Comments on Recount and Party Proportionality:
------------ Forwarded Letter ------------- From: "Crabb, Deane (PIRSA)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:13:33 +1030 Subject: RE: Recount and Party Proportionality: The reason in Australia that often only the ballots for the vacating member are re-examined is that it is these voters that have lost their representative. Tasmania has probably used this re-count method the longest. As most voters tend to vote first for all candidates within the list of their favourite party, most parties put up many more candidates that they expect to get elected. Then if there is a recount it means the replacement is more likely to come from the same party. This certainly happens in the major parties. But when a recount was conducted to replace an Australian Democrat member who was resigning from the Tasmanian Parliament to contest the Australian Senate, the recount elected Bob Brown, an Australian Green (and now their Federal leader). It should be noted that in Tasmania the Robson rotation is used so that the order of the candidates within each party list varies from ballot paper to ballot paper. This means that voters need to know not only which party they wish to support, but also which candidates for that party they wish to vote for. With 5 members to be elected from each electorate, voters have to mark at least the numbers 1 to 5, with the option to mark more numbers if they wish. Deane Crabb - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Reply to Diane's comments on Recount and Party Proportionality: Hi Diana, you wrote: "This certainly happens in the major parties. But when a recount was conducted to replace an Australian Democrat member who was resigning from the Tasmanian Parliament to contest the Australian Senate, the recount elected Bob Brown, an Australian Green (and now their Federal leader)." Donald: This is a piece of interesting information. It clearly shows that the voters are willing to change the proportionalily of the original election at the time of the replacement recount. Can you give us more information on this election of Bob Brown?? That is, do you know what percentage of the quota did Bob Brown need to win the election?? Thank you, Donald, ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info