Is Group Ticket Voting Really On The Way Out In Victoria?

The last week has brought the encouraging news via both The Age and The Herald-Sun that Victorian Labor is preparing legislation to scrap Group Ticket Voting at the last possible chance before this year's election. According to the reports, the legislation will be brought in in the sitting week starting July 28, and would presumably pass both houses quickly in order to meet the VEC's August deadline.  

Let's hope this is finally it for all this nonsense!  I understand the smaller parties may be reluctant to vote for a new system under which their chances of winning any seats are greatly reduced for now thanks to the Bracks Government's entrenchment blunders, so I'll cut them slack so long as they refrain from making false claims in defence of their position.  But if any major party stands in the way or does nothing this time then there is no excuse for them not caring about democracy.  

To keep this originally well-intentioned but now discredited system would say that Victorians are second class voters who do not deserve the right to direct their own preferences as easily between parties as voters can in every other state that at least has an upper house.  It would say that it is less important that MLCs be accountable to the voters who elect them than that they be accountable to an unelected consultant who has openly admitted to coercing MLCs' votes on electoral reform with the threat of starving them of future preferences.  It would say that it is right that voters be presented with ballot papers flooded with dishonestly named parties that use catchy names to send the unwary elector's vote to the opposite place they would have wanted it to ever go.  To say these things by doing nothing at a time when conspiracy theories about Victoria's elections already thrive, at a time when faith in democracy is more than usually frayed in the West would be something we should never forgive nor forget.    

Alas at this stage there is still no official confirmation that the legislation is coming and no detail on its content, so I can't yet be sure that there isn't a catch.  One issue to be decided is whether the electoral system would be fully optional preferencing (the above the line voter is instructed to number from 1 to as many boxes as they like, as in NSW, SA and WA) or semi-optional (as in the Senate, the voter is instructed to number from in this case at least 1 to 5, though if they number fewer then their vote can still be saved).  Subject to ability to implement I'd strongly recommend the latter.  Preferences make more of a difference with 5-seat regions than with whole statewide electorates.

Scaremongering about One Nation has resurfaced but on current polling the Coalition and One Nation are for the moment well placed to win a combined majority of seats in the Council whether the system is changed or not.  The right is likely to win at least 23 of the 40 upper house seats unless Labor's position improves substantially or One Nation's vote collapses to the mid-teens or below. While group ticket voting might throw one or two of those undeservedly to the Shooters, DLP or, shudder, Family First, it currently looks unlikely that it would stop a Coalition/ON majority (or provide anything meaningfully better for the left in outcome terms if it did).  A quota-proportional system with or without GTV suits the right better on anything like current polling than a single-seat preferential one does, because the right is not losing nearly so many votes to leakage when one of One Nation or the Coalition is excluded.  

Labor, however, is at some risk of a seat tally nightmare if it keeps the current system, even if its vote improves a little on current polling.  Primary vote breakdowns of lower house support by upper house region released by Redbridge/Accent found the party's lower house support to be below two quotas in every region bar one. That is even though upper house Labor support under group ticket voting is typically lower than in the lower house, and even though Redbridge/Accent appear to be strikingly underestimating the lower house support base for "others" (parties and independents that are not Coalition, One Nation, Labor or Greens).  The most striking example of this apparent underestimation is that Redbridge/Accent have Others on 5% in Western Metropolitan, where Others polled 20.9% in 2022 with Victorian Socialists getting 5% by themselves!  

What the Redbridge/Accent poll is pointing to is a situation where Labor's second candidates could be so readily leapfrogged by minor parties even if they had most of a quota that Labor might conceivably scrape in in the lower house yet confront a Council where it held only eight or nine seats.  If GTV is abolished the less authentic minor parties may still run, but with no actual chance of winning they're unlikely to make as much effort and their preferences will splatter.  

It is not in the Coalition's interests to keep Group Ticket Voting either.  If GTV survives it is likely there will be micro-parties (and not just the obvious fake ones) sending preferences that would otherwise scatter to One Nation over them in what could be several races between the two for seats. This is yet another reason why the idea that Group Ticket Voting still especially disadvantages One Nation is delusional.   And there are also possibilities that minor right preference spirals for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers or others could displace the Coalition in some regions.  

Right-wing attention seekers linked to the Monica Smit/Avi Yemini fake parties push have been claiming victory following the reports.  The victory is not won, least of all by these blowins, until Group Ticket Voting is gone with the legislation to axe it given Royal Assent (and there could well be a pointless legal challenge too).  Also, I believe there has actually been a plan within Labor to scrap GTV at the last moment (so as to avoid getting crossbenchers offside earlier) for some time before their shenanigans.   

I am happy for any Victorian MPs or their staff who wish to talk to me about what is going on with this legislation or any aspect of modelling the upper house election in the leadup to the sitting week to contact me.  (Email address in sidebar.)

Deception Alley

I thought it would be worth noting just how many deceptively named party attempts are currently being made, and to track them to see how they go.  Unlike the Commonwealth, Victoria publishes the names of parties attempting to register before the applications have been fully checked, so the publication of a name as applying is no guarantee that the deceptively named party will be able to pass the 500 members test.  It only means a list has been submitted.  

I classify a party as deceptive based on any of the following:

- its name is known to cause or likely to cause confusion 

- its name is known or suspected to have been deliberately created so as to mislead about the party's purpose

- its name is apparently created to send Group Ticket preferences to a party alien to the party's apparent purpose

- it is applying for name changes between unrelated concepts 

- it is mimicking the name of a party popular overseas or an unrelated party elsewhere in Australia

This list is not necessarily exhaustive.

REGISTERED DECEPTIVE PARTIES

Democratic Labour Party (DLP) - once upon a time voters knew the difference between the DLP and the ALP on the ballot paper but these days it's evident that some don't

End Mass Immigration – Reform AU, nee Companions and Pets Party, applying to change to Christian Alliance Party – Reform AU

Freedom Party, applying to change name to Safety Victoria – Violent Crime Prevention

New Democrats, applying to change name to Put Australia First, Save The Environment

DECEPTIVE PARTIES SEEKING REGISTRATION

Climate Action Now (Smit/Yemini grouping)

Free Palestine (Smit/Yemini grouping, not to be confused with Free Palestine Party which is also seeking registration)

Fusion Party Victoria – Reignite Democracy (this is Fusion claiming they are stealing Monica Smit's slogan as a tit-for-tat but given this party has worked with Vern Hughes and have horrendous form on preference recommendations nobody should trust them or will care)

I’m Voting to Avoid the Fine (Smit/Yemini grouping)

The Republican Make Australia Great Again

Several other deceptive party names including Muslim Votes Matter were being mooted but do not seem to have amounted to applications.