Tas Councils: Is The Deputy Election System Dudding Us?

This article is not so much brought to you as provoked by Hobart's Lord Mayor Ron Christie, who today caved in to a campaign from sectors (by no means all) of the Tasmanian and interstate religious right.  Following an outcry about upside-down red crosses on the Hobart waterfront, Christie criticised the Dark Mofo music and art festival, suggesting it was no longer "family friendly" (was it ever?) and that the Council may cease funding this very successful visitor drawcard.  It doesn't appear Christie necessarily speaks for the Council on this matter, and certainly nor did he when he became remarkably keen on a proposal for co-naming Hobart "nipaluna" (a stance rather at odds with his opportunistic criticism of Mike Parr's three-day burial performance by the way, given the intended meanings of that artwork).  The Ron Christie I knew a little in the early 2000s was quite the zany freethinker and I suspect would have loved Dark Mofo to bits.  I can only wonder what has occurred!



Christie's strange performances as Lord Mayor brought to my mind the issue of how he came to be Mayor in the first place despite achieving very little voter support at the 2014 Council elections, and reminded me of an issue I've considered now and then before with the way Deputy Mayors are elected in our local government system.  I believe that the way in which we elect Deputy Mayors, while simple to follow, is letting our Councils down in situations like this, and that there are probably better solutions.  As an introduction for readers unfamiliar with the system, candidates for election as councillors (aldermen) can run for Mayor or Deputy Mayor, but not both.  A single preferential election is held for each of those positions, with the constraint that the winner must also claim a seat on council in the multi-member Hare-Clark election for Councillor seats.  In 2014, for the first time, candidates for Mayor and Deputy were no longer required to have served on a council before.

Ron Christie is Lord Mayor until October because Sue Hickey resigned the position on account of her election to State Parliament.  When the Lord Mayor resigns close enough to the next election, no by-election is held.  The existing Deputy Mayor is promoted and a new Deputy is elected "Rats In The Ranks" style by fellow Councillors.

2014: Who Hobart Voted For

At the 2014 Hobart City Council election, Sue Hickey was elected as Lord Mayor, narrowly defeating incumbent Damon Thomas.  The other mayoral candidates were former Deputy Lord Mayor Helen Burnet (Greens), Green alderman Philip Cocker, and newcomer Suzy Cooper (who won an aldermanic seat but resigned mid-term).

There were 11 candidates for Deputy Mayor, including sitting incumbent and sitting alderman Christie, sitting aldermen Jeff Briscoe, Marti Zucco, Eva Ruzicka, Peter Sexton, Bill Harvey (Greens), former Liberal state candidate Tanya Denison (who was very narrowly elected as an alderman) and four minor candidates from the Christie ticket whose bids for Deputy Mayor appeared to be a bizarre (and unsuccessful) preference-harvesting attempt.

Christie polled 2970 primaries for Deputy Lord Mayor (15.7%), trailing only Harvey (3454, 18.6%).  As the cutup progressed, preferences pooled with more politically mainstream candidates than Harvey and Christie went on to defeat Harvey easily.  (Harvey also lost his Council seat, but got it back on Cooper's countback.)

It is when we look at the Councillor primaries that we see something really interesting.  The man who is now Lord Mayor polled only eleventh on Councillor primaries, with just 455 votes (2.6%) in his own right.  He was even outpolled on primaries by two candidates who failed to be elected as councillors.  It's not all about primaries, of course, and Christie did very well on the surplus votes of Sue Hickey and Damon Thomas, and as a result was fourth elected as a councillor.  Nonetheless he still had less than 6% of the aldermanic vote even after the surpluses of Hickey, Thomas and Burnet, who were far and away the three most popular councillors.  It was hardly a convincing performance for someone who is now the city's leader.

A Systematic Problem

A look at the other council results around the state shows that in general, those elected Deputy Mayor under the new all-in, all-out system did not set the electoral world on fire.  There were 25 Councils that had contested elections for all of Mayor, Deputy and Councillors in 2014.

Naturally, those candidates elected Mayor did well on the aldermanic ballots too.  In 23 of these 25 cases, they topped the aldermanic primary vote ballot, the exceptions being Glamorgan-Spring Bay (Michael Kent 3rd) and Kingborough (Steve Wass 5th, but still with a quota).

It might stand to reason that the Deputy Mayor would be the second most popular person on the Council but only one elected Deputy Mayor under the new system made that intuition stick.  That was Mark Jones (Southern Midlands).  On the aldermanic ballots, the remaining 24 Deputies achieved eleven third places, seven fourth places, five fifth places and one sixth place - and this is after preferences, not just on primaries.  Bear in mind that this is not like the Senate - preference flows between candidates are rather weak, so the position in which someone is elected is probably a good indication of how popular they are or are not.

My critique of the system has been that often talented people who would make good stand-in Mayors miss out because they run for Mayor, lose, and therefore don't make the leadership team at all, while the Deputy position may get snaffled by someone with mediocre popular appeal.  It seems that under the new system this may have become more likely.  Indeed, of these 25 Councils there were 21 cases of at least one failed Mayoral contender outpolling the successful Deputy on the aldermanic ballot, including eight cases where two did.  (There was only one elected Deputy who outpolled their Mayor as an alderman, and that was Paula Wriedt (Kingborough), a former state MP).  There were 19 councils where a failed Mayoral contender finished second behind the Mayor on the aldermanic ballot, to only the one where a successful Deputy did.

If Councils were all factionalised into left-right camps, such that the successful Deputy Mayor typically came from the same side of politics as the winning Mayor, while the main defeated challenger came from a faction with minority public support, then this would all be to be expected.  But local councils are generally not like that.  More often what happens is simply that the most popular two or three aldermen will run for Mayor because being Mayor for four years is the big prize and it is worth going for it if there seems to be a realistic chance.  Running for Deputy makes more sense for those who have little chance of winning the top job.

It might be argued (and I suspect it was true in 2014) that running for Mayor actually in itself makes a candidate perform better on the aldermanic ballot (unless they are an absolute no-hoper), and that the candidates for Deputy would do better as aldermen if they were also running for Mayor.  But if that's the case, my proposed alternative would cater for that.

An Alternative

Here is how the system for electing Mayors and Deputies could be fixed to ensure that the candidates with the most popular support are elected to both positions, and that popular aldermen no longer have to choose between a risky shot at Mayor and a less risky shot at Deputy.

Each council could have a single Mayor/Deputy Mayor ballot paper for both leadership positions.  A candidate for Mayor or Deputy Mayor could nominate for either of the positions or both.  The election would then be counted using the same ballot papers - twice.

The first round of counting would  include all the candidates who have nominated for Mayor.  If any candidate had not nominated for Mayor, they would be excluded at the start of the ballot and all their preferences would be distributed to the next available candidate who did nominate.  The primary count and, if needed, preference distribution would then be carried out until the Mayor is elected.

The second round of counting would include all the candidates who have nominated for Deputy, except the Mayor.  The Mayor, and any candidate who has not nominated for Deputy, would be excluded at the start of the ballot, and their preferences would be distributed to the next available candidate who did nominate.  The primary count and, if needed, preference distribution would then be carried out until the Deputy Mayor is elected.

(A similar idea - see comment by reader mstj - is to keep the current two ballots and allow candidates to run for both Mayor and Deputy if they want to.  In this version, the candidate elected Mayor is excluded from the Deputy ballot at the start of counting and all their preferences are transferred to the next available candidate.)

Drawbacks?

The advantages of this system should be clear - it makes candidates available to be elected to either position, which is good for the candidates and also good for the voter.  What are the drawbacks?

Firstly the system would obviously lead to more people running for both Mayor and Deputy, which could lead to much longer counts for these elections.  However, this problem could be reduced by introducing deposits for running for leadership elections.  I was baffled to find out that in fact no deposit is required to run for local government in Tasmania (indeed there is currently nothing to deter some bunch of people from horribly pranking the system by nominating hundreds of candidates for the same council).  Set a deposit for running for Mayor or Deputy, to be refunded only if the candidate is elected or has at least, say, 10% of the primary vote on at least one of the ballots.

Secondly a voter might be unsure about how to vote if they perceived, for some reason, that a particular candidate who is running for both positions would be a terrible Mayor but a great Deputy, or a great Mayor but a terrible Deputy.  This isn't a particularly likely perception, and in the first case it would be somewhat irrational since anyone elected Deputy could potentially become a stand-in Mayor.  Nonetheless, it's true that the system doesn't cater for it.  However, as it is, a voter who thinks a certain candidate would be excellent as either Mayor or Deputy cannot express that view for both positions.  Also, if a voter thinks that the top two contenders for Mayor would be the ideal choice as Mayor and Deputy, they cannot express that view either.  So I think more is gained than would be lost in terms of choices that a voter can make by this proposal.

Incidentally, since ballots for Mayor and Deputy are by optional preferential voting, this system would not lead to increased informal voting.  However, the instructions on the ballot paper should instruct voters to vote for at least two candidates.

Another Alternative

Another option is to simply stop electing Deputy Mayors by popular vote, and have them always elected by the Councillors.  The advantage of that is that any Councillor who is defeated in the Mayoral ballot still has some chance to become Deputy.  The disadvantage is that the position is no longer popularly elected.  However, that argument loses some of its force given that, in many cases, the person who the voters might most like to have as Deputy Mayor is not available for the position anyway, because they are running for Mayor.

I hope this article encourages some consideration about how we elect Deputy Mayors and whether we could and should do better.  I hope it also makes one other thing clear: when it comes to Dark Mofo, Ron Christie does not speak for me!

(Footnote: There has also been one full Council election since 2014, the early election this year in Glenorchy.  That one, conducted under highly unusual circumstances, bucked the trend in that Matt Stevenson, elected Deputy Mayor, was also second on the aldermanic ballot.  Based on his massive preference flow from the winner on the aldermanic ballot, he would also have won easily under the alternative system.)