Voters left in the dark after changes to the electoral system

By CHRISTIANE BARRO

The prospect of an election on July 2, just weeks after the introduction of a new voting system for the Senate, will leave voters unsure how to vote correctly, experts say.

Political scientist and senior lecturer in politics at Monash University Dr Nick Economou raised concerns of an increase in "exhausted" votes  because the Australian public has not been appropriately educated about the reformed electoral system. 

A vote is classified as "exhausted" when the party/parties you put down preferences for are no longer in the count, and your vote is then effectively excluded. 

Dr Economou disputes this is a step forward for democracy. He suspects those advocating changes to the voting system are motivated to remove “a group of political actors the vast majority of parliamentarians don’t like”.

“Political actors don’t like the group of people who were elected in 2013 so they’re trying to retrospectively change the result by changing the electoral process and then calling a double dissolution election to get rid of those people … (it’s) a form of saying we don’t like the way in which you the voters gave us a senate,” he said.

Independent candidate for Lalor Lewis Freeman-Harrison said Australians were "sick and tired of the dirty tactics and the politics”.

Lots of people were questioning “what’s going on?” he said.

Dr Economou said electoral reform should allow voters greater autonomy over their vote, yet Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s need to pursue a partisan electoral advantage had led to a “confusing mish-mash of ideas nobody really fully understands”.

The Parliament of Australia website shows changes to the optional use of above the line voting were discussed after Ricky Muir's election to the Senate in  2013 with a tiny percentage of primary votes.

“Ricky Muir and all other members of the Senate were elected by exactly the same mechanism yet there was something wrong in the way in which Mr Muir was elected,” Dr Economou said.

“Then there was something wrong in the way in which everybody was elected,” he added.

Senator Muir was elected with 0.51 per cent of the primary vote, as detailed in the ABC 2013 federal election results. 

Dr Economou said this discussion was stalled for three years and had been introduced as a “last minute decision”.

Mr Freeman-Harrison said he was against the voting reform and because it was a “complete distraction” to community interests.

“We’re seeing children pretty much playing games in Parliament … we should be focusing on what matters to the community, not what matters to the politicians themselves,” he said.

A double dissolution would mean “there’s really not going to be a lot of time for the electoral commission to try and explain these changes to the public”, Dr Economou said.

As a consequence, Dr Economou said the public might continue to vote in the same manner as in previous federal elections.

“[Voters will] see the ballot paper constructed as its always been constructed … and they will do as they’ve always done, they will cast a single preference above the black line for the party ticket of their choice,” he said.

Above-the-line voting is the preferred choice for Australian voters, with 97 per cent of people voting that way, and the remaining 3 per cent voting for preferred candidates below the line.

This will lead to an “exponential increase” in exhausted votes, Dr Economou said.

Minor Right-wing parties that were picking up a very small number of primary votes would find their votes “withering” in the process, he said.

“The average vote there is nationally about 7 per cent. So 7 per cent of the electorate's vote at least will probably exhaust,” he said.

Labor voters in areas such as South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland, where Labor is polling quite poorly, will also find their votes exhaust, according to Dr Economou, because they will not go on as preferences to any further party.

He said: “99.9 per cent of them vote a single one primary above the black line and if they do that in the forthcoming election, than what will happen is that the Labor vote will be confined to the Labor ticket and it won't go anywhere else.”

“Confusion and complexity leads to informal voting. Informal voting equals disenfranchisement and that is not democratic,” he added.