates getting elected to the Senate on a small primary vote, for example Family First’s Steve Fielding or the DLP’s John Madigan in Victoria. In principle I don’t have a problem with this, if everyone’s ballot papers are a true representation of their actual preferences then it is quite possible that someone who is not a first choice of many, but who many prefer to the other candidates who are not their first choice, can be quite reasonably be elected (for example, most people like A or B, but neither has a majority, the people who like A hate B and the people who like B hate A, so third choice C, even with the smallest primary vote, may be the most acceptable to the electorate as a whole). The problem is that due to above the line (ATL) voting it is not necessarily the case that ballots do truly reflect actual preferences. In theory this needn’t be a problem, if people take some responsibility for being informed then you can have full control over your vote, you can view preference tickets in advance and decided whether an ATL vote really does reflect your preferences and if not then you can vote below the line (BTL). In reality however not many do this, and it seems likely that many voters end up with preferences allocated in ways they wouldn’t do themselves. OPV has been proposed as a way of avoiding the problems with ATL voting, either by allowing some sort of ATL preferencing, or allowing OPV below the line, this would deal with the problems of “preference harvesting” to some extent, and I would consider OPV as potentially worth considering to deal with these issues, but as an individual casting a vote, OPV (and particularly using effective OPV due to the Langer method when it is not used by most of the electorate) is not a good method of taking control of your vote, allocating preferences to everyone yourself is much better. If your vote exhausts then it means that all of the other votes in the preference flows directed by deals are actually counting for more since the exhausted votes have been taken out of the picture. Once again as above, if lots of people decide the Labor and Liberal parties are as bad as each other and exhaust their votes then it opens the door for others to get in on small votes, others who presumably you like even less since you didn’t give them a preference.

So in conclusion, the most likely reason for wanting your vote to exhaust at a certain point is because you don’t want any of the remaining candidates elected, yet there is no mechanism whatsoever for you to achieve this, all it actually achieves is stopping you having a say in who gets elected amongst those candidates. Furthermore, if you do it because you dislike both major parties, then it is possible that it will allow someone you like even less to get elected in their place.

 

 

 

 

 

Every time an election comes around I notice that lots of people have a poor understanding of how preferences work in Australian federal elections. I’ve written about them before but have decided to bring the blog back to life with a new post explaining how preferences work and tackling some common misconceptions.

The first part is an explanation of the basics of preferential voting without taking a position on who to vote for, but the latter part is mostly about why people who like the Greens should vote for them. If you don’t like the Greens then fine, don’t vote for them, the basic advice still applies regardless of who you want to vote for – preference all candidates in the order in which you like them.

Comments on preferential voting are welcome but this post isn’t for discussing the relative merits of the parties or candidates so such comments will be moderated.

Why have preferences at all?
For the simple reason that it is more democratic and gives a better representation of the electorate’s wishes than first past the post. Now there are all sorts of other changes which people argue for such as proportional representation or multi member electorates and so on, but if you fix all other features of our electoral system and just ask whether it is better with or without preferences then it is undoubtedly better. The shortcomings of first past the post are clearest in the situation where there are similar candidates which split the vote. Imagine that in an election nice candidate A is supported by 35%, nice candidate B by 25% and nasty candidate by 40%. In first past the post the nasty candidate wins, even though 60% of the electorate prefer nice candidates. A fairer system is to eliminate the least popular candidate and then compare those that remain. In some systems this is done by having run-off elections, so they run a whole new election with just the two most popular, with preferential voting it is essentially the same thing but all done at once so you don’t need to organise more than one poll. Nice candidate B is eliminated from the count, and their next preferences are allocated. Some opponents of preferential voting try to claim that this is unfair because those people get two votes, but from that perspective, everyone got two votes, it’s just that the supporters of the two leading candidates were able to vote for their favourite both times.

How do preferences work in the House of Representatives?

The House of Representatives (HoR) or lower house is where Government is formed. It consists of representatives of local electorates across Australia. When you vote, one of the ballot papers is for the HoR candidates in your local electorate. Typically you will have somewhere between 3 and 10 candidates in your electorate – it depends on how many people nominate for it. To vote you just number all of the candidates in the order that you like them. All of the first preferences are counted. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second preferences are allocated at full value. This process is repeated until a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.

 How do preferences work in the Senate? 
The senate, or upper house, consists of representatives from each state and territory. At a regular election half the senate is up for election, which means 6 senators from each state (also the 2 from each territory as well). The voting system is different to allow for multiple members to be elected, but also uses preferences for the same reasons as for the HoR. In the lower house with 1 person being elected, they need 50% plus 1 vote, which is 1/(1+1)*100% + 1. If you wanted to elect 2 people you would expect the required amount to be approximately 33% + 1 vote which is 1/(2+1)*100% + 1. For an election to elect 6 candidates the quota is 1/(6+1)*100% + 1 which is about 14%.

There is an added complication here, a candidate can get in excess of a surplus, to take an extreme example, suppose 90% of people likes one particular candidate, then they would be elected easily, but it wouldn’t be fair to then elect 5 other candidates from what just 10% of the electorate want. As a result, the surplus is redistributed. One way you could do it would be to just use up enough votes for a quota and then allocate the remaining ones to their second preference, but this is rather arbitrary so instead all of them count for their next preference but at a reduced value so that the total number of votes left after electing the first candidate is the total minus 1 quota. For example, suppose you had 100 people and a quota was 14. Let’s say 30 vote for candidate A, so we want to allocate 14 votes to elect them, and have 16 left over that go towards other candidates, so we keep all 30 votes in but now they each have a value of 16/30 each, so the total number of votes in the count are the 70 who voted for someone else plus 30 votes at a value of 16/30, which is 70+30*(16/30) = 86 = 100 minus a quota of 14.

So anyone with over a quota is elected first and their surplus distributed. At the end of this, if there are not yet 6 elected, the procedure is similar to the lower house, you eliminate the least popular and distribute their preferences. You do this until someone else gets over a quota, and if all the spots aren’t filled yet you distribute their surplus and so on until 6 candidates have been elected.

What this means in practice is basically the same as in the HoR, the best approach is to number the candidates in the order in which you like them, preferential voting means you don’t have to make judgements on who is likely to win or not, if your top preferences get eliminated your vote still counts.

Above the line voting

Since there are a large number of candidates in a typical Senate election, meaning a lot of boxes to number, above the line voting was brought in, the justification being to cut down on informal voting. This means that rather than number all of the candidates yourself, you number a single box labelled by party, and your preferences are distributed according to a ticket lodged with the AEC by the party. It is important to realise that these are not secret, they are published online before the election (here http://www.aec.gov.au/election/downloads.htm) and you can ask the officials to view a copy at the polling place. The problem is that many people vote above the line without knowing how the preferences are being directed and then are not necessarily happy with the outcome. This is easily avoided, view preference tickets, if you agree with the one for the party you want to vote for then you can vote above the line, if not then vote below the line, or ignore the tickets entirely and vote below the line.

For the 2013 election some things to be aware of are that the preference allocations of the Wikileaks party have been very controversial, in some states they have preferences right wing parties quite highly, and in WA their preferences could help elect a National Party rather than Greens Senator Scott Ludlam who has been the most outspoken parliamentarian on the issues that they are campaigning on. Here in South Australia preferences from independent Nick Xenaphon go to Labor and Liberal.

So What Does All This Mean For How I Vote?

I agree with the advice usually given by ABC psephologist Antony Green – just vote for the candidates in the order in which you like them. In particular this means there is no need to worry about where your preferences are going – if you number them yourself then nobody can change where your preferences go, preference deals will mean nothing for your vote. It also means don’t worry about who has a realistic chance or not, just vote for who you like, in a preferential system there is no “wasted vote”. Also make sure you do number all of the candidates to make it a formal vote, an informal vote really is a waste.

But if I vote for a minor party does that risk letting the major party I don’t like winning?

No. To make it clearer, consider a specific example, you want to vote Green but don’t want it to let the Liberals win. If the Liberals win then at some stage in the count they achieve over 50% of the votes, let’s say 51% for the sake of argument. Then at this point your vote is with the other 49%, which includes everyone who preferenced Labor above Liberal. Even if you and every other Green voter who doesn’t want the Liberals to win were to change their number 1 to Labor it would not change any of the votes in the 51% who have put Liberals above Labor, so they still win.

There are some complicated scenarios where a change could affect the outcome, these usually involve 3 or more candidates who are very close, but without knowing what everyone else would do there is no real way of predicting the outcome, you are best off voting for who you like best. (There is in fact a mathematical theorem which essentially says that no voting system can avoid these sorts of problems, so it is not a particular weakness of our system).

What’s the point of voting for a candidate who won’t win anyway?

Your first preference is important, it determines the allocation of public funding. If you vote 1 for someone who isn’t really your favourite then you are denying funds to your favoured candidate and giving them to someone else. Also, a first preference for one candidate that goes on to help another candidate win sends a message to the winning candidate about what you think. For example Labor will pay more attention to issues championed by the Greens if they are elected on Greens preferences. Also if you do have a favourite candidate or party who are not likely to win, then if you don’t vote for them then they never will be likely to win. In 2001 the Greens got 15% of 1st preference votes in the seat of Melbourne. In 2010 the Greens won the seat. If the 15% in 2001 hadn’t bothered then it may never have been winnable. In 2010 the Greens got over 15% in many seats, including Mayo and Port Adelaide in South Australia.

I’m Going To Vote Greens In The Senate but not the lower house.

The Greens campaign is focused on the senate since these are where the most likely wins are, but given the discussion above, if you like the Greens then why not give them your lower house vote as well, you still get to have your say with your preference but you get even more of a say with your first vote and help to potentially make your seat winnable in the future.

I’m going to vote informal because my vote will only end up with one of the major parties.

Congratulations, you’ve just helped to maintain the power of the major parties, i.e. you’ve achieved exactly the opposite of what you wanted. If your vote ends up counting for one of the major parties then it means that everyone you like better has been eliminated from the count because the majority of other people did vote for the major parties. Your vote is not making them more likely to win at this point, everyone else voting for them has already done that, your vote is just expressing a preference between them. It is not saying you like them or giving approval for their policies, it is just allowing you to still have a say over who gets elected even though your preferred candidates did not get enough votes to stay in the count. If your vote was informal they would still get elected but the parties or candidates you do actually like lose funding and lose the chance to have be in a more winnable position in the future. Simplistically it seems like you’re denying something from the major parties, but you aren’t really, you are just hurting the party you like. If you cast a formal vote you are helping the party you like and hurting the majors even if your vote goes to them eventually, because your vote is helping to threaten the duopoly. What they really fear is other candidates getting elected. This happened in places like Melbourne, Denison and New England precisely because people cast formal votes for candidates not from the major parties. An informal vote will not change anything, a vote for a candidate you like has a chance to, even if they don’t get elected this time. Just to be clear, preferential voting in no way favours the major parties, in fact without it there would be much less chance of anyone ever being elected since people would be forced to consider whether it is worth voting for someone else they suspect unlikely to win and giving up their say on who actually wins. If you don’t like the major parties the only way to beat them is to elect other candidates, this may mean voting for candidates who aren’t likely to win this time but otherwise there will never be anyone able to build up enough of a vote to beat them in the future.

 

In the wake of Bob Brown’s announcement that he will retire there has been much speculation about the future of the Greens. For those who don’t like the Greens (e.g. anyone who writes for News Ltd) it’s another chance to excitedly declare the imminent demise of their sworn enemy.

From the perspective of a Greens member the idea that the party cannot survive without Brown is quite ridiculous. A key feature of the greens is commitment to grassroots democracy, the interior structure of the party is highly democratic. While there is a great deal of well-deserved respect for Brown, it isn’t as if he’s the party dictator. His position was as parliamentary leader, as elected by the 10 elected representatives in federal parliament. There is much more to the Greens than the federal parliamentarians, there are numerous Greens representatives in state and local government all over the country. The overall structure of the party is based on the states, and big decisions are made at conferences where representatives of the state parties meet. At times people have disagreed with Bob Brown on big decisions and he didn’t always get his way, and was happy to recognise the will of the party through its representatives.

Furthermore there is much more to the Greens that just Bob Brown. They are a party based on a set of principles (described in the charter), and are part of an international movement. While he has done a good job of attracting people to the party, they are ultimately there because of what it stands for, and that does not change with his retirement.

The Greens have consistently been growing in support for some time and that growth isn’t guaranteed to continue indefinitely, but an imminent collapse seems highly unlikely.

One more thing, I’ve seen a number of comments from people making some fairly bizarre insinuations about the timing of Brown’s retirement – basically that he knows that something is going to go horribly wrong (usually involving the carbon tax) and he’s getting out to avoid it. For a start this sort of behaviour would go against everything we know from about Brown’s past record, but it’s quite silly to even go looking for an ulterior motive. He has to decide now whether to recontest the senate. That means staying for another 6 years, and he’s in his late 60’s now. He’s been in state and federal parliament since the mid-80’s, it’s not unreasonable that he might want to retire now rather than commit to another 6 years. With the party now having elected representatives from all states in federal parliament, including one in the house of representatives, and an obvious successor in Milne, now seems like an ideal chance for him to finally have a break.

Update: an article about Milne’s good start as leader at The Global Mail.