Alternative vote in Australia and Two-round system in France

2015
 Every country in the world selects its own electoral system for making democratic choices.
electoral system is the method used to calculate the number of elected positions in government that
individuals and parties are awarded after elections. In other words, it is the way that votes are
translated into seats in parliament or in other areas of government (such as the presidency). There are
many different types of electoral systems in use around the world, but in our paper we’ll focus on
electoral systems used in Australia and France. In order to be more specific, we'll emphasize on the
alternative vote and two-round system, their descriptions, how they appeared in Australia and
France, what is their designation, their role in the formation of state structures such as government
and parliament in Australia and France. In our paper, we’ll also provide strengths and weaknesses
that are almost the same for both Australia and France and the examples of several elections in order
to highlight the main features of these systems.

First of all, we’ll describe the alternative vote by using the example of Australia. In this case,
voters are asked to rank-order a number of candidates 1, 2, 3 and so on. This system is used in SMD,
the voter has one vote and the ballot is ordinal. If no candidate receives a majority of votes on the
count of first preferences, then the candidate with fewest votes is eliminated and her votes are
redistributed among the remaining candidates in accordance with second preferences of her voters.
This procedure is repeated until a clear winner emerges.

The AV system is typically Australian, where the tendency is to refer to it as “preferential

voting”. It is used in Ireland (for presidential elections and parliamentary by-elections) and Sri Lanka
(for presidential elections) and at various occasions at local or regional level in parts of the USA,
Canada and the UK. If we go deeper in the history, we’ll see that the Commonwealth of Australia
Constitution Act passed in 1900 established a parliamentary form of government, composed of a
lower chamber, the House of Representatives, and an upper chamber, the Senate in Australia.
Members of the House are elected for a maximum term of three years, while state Senators are
elected for a term of up to six years, with half the Senate elected every three years. In October 1918
Alternative vote was introduced by Glynn’s Commonwealth Electoral Bill for the elections to the
Australian House of representatives, while Senators are elected by the Single Transferable Vote (STV)
system of proportional representation since 1949. There have been various occasions throughout the
evolution of Australia’s electoral system when AV was applied in multi-member constituencies- the
most bizarre case being the system used to elect Senate from 1919 to 1948. Merely, as we have
mentioned, we will focus on the elections of the House of Representatives. At first, the
Commonwealth electoral Bill produced by Barton government in 1902 before the adoption of AV,
allowed the voters to express as many preferences as they liked, with a vote counting as valid
providing the voter had declared at least one preference. In addition, voters could “strike out” the
names of those candidates they did not want to give any support to. In other words, there could be
candidates neither ranked nor struck out. Nowadays in Australia, where AV is still in action, voters
have to rank-order all the candidates on the ballot paper, otherwise, their vote is declared invalid. It
means that voters must express as many preferences as there are candidates.

In Australia a candidate is elected if he/she gains an absolute majority or 50% + 1 vote. If

none of the candidates in a division obtains an absolute majority of the first preference votes, a
second round of counting is held. In order to make it more clear, we’ll provide the example of
Australian federal elections in 1998. There were six candidates running for one seat and there were
72 356 valid votes. First count consisted of the sorting ballot papers in order of the first-preferences.
As no winner was found, it was necessary to “exclude” the candidate with the fewest votes Rolls and
re-sort her 309 ballot papers according to the second preferences of the voters. The result of the
second count was also inconclusive: still none of the candidates had the overall majority. The third-
count showed that they had to exclude the next weakest candidate- Ray Pearce. In this election,
Australian Democrats were benefiting more from the transferred votes, But still no candidate had
more than 50 percent of the vote. Several courts and several exclusions were needed to reach the final
result. Since only two candidates were left, one of them had to get an overall majority. Final victory
went to Neville (National party) who received 62%. AV allows voters to give their first preference to
a minor party with little or no possibility of victory, and then use their second preferences to support
one major party candidate or the other, minor parties can significantly influence the outcome of an
election when neither of the two major political groups has an absolute majority, as shown in
example.

Nonetheless, AV is a majoritarian electoral system that - like the first-past-the-post (FPTP)

system - favors larger parties at the expense of smaller groups. It is difficult for minor parties to gain
representation in the House under AV, unless their support is regionally concentrated and even then,
the AV absolute majority requirement presents an additional demand that smaller parties have to
overcome in order to win seats. Apart from the unfair treatment of smaller parties, this system can
also produce anomalous majorities. For instance, in nine of 24 Australian elections in 1949, 1955,
1958, 1963, 1975, 1977, 1980, 1996, 2001 the Liberal Party was awarded more seats than the Labor
Party despite having won fewer votes. This happened because there were bias in the seats-to-votes
ratio. But at the same time we have to mention that AV fosters the creation of the coalition
governments. For example, Since 1949, a coalition of the Liberal Party of Australia (a conservative
party despite its name) and the right-wing, rural-oriented National Party of Australia (previously the
National Country Party and originally the Country Party) has alternated in power with the left-of-
center Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Under AV, Australia has developed a party system dominated by two major groups, with a
number of smaller parties largely excluded from the House of Representatives - but not from the
Senate, where the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system provides minor parties far greater
opportunities to attain parliamentary representation. AV was proposed also in Great Britain but 66%
of its population refused to establish it as election system, they preferred FPTP. Indeed the UK and
Canada refuse to accept this system, especially right side- conservative parties in both countries are
against this system. The main reason for them is that they don’t have allies and in case of AV they
will lose seats. But in case of Great Britain left side- Labor party will benefit from this system because
they have allies such as Liberal democrats, SNP and in Canada liberals have allies like Greens, NDP,
BQ. Allies are small parties and they don’t support conservatives in this case. That’s why AV is not
appropriate for conservative parties in the UK and Canada.

The second important electoral system, that we’ll explain is Two-round system in France.
This system will be applied to those systems that require voters to vote on two separate occasions. It
is closely associated with France where it was used for elections to the chamber of Deputies from
1928 to 1945. It was readopted by the French fifth republic in 1958 and has also been used for
presidential elections. TRS was also spread in countries that were influenced by France. Many of the
former French colonies in West Africa such as Mali retained the TRS system. It is not surprising, as
we can remember that colonial inheritance played a big role in case of these countries. They take the
electoral system which they know and which is closed to them because of their colonial master. The
central feature of this system is that two rounds are held on two different polling days. All parties
take part in the first round, usually promoting their own candidates. Presidential candidates are
required to present 500 endorsements signed by elected officials in order to secure a place on the
ballot. The principle objective is to ensure that the candidate elected will have an overall majority of
support in the district (50%+1) more than 50 percent of the votes cast. France uses majority-plurality
version of TRS for its legislative elections and a majority-run-off version for its presidential elections.
A 1962 amendment to the constitution established the popular election of the president by runoff
voting. In both cases first stage is like an SMP elections. French voters simply select their preferred
candidate. In order to be eligible for the second round, candidates must have obtained a number of
votes equal to at least 12.5% of the total number of registered voters. Once there are more than two
candidates, then there is no guarantee of a majoritarian result. if no candidate receives an overall
majority in first round then a second round of voting takes place one week later for legislative
elections, two weeks later for presidential elections. All the candidate requires in the first round is a
plurality of the vote. If the top two candidates qualify for a runoff election, the candidate with the
largest number of votes will be elected to office for a term of five years. In this case the final result
will be majoritarian. Furthermore under the runoff system, a simple majority in the first round does
not guarantee victory in the second round: in 1974, 1981 and 1995, the winner of the first round of
presidential balloting went down to defeat in the runoff election.

In France, ballot papers are produced by the parties themselves, not by the state. There are a
set of regulations which govern the style. It must have the candidate’s name, It can contain further
information as desired, such as a party slogan or symbol. Each party provides its own ballot paper. To
vote, the elector has to choose the appropriate ballot paper of the preferable party, puts it in the
envelope and pops it into the ballot box.

TRS has been credited to encourage a politics of centrism in France- requiring parties to
cooperate and form alliances, it fosters broad inter-party alliances, reward centrist candidates,
promotes accommodation and moderation in politics. Here we can discuss the example of France as
we know from its history that coalition governments are taking power very often. The big parties
such as socialist party, communist party and Gaullists always form coalitions with small and less
popular parties that get fewer votes. For instance Greens and left radicals made a coalition with
socialists and UDF (union of French democracy) with Gaullists, But they are demanding from bigger
parties several seats after their victory in elections.

In France, the two-ballot system has encouraged multiparty competition. In recent years
multiparty competition has been encouraged by the relatively generous form of state funding for
political parties that was introduced in 1990. Moreover, we have to mention that threshold affected a
lot the nature of multiparty system. In 1958, the threshold was 5 per cent of the electorate. It was
increased to 10 per cent in 1966 and was further raised to the current level of 12.5 per cent in 1976.
These two reforms were intended to limit the number of candidates in the second round, in order to
enhance the polarization of French political system. A similar point applies to presidential elections,
but in a different way. In 1976, the required number of sponsors was increased in an attempt to
reduce the number of candidates standing at the first ballot. Despite some reforms, there are still a
large number of first-round presidential candidates. Indeed, in 2002 there were no fewer than
sixteen.

Furthermore, both systems have almost the same strong and weak sides. As for strengths,
AV and TRS maintain the simplicity, requiring voters to do no more than simply tick a box or pick a
ballot paper. Also they assure strong legitimacy of individual members of parliament elected with a
true majority vote (although not necessarily in the first round of voting) and gives supporters of
smaller parties and minority voters a greater say in the election outcome, cause in case of TRS when
their preferred candidate from smaller party is defeated they can vote for the one of two top party
candidates in second round and in case of AV electors can give the second preference to the one of
two top candidates. Anyway in each case, their vote won’t be lost. Both systems reward centrist
candidates, promote accommodation and moderation in politics and encourage parties to create
alliances. At last, in both cases, strong voter-representative link may occur. It means that winner
candidate is known and popular among his voters, they support and encourage him, who will
represent their interests in parliament.

As for weaknesses, This system can cause the underrepresentation of third parties and
minorities. in case of TRS small party candidates are defeated in the first round and only top two
candidates are chosen for the second round, small parties can disappear or make a coalition with one
of the biggest parties, but they won’t coexist independently. In case of AV, candidates are eliminated
during the several counts and their votes are cast to other candidates. This occasion promotes the
disappearance of small parties. With the two-round vote and AV, election results are not known
immediately: final results are determined only after a second round of voting a week or two later or
in case of AV after several counts. At last Parochialism and “pork barrel” politics appears in this
system. Members of parliament are concerned with narrow, parochial interests of their geographic
constituencies only. It means that after election chosen candidate emphasize only on interests of his
district not in terms of the whole country. When he is elected he delivers something to the district
and voter that voted for him and helped him to win. But still we can see a small difference in
weaknesses between AV and TRS. In Australia smaller parties have never managed to win a seat.
Underrepresentation of small parties and minorities in AV are more harsh than in TRS. apart from
the unfair treatment of smaller parties, AV in Australia has produced anomalous majorities. For
instance, as we have already mentioned, in nine of 24 Australian elections the liberal party was
awarded more seats than the Labor Party despite having won fewer votes.

In summation, we have provided the structure and important features of the two electoral
systems: Alternative vote and Two-round system. We have focused on the examples of Australia and
France, as far as they are the countries that have used these systems for years and have gathered a lot
of experience. We have seen through historical facts, how these systems were accepted, evolved and
improved during the years. We have also emphasized on the strong and weak sides of these systems
and found out more about their effectiveness. We can claim now that AV and TRS represent the
strong electoral systems that are known and popular worldwide.
Used Sources:

1) David M. Farrell, “Electoral Systems- a comparative introduction”, 2nd edition, 2011

2) David M. Farrell, Ian Mcallister, “The Australian Electoral System- origins, variations and
consequences”, 2006
3) M. Gallagher, P. Mitchell, “The politics of electoral systems”, Oxford press edition, 2005
4) S. Toubeau, “Electoral System change in Europe since 1945: France”
5) IPU PARLINE database on national parliaments: Search , Australia - House of
representatives
6) http://www.electionresources.org/, Presidential and Legislative Elections in France