Over the last few years I have had the privilege of making submissions and then appearing before parliamentary inquiries reviewing the conduct of the most recent federal election and the most recent state elections in New South Wales and Victoria.
Each of these inquiries are a standard practice following every general election, and are conducted by a standing joint committee dedicated to electoral matters. In NSW and federally it is called the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM), and in Victoria it is called the Electoral Matters Committee.
The federal JSCEM started as the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform, which ran from 1983 to 1987. This body helped usher in dramatic electoral law changes in 1983-84 which created the Australian Electoral Commission, created our modern system of redistributions and expanded the parliament. The JSCER eventually transitioned into the JSCEM that exists today.
Not every state has one of these committees, but they probably should. Tasmania recently created their own JSCEM, and I have signed on to an open letter calling for the creation of a similar committee in the Queensland parliament.
But today I’m talking about Western Australia. Because last weekend’s election revealed quite a lot of issues that need to be discussed and resolved. There’s not one single problem that needs fixing, but rather a need for a full inquiry that can consider all of the issues related to the last election. This is exactly what a JSCEM would do in other jurisdictions.
With the new Legislative Council ending the period of Labor’s double majority, this is the perfect time to review the committee structures in the parliament.
A number of the issues that come up have been blamed on the Western Australian Electoral Commission (WAEC), but I think that’s a bit simplistic. Some of the issues I have come up against appear to be written into legislation, and I suspect funding decisions by the state government have influenced the WAEC’s ability to do its job.
I am sure there are other issues that I haven’t noticed that others would bring up at an inquiry, which is all the more reason to have a proper process where the public can make submissions or testify before a committee.
Major changes were made to WA’s electoral legislation before the last election. It is good practice to hold an inquiry to examine how those laws held up following their first use.
I would make a proper submission if the opportunity arose, but some of the issues I have either experienced myself or have seen reported include:
- The WAEC decided to not establish early voting centres in four specific electorates. This meant that any pre-poll voter in those seats needed to cast an absent vote in a different electorate. Was this due to cost, or availability of venues? This should be explained so that it can be avoided in future.
- The WAEC decided to not separate pre-poll voting totals from election day voting totals for their early voting centres (all of which were also used on election day). This makes it possible to analyse the different voting trends that often appear in pre-poll votes. Amalgamating vote totals into larger piles also makes it harder to identify errors in counting.
- The WAEC did not publish two-candidate-preferred counts until quite late in the night, seemingly waiting until they were certain that the correct 2CP pairing was used. Apparently they have used this process since at least 2008, but it is still something that slows down results reporting unnecessarily. A JSCEM inquiry would provide an opportunity to debate this process.
- More generally the WAEC had issues with delayed reporting of results in certain seats, and it would be good for this to be explained.
- The WAEC is not reporting upper house voting figures at the level of Legislative Assembly district, even though all votes are cast by a voter in a particular district. For ordinary booths it is easy enough to identify the district of the voter (although I think it’s possible that some votes that would be treated as absent for the lower house are just counted locally for the upper) but it is not possible for other voting categories like absent and postal votes. Apart from hindering our analysis, it severely limits the ability to compare results and identify counting bugs.
- The WAEC is not publishing any interim results for their data entry of below-the-line votes for the Legislative Council. I assume this data will eventually be published, but an absence of progress reports makes it hard to analyse the progress of the count.
- There have been reports of staff shortages and ballot paper shortages around the state.
- The number of candidates nominated to run for a party in the Legislative Council determines the size of the party’s spending cap, creating a perverse incentive to run more candidates than necessary.
I want to clarify that I don’t think there is value in blaming all this on the WAEC. The conduct of election is in the first place a function of legislation and funding, both of which are outside of the WAEC’s control. This is why the full electoral process should be the subject of an inquiry.
