Dr Kevin Bonham
ELECTORAL, POLLING AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS, COMMENT AND NEWS FROM THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CLARK. HEY MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY, YOUR ARTICLE ABOUT OPINION POLL METHODS BELONGS IN A MUSEUM.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
2PP Federal Polling Aggregate Relaunched
Thursday, November 30, 2023
EMRS Says Tasmanian Labor's Getting Nowhere
Election "held now" would be some kind of hung parliament, but further improvement for the government would put it in contention for winning outright
Jeremy Rockliff increases slim Better Premier lead
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
JSCEM's Strange Case For Extra Territory Senators
Yesterday saw the release of the final version of the Joint Standing Committee into Electoral Matters report into the 2022 election. Following the somewhat lightweight and culture-war afflicted 2019 report it was good to see a return to substance, but that is not to say that everything is wonderful. There are various welcome aspects of JSCEM's findings and proposals that I may comment on later but for now I wanted to deal with JSCEM's recommendation to increase the number of Senators for the ACT and Northern Territory from two to four apiece. (I'm also considering a longer article about the current push for "truth in electoral advertising" laws, and the extent to which that movement is being fanned by naive support arising from the Voice failure and the rise of Donald Trump style candidates.)
Increasing the number of Territory Senators can be done by legislation and could in theory very well happen before the next election, while an increase in the House of Representatives is likely to be a second-term project for the Albanese Government, assuming that it gets a second term. As the support of Labor, the Greens and David Pocock for expansion appears highly likely, the Government would only, for instance, need the support of either Lidia Thorpe or the Lambie Network (or even someone to abstain or be away) to pass the change. In theory an expansion could be challenged in the High Court but the prospects for any challenge would seem dim. The Constitution allows the Parliament to create Territory representation on whatever terms it likes and so long as there's some reasonable argument rather than it just being an out-and-out stack, it's hard to see on what basis the Court could say no.
I've sometimes been thought (including by JSCEM via a footnote) to be opposed to more Territory Senators but it's more correct to say I am cautious about it. The current Senate accidentally maintains a good left-right balance depending on the will of voters of the day and I'm wary of anything that might disturb that and skew the Senate. At the same time I think there are some sound arguments in favour of more Territory Senators. What I am opposed to here is bad arguments for reform and this debate has been awash with them. I first raised this here just after last year's election. JSCEM in its majority comments has at least correctly grasped that increasing Territory Senators has nothing to do with - and cuts against - "one vote one value", but in the process it has misrepresented those who have worked to make that point, and made some findings that are not entirely factual.
The JSCEM proposal and past results
JSCEM has proposed that the ACT and Northern Territory each receive four Senators and that the Senators be elected for three year terms. This would mean Senate elections with a quota of 20% after preferences, though minor parties could sometimes win seats on primary votes in, say, the low teens. This proposal is something of a relief as there was some speculation that the major parties might seek to expand Territory Senators to four but switch them to six-year terms thus retaining the current two-seat elections (except in a double dissolution). That would not have addressed one of the best reasons for having more Territory Senators in the first place (what I call the "impoverished representation" argument resulting from only electing two Senators at a time) and could have led to 4-0 left-right shutouts in the ACT.
As I note in the previous article, a four-seat ACT (all in all out) would have returned 3 left and 1 right Senators consistently if it had existed at all elections from 2007 onwards; before that it would have been a mix of 2 Labor 2 Liberal and 2 Labor 1 Liberal 1 Democrat results. For 2022 the non-Labor left Senator would have been David Pocock instead of the Greens, but Pocock's presence is itself largely a product of the two-seat system. For the Northern Territory it's 2 Labor 2 CLP all the way except that in 2022 Labor's second seat would have fallen to the Greens.
However it's entirely possible that the lower quota for the NT would lead to new entries into Territory Senate elections, though the 1500 member requirement for new parties might make it hard for Territory-specific parties or independent-centred front parties to get going.
JSCEM's arguments and my comments
A term of reference for the JSCEM enquiry was "proportional representation of the states and territories in the Parliament, in the context of the democratic principle of 'one vote, one value'."
Technically the terms of reference for JSCEM come from outside it, from the Special Minister of State (Don Farrell) but this seems to be a case where the wording has caused problems in terms of the committee being able to (with a straight face) make the finding that the government wants.
Hence JSCEM launches into a disucssion of how "While proportional representation and one vote, one value are often discussed together in Australia, they do not mean the same thing." Which is of course true, but the problem is that submitters have been asked to discuss one in the context of the other. It also doesn't help that the term of reference is ambiguous, since it can refer to how proportionally the states and territories are represented relative to each other (malapportionment), but also to whether a given state's voters are represented more or less proportionally within that state (district magnitude). This is especially relevant to Territory Senators, because adding more of them per election means the voters of each territory get to vote in a more internally proportional election, but also become more overrepresented compared to the average voter.
JSCEM accepts the fact that "one vote one value" cannot justify increasing Territory Senator numbers and argues that it is irrelevant. "The Australian Senate is elected using a type of proportional representation in which a whole state or territory is the electorate, but is intentionally structured to prevent one vote, one value across Australia" "It is not possible to apply the principle of one vote, one value to the Senate because all the original states were given the same number of Senators as a compromise to bring smaller states into the Federation at the time the Constitution was framed."
As someone who thinks one vote, one value is a core democratic principle, I will apply it to analyse whatever systems I like and if I encounter a system that has been designed to frustrate it I will simply mark that system down. Saying that we can't take into account the further degradation of one vote, one value when changes are proposed to the Senate is confusing a historic fact with a value.
JSCEM goes on to present a pretty coherent argument for more Territory Senators, which can be summarised as follows:
* The intent of the Constitution is that big states be protected from being dominated by small states
* It is arbitrary to provide this protection to small states and not to Territories
* Territories especially need protection because they are at risk of having their laws overruled by the Commonwealth
I would say this argument is valid if one believes that it is intrinsically good that "small States" (which actually means less populous states) receive equal representation to large ones, but if one doesn't believe that one can ignore it. One can also hold - as plenty enough of the Founding Fathers did - that it is a necessary evil entered into to secure Federation that the small States are equally represented, and that if it isn't necessary to increase malapportionment, then it isn't arbitrary to say no.
1973 And All That
Where things get deeply weird is in committee comment 1.102:
"The Committee is of the view that the discussion about territory representation in the Senate based on population statistics is based on the assumption that the intent of the Senate (Representation of Territories) Act 1973 was to grant territory representation based on population, and that this assumption sits at odds with the Senate’s role. State representation in the Senate is not based on population, and it is unconvincing to argue that territory representation in the Senate should be."
I'd like to know who wrote this comment.
The idea that anyone was basing their use of population statistics on what the 1973 legislation intended falls as far as I'm aware in the "said no one, ever" category. It's very obvious that the broad intent of the 1973 legislation was to grant Territories some representation in the Senate rather than none. The 1973 legislation clearly didn't intend that that representation be granted based on then present day population, because if it did both the NT with 0.7% of Australia's population at the time and the ACT with 1.3% of Australia's population would have got only one Senator each. (Labor did then, as it happens, use future population as an argument for giving the Territories Senators at all, and here its projections proved to be way off, expecting more people in both Territories by the mid-1990s to 2000 than those Territories actually have in 2023.)
In fact the use of population statistics by those concerned about the arguments being made has come about because the government, having been elected with a mandate for "one vote, one value" but none for more Territory Senators, sent JSCEM a reference that linked the two concepts and invited people to comment in that context. At the same time, advocates for more Territory Senators were presenting cherrypicked comparisons with Tasmania to push the false claim that the Territories are under-represented at present. Furthermore, some people actually just really care about one vote, one value.
Some perspective here about the impact of terms of reference on what people put in their submissions would be good, instead of gaslighting and strawmanning submitters who addressed the terms of reference in good faith with the fiction quoted in bold above.
JSCEM also approvingly quotes Senator Pocock as saying the following:
"Rather than considering what baseline level of representation for the Territories should be in comparison to the existing small States, a political decision was made in 1975 [sic -KB] granting the two major Territories two Senators each. The number of Senators had no real basis but was a political decision that effectively gave both major parties two additional Senators (one from each Territory) … The debate did not seek to answer the question: what is a baseline level of democracy that is appropriate for small (non-Original State) jurisdictions?"
Yes and no. I've started reading the 1973 debates (I may add more on them later!) and the then Whitlam government did in fact discuss why it had opted for two Senators per territory rather than one. It was stated that the reason for this was to provide for Territory representation in the Senate without the vagaries of single seat results in small populations affecting the power balance of the Senate. It should be noted also that this was not a major party deal; the Coalition largely opposed the push and blocked it in the Senate causing it to become one of the triggers for the 1974 double dissolution; it was then passed through the joint sitting. I quote from Fred Daly's second reading speech:
Two senators are suggested because it would be proper to have an even number representing the Territories. If only one senator alone represented a Territory, almost certainly the one party would be represented for long periods. It is probable that both senators would belong to the same party. It would appear then to be more democratic to have an even number elected each time for each Territory thus following the pattern of the major parties providing that each would have a representative in the Senate
Thus there clearly was a principled basis for the choice of two at the time. Whether there was any basis for the choice not to go beyond two other than that going beyond two would have been playing with obvious fire (even two was only accepted 4-3 by the High Court as it was) is less clear.
The summoning of the 1973 ghost is all the more strange because the Parliament has since considered and addressed via legislation the question of when the Territories should be considered to deserve more Senators, but the existence of the standing legislation has been ignored in the current debate. This was done by the Hawke government in its Electoral and Referendum Amendment Act 1989, the Act providing that:
when either the Australian Capital Territory or the Northern Territory becomes entitled to six or more House of Representatives members, that Territory shall be represented in the Senate by one senator for every two members;
In proposing this the Hawke Government argued
The Joint Standing Committee [on Electoral Reform - KB] examined this issue, following concern that it would be possible for a government with a majority in both Houses to increase the representation of the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory out of proportion to their populations. The Government has accepted the Committee's conclusion that fixed formulae for the representation of Territories should be prescribed.
But, if the JSCEM proposal is accepted as it stands, not any more.
The truth of the matter is that the same charge Senator Pocock levels against the 1973 legislation (that it was a political decision without systematic basis) can be also levelled against JSCEM's recommendation for four Senators per Territory. Because if neither an area's population nor the fact that the Territories were not in the original deal justifies restricting their numbers, on what basis is the ACT to be given only four Senators to Tasmania's twelve, and not twelve itself? Indeed, given the Territories' vulnerability, perhaps the Territories should be given sixteen?
JSCEM even argues that "The Committee considers that territory representation should reflect the intent of the Constitution such that territory representation should be considered on a similar basis to the representation of the smaller states in the Senate. " then follows that with "Consequently, the Committee recommends that the representation of the territories in the Senate be increased to four Senators, elected for a period of three years." In what mathematical system is four Senators similar to twelve? How is this consequent? Labor here is open to the charge that it really wants to go so far as will prevent a 1 Pocock 1 Liberal 0 Labor result should Pocock become even more popular, but not much further.
Senator Pocock, indeed, prefers a principled formula-related approach and proposes six Territory Senators with six year terms, a proposal that could however greatly benefit the left in the Northern Territory.
Note
As noted at the top I am not necessarily against increasing Territory Senate representation. I think that there is a valid argument that all Australians should ideally have access to a quality proportional voting experience in the Senate, and that this is a principle that should be weighted carefully alongside one vote, one value. One might call it one vote, one quality. A district magnitude of two is not a proper Senate electoral contest and expansion to four at a time would give the Territories more reliable access to a quality voting experience and to diverse representation. If the expansion is passed, it may well distort the Senate, but it will also have meaningful benefits.
However I think there should be rigorous debate about this proposal, and I consider that much of what we are being offered in defence of the proposed expansion is an insult to legitimate beliefs that "one vote, one value" matters. It's not the first such insult we've seen lately, with the current Government expecting those who wanted an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to endorse it while the leading model on the table was severely malapportioned.
More comments are likely to be added later.
Friday, November 17, 2023
Mulgrave By-Election 2023: Prospects And Live Commentary
Vacancy for resignation of Daniel Andrews (ALP)
Welcome to a quick preview and live thread for the Mulgrave by-election in Victoria. This is the second time this year that both major parties have fronted up for a by-election caused by a mid-term resignation of a sitting Premier. In case that doesn't sound like much, prior to this year that hadn't happened in any State since 2008, and had only happened ten times that I can find since 1970. (This is the first year in that time with two of them!) Often when a Premier quits the seat they vacate is such a safe one that Oppositions don't risk embarrassment by contesting.
There are many odd features of the Mulgrave contest and while the general buzz around it is much weaker than for Rockingham I think it's worth covering even if it turns out to be a fizzer. I'll have some live comments scrolling to the top tomorrow night.
2PP swings when Premiers vacate
As mentioned above a 2PP contest in a seat for a mid-term vacating Premier is a relatively rare event. Victoria hasn't had a case since 1981 (the Liberal Party did not contest when Steve Bracks quit) and half the cases since 1970 where a 2PP swing is available or can be estimated have been in Western Australia.
For the record here is a table of those I found (there is no 2PP estimate available for Barambah 1988). In every case there was at least probably a 2PP swing to the opposition (though in the case of Kew 1981 this is not beyond doubt because of undistributed Democrat preferences).
Notes: Swing figure is swing to Opposition at the by-election (italics are estimates, Nedlands 1982 estimate was by Malcolm Mackerras). St 2PP is the Government state 2PP at the previous election. Seat 2PP is the Government 2PP in the vacating Premier's seat at the previous election, shown in italics where the oppisition didn't make the 2CP. (Incidentally there have also been three Northern Territory cases, with swings to oppositions of 7.0%, 9.2% and 16.9%.)
There is a significant relationship between the previous Seat 2PP and the swing to opposition but I wouldn't read much into that because of the small sample and the fact that most of the by-elections were outside Victoria:
By historic standards it isn't that likely that a government would lose the 2PP in a seat held by a former Premier on a margin around 10%, but it is possible. (Kew 1981 was a near miss on a similar margin). Whether the 2PP decides the outcome in Mulgrave's case remains to be seen. Blue dots are Coalition Premiers and red dots are Labor ones, for what it's worth. The relationship between the previous state election 2PP and the swing to the Opposition in the by-election is weaker and in fact not statistically significant.
Andrews, an unusual Premier
The average 2PP swing when Premiers depart in the by-elections shown above was 10.9%, just over what the Liberals need to win the 2PP here and well above the 5% or so one would normally expect for a government vacancy (there is not enough recent Vic data to do a Vic-specific estimate here). However this includes Premiers who were popular and long-serving and others who had not been there for long at all. Andrews is for sure a major Premier, in the job for almost nine years. However Andrews had the unusual property that while more voters in general approved of him than disapproved, those who disapproved tended to disapprove very strongly.
There isn't anything like the evidence of a building net personal vote for Andrews over time in Mulgrave as there was for McGowan in Rockingham (in fact, after adjusting for redistributions Mulgrave wasn't any better for Labor relative to the state average at the end of Andrews' career than after his first term as an MP). I've also tried to use Legislative Council vote differences to estimate a personal vote, but here it doesn't seem that Andrews' 2022 result was anything special compared to other Labor incumbents in nearby seats. Most likely having Ian Cook run against him with something of a folk-hero image in some media damaged Andrews' result in 2022, and also the seat may be simply becoming a bit less Labor-y over time. So I don't think Mulgrave is starting from an obviously inflated baseline of the sort I'd normally expect for a departing major Premier.
This said there may still exist plenty of voters who will not vote for Labor without a candidate of Andrews' prominence, but will they be cancelled out by voters who specifically disliked Andrews returning to the fold now that he's gone?
Three-cornered contest
Mulgrave was much hyped at the previous election because of the unusual candidacy of Ian Cook, a local catering company owner whose business was temporarily shut down following a listeria outbreak that killed a hospital patient. The case gave rise to "slug gate", a colourful conspiracy theory (of some interest to me as a professional malacologist) that a slug had been planted in Cook's building to fuel the case for shutting it down. (Cook recently had a pyrrhic victory in court in which the shutdown was ruled procedurally unfair but he was paid no compensation.)
Cook (Independent) did not get near defeating Daniel Andrews, but he did finish second. Surprisingly, the final indicative distributions revealed his two-candidate preferred vote of 39.2% was weaker than the Liberals' 39.8%, despite the Liberal candidate Michael Piastrino at most times seeming more like an escapee from one of the more excitable "freedom parties" than a mainstream candidate. Although I would have thought Piastrino's campaign would have driven off anyone who could even passingly stand Andrews, 20% of the preferences with Piastrino at his exclusion still flowed to the Premier.
Opinions vary as to whether Cook might greatly boost his vote in a by-election with no significance for forming government (and perhaps be a serious contender this time), or whether he will suffer from not having Andrews or Brett Sutton to rail against anymore and from a more respectable Liberal alternative.
The Mulgrave 2022 count produced many conspiracy theories, and continues to be the subject of false claims that polling showed Daniel Andrews would lose (see B1 in my disinfo register).
New major party candidates
Cook is a constant but the major party candidates have changed. The new Labor candidate is Greater Dandenong mayor (for the past year) and psychologist Eden Foster. Foster's council area includes the southern half of Mulgrave and her own ward overlaps a small part of it. Foster is only a first-term councillor and the use of the ward system coupled with round-table elections means there's not a lot on the record about her electoral appeal, but she's presumably done something right to get the big job unopposed.
The Liberal candidate is long-term Liberal policy advisor Courtney Mann, who also self-describes as an educator but thus far I have found no further information re that. Mann was the candidate against Andrews in Mulgrave way back in 2010; at that election the swing in Mulgrave (7.3% 2PP) was just above the state average of 6%.
Aside from the majors and Cook, the remainder are not likely to much disturb the scorers: a Libertarian, Animal Justice, Victorian Socialists, Sustainable Australia, Family First, Greens (their 7th worst seat in the state last year) and a minor indie who didn't clear 1% in 2022.
Polls
All things being equal governments will do better in by-elections when they are polling well at state level than when they are polling badly. The only state poll since Jacinta Allan became Premier was by Resolve Strategic and suggested that Labor would very easily win an election "held now" but some caution should be attached to the figures because of the federal tendency of Resolve to be way better for Labor than other pollsters. At least there is no sign that the government is trailing.
No seat-specific polls have been seen. The Herald-Sun has printed noises about Labor polling supposed to show a swing from them to Cook, but said outlet is yet to print a full page apology for giving credence to Cook campaign street team exit poll rubbish that suggested Cook was winning last time (wrong by a mere 18%).
Federal drag factors might have some influence. The Albanese government has been sliding in the polls (it is still ahead but down to 52.3 in my aggregate now) and has had a bad week with news of released detainees some of whom had serious criminal records breaking in the last few days.
Other factors
The ballot draw is less favourable for Labor than in 2022 when Andrews drew top of the ballot; the difference between first out of 14 and eighth out of ten could be worth as much as 1%.
Antony Green has drawn attention to low prepoll and postal returns in what could be a sign of a poor turnout, or a high on the day vote, or both. If there is a high on the day vote they might struggle to find booths, with only 10 of the 20 booths from 2022 on offer to voters. Most of the temporarily abolished booths were small but it's notable that in them Labor won the 2PP 62.3-37.7, compared to 57.5-42.5 at the booths that have been retained. This means that all else being equal, Labor's swing in the booths overall will underperform its swings in the individual booths by about 1.8% - a trap for unwary players if there's a contest. Especially, Brandon Park booth could pick up less Labor-friendly voters from Waverley Meadows, while Gladeswood booth could move towards Labor relatively in the absence of Waverley Park.
Federal drag is possibly a factor. The Albanese Government has come back to about its previous election result in polling in recent weeks, and the last few days have been torrid for it with coverage of released detainees (some with serious criminal records).
Benchmarking
I like to set benchmarks for what should be considered a good result for the major parties to guard against the tendency of parties to engage in spin post the by-election. But this one is quite tricky ...
For Labor, firstly they want to win the seat - a loss to either challenger is bad (worse if it's to the Liberals). But ideally they would want to have clearly won on the night, even if Cook gets vaguely close. If it's called for them by the end of Saturday that is at least decent. A good result would be that with a 2PP of 55 or better vs the Liberals. (The 2CP against Cook is irrelevant so long as they beat him.)
For the Liberals, to at least get a substantial 2PP swing would be some kind of foreward progress, and to finish second and get the margin under 55-45 would be good and should take a lot of pressure off John Pesutto if it occurs. Finishing third again isn't necessarily bad, but it depends on whether the reason for that is that Cook has done better than 2022. In particular the Liberals would feel it had been a worthwhile exercise if their preferences helped Cook to win or nearly so. What would be really bad for the Liberals would be a repeat of 2022 (or similar) - an outcome in which neither they nor Cook make much headway and Foster wins quickly and easily. The Liberals did very well in the absence of Labor in the Warrandyte by-election but Opposition Leader John Pesutto may still be only one shocker away from being shown the door. A bad Liberal performance here would be seen as a bad sign for their hopes of winning outer suburban seats in 2026 with an "inner city wet" type leader.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Poll Roundup: This Is The Way The Honeymoon Ended
2PP Aggregated Estimate: 52.9 To ALP (-1.4 since mid-August)
ALP would still win election "held now", probably with increased majority
Time for another federal voting intention poll roundup as there have been several noteable results in recent weeks. In a previous edition I reported that while the end of the Albanese Government's polling honeymoon had been declared by many hasty false prophets, we weren't quite there yet ... but we could be soon. My standard for the honeymoon phase still existing had been a 54-46 estimated aggregated polling lead for the government, but in the event of the government falling slightly below that level I would want to see at least a month of evidence that that was the case. (It is somewhat like how a single quarter of negative growth does not count as a recession).
Anyway I can now report that on my estimates the rear-vision window shows that it's been two months. The Albanese Government's polling honeymoon ended not with a bang but with a gradual slip into the twilight zone of not-quite-enough-ahead in early September. There were several individual poll results better than 54-46 since then but on a weekly rolling basis I have had Labor in the 53s ever since. Furthermore following this week's Newspoll the Government dipped just below an aggregated (and Newspoll!) 53% for the first time.
Saturday, November 4, 2023
Voice Referendum: Turnout and Informal Votes
I haven't seen any other articles on these subjects so some coverage of turnout and informal votes in the Voice referendum.
The most important thing to know about Voice turnout is that it was a lot higher than many people said it was going to be. It indeed managed to just beat the 2022 House of Representatives turnout, but this is no great miracle alone given that the 2022 election was COVID-blighted. What makes it more impressive was that it was acheived against the backdrop of an enrolment drive that made the roll more complete than ever before, putting more voters on the roll who had a relatively low chance of voting. Another factor that makes the near-90% turnout commendable is that six years ago there was a mass voting type exercise that was voluntary, and there was some potential for confusion about whether voting in the referendum was required.
Just a disclaimer before I get much further: when I post graphs with low r-squared values (percentage of variation explained) I come across a few readers for whom a little knowledge of statistics is a dangerous thing and who will, sometimes irately, insist that anything below r-squared equals 0.3 or so is worthless. In fact electoral statistics are very messy and even r-squared values of a few percent can be statistically significant if there are enough data points. The important thing with such values is to be especially cautious about assuming causation since the causes of such patterns are often to be found elsewhere. For instance, in the 1999 Republic referendum, seats with high Yes votes had low turnout, but that isn't because high support for Yes in an area caused people to not vote, it is mainly because inner city seats that tended naturally to vote Yes also have high numbers of transient young voters (who themselves would be likely to vote Yes if they voted at all).
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Voice Referendum Polling Accuracy
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Will The Spirit Of Hare-Clark Be Killed By Farce?
Update: As of 9 November the Legislative Council has fixed the issue reporting in this article by changing per-candidate funding to per-party/group funding.
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Watch out which candidate you vote for next Tasmanian state election. Your vote could cost the party you voted for $17,000. That's if the Liberal Government's current electoral public funding model is passed through Parliament with the help of the Labor Opposition.
Of all the bizarre things that have happened in the current Tasmanian Parliament this is among the strangest. We are here not by design but by accident, largely because former Attorney-General Elise Archer was given (and relied upon instead of checking) incorrect advice on a technical point about elections in the ACT. It may be that the Rockliff Government has no real intention of progressing electoral reforms inherited from Archer, or that an election intervenes before they can come into place. But if the Government does go ahead and the Electoral Disclosure and Funding Bill 2022 (No. 25) comes into force with Labor support, then that will create a public funding model that will distort the competition between candidates within the same party. It will also unfairly advantage some parties over others, and expose voters to tactical dilemmas best left to defective voting systems like first-past-the-post. This will be the worst reform in the 126 year history of Hare-Clark, the first change that is completely contrary to the spirit of the system.