The Urban Myth That "Sack Dan Andrews" Was A Labor Front

Does this look like a Labor front to you?

Group ticket voting in Victoria has again been in the news a lot lately - see my latest article about whether abolishing it would assist One Nation.  With this latest discussion has come a resurgence of a longrunning online urban myth concerning the shortlived Sack Dan Andrews party (or more formally Restore Democracy: Sack Dan Andrews Party) in the 2022 Victorian election.  The myth is that this party was set up to harvest the votes of people who hated former Victorian Premier Andrews and channel these votes back to Labor.  The reality is that while there is a disputed claim that Sack Dan Andrews (SDA) was a siphoning attempt of some sort, Labor gained no benefit from it anyway, and it had nothing to do with the party.  This article explores the reality of this short-lived party's preferences and its actual impact on the election in detail.  For those on twitter I also have a shorter version of events on a thread here.

Would Scrapping Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Help One Nation?

On this website I have frequently covered Victoria's ongoing failure to repeal the use of Group Ticket Voting in state Legislative Council elections.  Victoria is now the last state that still has this system, which has been scrapped everywhere else after being gamed by preference-harvesting.  In the current cycle the Electoral Matters committee in an outstanding report recommended the scrapping of Group Ticket Voting way back in July 2024, and the government has still not responded officially to that recommendation.  The clock is ticking in terms of time for the Victorian Electoral Commission to implement the changes required to move to a different system, and the Commission has said the decision must be made by August.  After recent issues involving service delivery by state electoral commissions I suggest the sooner the better.

Last week there was reporting by the Guardian this week that one Labor MP had said current Premier Jacinta Allan "had appeared reluctant to [scrap GTV] as it would benefit One Nation."  Separately I understand that the view that scrapping GTV would benefit One Nation is also espoused by some Labor lower house MPs.  Irrespective of who actually holds that view, this article is to explore this claim.  

The Guardian's article does not say why anyone holding this concern might hold it, and in the absence of any actual claimed mechanism it is not that easy to counter.  However there are at least three well known myths about how Group Ticket Voting is supposedly bad for One Nation in the modern age.  Here they are and here is why they are wrong.

Victorian Labor Kicks The Group Ticket Can Down The Road

(Coverage of Victorian by-elections tonight from 6 pm.  Live page will go up around 5 pm).

Victoria is the last place in Australia where Group Ticket Voting persists in upper house elections.  The system was invented in the 1980s because the Democrats, who are to blame for everything, forced the Hawke Labor government to retain full preferencing in Senate elections.  Because requiring voters to number all the boxes for Senate elections often caused extremely high informal rates, Group Ticket Voting was created as a way to retain full preferencing while cutting the informal rate.  A voter could vote 1 for a party and their party would allocate their preference for them.

Initially this system lacked obvious downsides but its potential for exploitation was obvious as early as the 1987 federal election, where a Nuclear Disarmament candidate with 1.5% of the primary vote was elected.  A series of farcical GTV elections around the country since led to the abolition of the system in NSW, federally, SA and WA leaving only Victoria.  Problems exposed with the system have included:

* parties winning off tiny vote shares defeating much more popular parties when they would not win under any other system

* confusing and deceptive GTV preference allocations that are beyond the understanding of most voters if they tried to follow them

* preference harvesting in which ideologically unrelated parties band together to try to secure election off each others' group ticket preferences

* creation of unnecessary tipping points that should be irrelevant to the contest, making it easier for elections to be voided (eg WA Senate 2013)

* creation of bogus near-100% preference flows between parties when, if asked to choose preferences for themselves, voters spread preferences in a much less concentrated fashion

* corruption of parliamentary voting behaviour, in the form of party votes on electoral reform being influenced by fear of losing the ability to work with Glenn Druery, as stated by Druery himself in the Angry Victorians sting video

* denying voters the ability to direct their own preferences between parties above the line (which they will be used to doing so having done so twice since the last state election) and throwing away their stated preferences and overwrites them with a group ticket vote if they do. 

*confusion between the Victorian system and the Senate system

Victorian Upper House 2022: It's Still Not Real Democracy But It Is Funny

Legislative Council 2022: ALP 15 L-NP 14 GRN 4 LCV 2 AJP 1 SFF 1 PHON 1 LDP 1 LDLP 1

The buttons have been pressed on the Victorian Legislative Council election for 2022.  This election yet again employed the long-discredited Group Ticket Voting system even though the same system wrecked the 2018 election . Nearly all members of the 2018-22 parliament, and most of the parties contesting the 2022 election, did nothing about the fact that at least eight of the 40 MLCs in the parliament were not there on electoral merit.  

And so, this garbage system in which parties beat other parties with several times their vote and win regional seats they would not have won in any other system on the earth continued.  That said, the 2022 results aren't nearly so bad as last time.  Yet again, there have been many individually incorrect results (including one which focuses attention on yet another undemocratic junk feature of Australia's worst electoral system) but all the same,  the overall balance of this parliament is remarkably representative.  There have also been hilarious doses of karma.  Parties that supported preference harvesting or did nothing about it have in many cases been hoist on their own petard while several parties that opposed Group Ticket Voting have had success.  Glenn Druery's "alliance" has not been nearly as successful this election after a campaign in which Druery got stung not just once but twice. While its members did get three seats between them, they may well have won one of those anyway.  Nearly all the randoms who got in at the last election lost, and both major parties lost a seat they should have won as a price of their inaction on the problem.

Victoria Legislative Council 2022: Button Press Day

Update (Wednesday night) All regions have been declared.  Bernie Finn unsuccessfully sought a recount, apparently solely on account of the margin of 210 votes, which was rejected.  He claims there is precedent for granting a recount but the 2006 cases involved provisional margins of 76 and 114 votes at key points (though the latter did see a 205 vote shift which changed the winner!)  There is no automatic recount margin and I would expect the VEC to be wanting to see some evidence of actual error (from scrutineering or results issues) before granting a recount.  Finn can petition the matter to the Court of Disputed Returns but they would want to see evidence of actual errors too.

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Outcome ALP 15 L-NP 14 GRN 4 LCV 2 AJP 1 SFF 1 PHON 1 LDP 1 LDLP 1

This thread will follow and, where interesting dissect, the final results from the Victorian Legislative Council count as the proverbial buttons are pressed to finalise results on Wednesday.  If vote totals change before then, analysis will continue to be posted on the existing live thread (which includes projections of seat outcomes and totals).  Any fresh detailed analysis of the impending button presses that I find time to do will also be posted there and the outlook summaries on this page will be edited.   For a guide to what to expect see my 2018 Button Press Day thread.

Victoria 2022 Legislative Council Live

The primary vote count is more or less complete - analysis continues on this thread until the button press but go to Button Press Day thread for summaries of results and analysis as they arrive.

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SEATS WON OR LIKELY: Labor 15 Coalition 13 Greens 3 Legalise Cannabis 2 Shooters 1 One Nation 1 Animal Justice 1 Labour DLP 1 

SEATS IN MOST DOUBT:

SE Metro: Liberals vs Lib Dems - very close and very difficult to model

W Vic: Legalise Cannabis vs Greens - Greens slightly favoured

W Metro: Liberals favoured vs Labour DLP

Overall outlook: ALP/left majority (22 seats expected)

Relatively few "Druery candidates" currently in line to win.  

Most crossbench incumbents will not be returned.

How To Make Best Use Of Your Vote In The Victorian Upper House

This is just a quick piece to give my voting advice for the benefit of those who have seen the recent publicity about voting below the line in Victoria but would like advice on how to do it. This is what I advise as being the best way to make effective use of your vote.  

1. On the large ballot paper (Legislative Council), vote below the line for candidates.  Do not number any boxes above the line for parties.

The Victorian system is different to the federal Senate system.  In the federal Senate system, you can put the parties in an order of your choice above the line, but in Victoria you cannot do that: if you rank parties above the line as nearly all voters did in the Senate in May, your preferences beyond 1 will be ignored.  If you do vote 1 above the line then your preference is allocated according to a ticket lodged by the party you have voted for.  This system is called Group Ticket Voting.  It is long-discredited and has been abolished everywhere in Australia except for the Victorian upper house.  It results in parties using networked preference deals to elect MPs who have no real voter support (in cases less than 1% of the vote) at the expense of deserving candidates.  (For more see my recent article about the history of party policies around this disaster.)

Victorian Party Policies On Fixing Group Ticket Voting

The Scoreboard - Victorian Election 2022

The following parties have a publicly documented commitment to, or position of support for, scrapping Group Ticket Voting:

* Victorian Socialists (longstanding)

* Australian Greens (longstanding)

* Animal Justice Party (added 16/11 - conditional on single statewide electorate)

* Pauline Hanson's One Nation (added 17/11)

* Legalise Cannabis (added 22/11)

See comments below for what these parties have said about the issue.  

Other parties will be listed here when I become aware that they qualify.  Parties that have publicly documented commitments to policies that would clearly significantly reduce the Group Ticket Voting problem may also be noted in this section.  

Don't take too much notice of how short this list is in the early stages of the campaign - but if a party has not been listed in this Scoreboard section by voting time and electoral reform is important to you, please don't vote 1 for it. 

Some voters may wish to specifically avoid parties that are part of Glenn Druery's preferencing network.  All such parties are marked with a (D) after their name for the benefit of voters who may want to put them last.

2018 Ehrlich Awards For Wrong Predictions

"Labor Senator Murray Watt says Barnaby Joyce shouldn't be Acting PM. Who the hell is Murray Watt? Barnaby will be Acting PM next week. Murray should worry about acting as a real Senator. Like see actual constituents & be relevant. At the moment its Watt by name, who by nature."

George Christensen kicks off this year's Ehrlich Awards for Wrong Predictions with the above piece of banter dated 15 February.  In fact, Barnaby Joyce took leave for the week following the comment, and was not Acting PM, and soon after stood down as Nationals leader and Deputy PM as well.  This one sets the tone for a year in which a common theme was Coalition MPs or sympathisers expecting that pretty much anything would go right for their side of politics.  I'd include more left-wing failed predictions for balance, but this year I just haven't seen that many.  Feel free to add more examples I have missed in comments.

Group Ticket Voting Wrecks 2018 Victorian Upper House Election

The buttons have been pressed on the Victorian upper house election.  In the end, none of the results were all that close, and all regions have been declared.  If anyone can find a legal basis for challenging the results, they will now have to do so in court.  On that, it would be nice if professional preference harvesting could be deemed to be a bribery offence under Section 151 (3) (d) but I  suspect that it doesn't work like that, and that that section is aimed at bribery connected with how-to-vote cards.  I can only assume what has happened is all legal, but history should record it as another upper house election that was trashed by Group Ticket voting. 

I should add that this post is not intended as an attack on the calibre of those elected to represent parties with small vote shares.  They may turn out to be excellent MPs.  Rather the point is that they were not elected by a proper electoral system and those elected on very small vote shares do not have a proper mandate.

Victorian Upper House 2018: Button Press Day

Introduction

I've decided to bring the Victorian upper house count to the top with a new thread for the day on which all the buttons are pressed, and also for any possible recount news.  My coverage of the count was here.  The schedule is for buttons to be pressed for each division from 2:10 pm at ten minute intervals, in alphabetical order by region name.  However, buttons are being pressed faster than scheduled.  Declarations are scheduled for 6:00 but it is possible that some division will be close enough (either at the end or at a key exclusion point) for a recount to be requested, or that some other issue requiring a recount might be identified.  In 2006 there were two recounts, one because of a 6,000 vote transcription error.

Provisional results will be posted as soon as they are available. I am now reviewing the preference distributions.  There may be some delays in posting analysis (if the distributions are up by then!) as I will be out between 3:45-4:45 but will be online for some of that time.

For all the analysis on the above thread and elsewhere there are some seats that are going to the button in significant doubt.  There are others where what is going to happen appears to be clear but it is possible that all the modelling thrown at these counts might still be wrong and something unexpected will happen.  I should note that at this stage we only have party totals, and do not know if there might be an unusually significant below-the-line vote for any otherwise irrelevant candidate (though there is no reason to think that there is.)

Victorian Upper House Live

Go to new button press thread for final results and discussion. 

Button presses to occur on Tuesday at 10-minute intervals commencing 2:10 pm.  Very close results (if any) could still be subject to recount beyond that.  ABC Calculator seat "results" (actually output of a flawed but useful model) are not final and some are not likely to be correct.

Warning: The North Metro count section has been rated Wonk Factor 5/5.  Some of the rest aren't too far behind.

Fear And Loathing With Victorian Upper House Preference Flows

Following the launch of Antony Green's Legislative Council calculator I've been playing around with some possible scenarios for the Victorian upper house group ticket flows.  Quite a few people are doing this and so there are a number of different estimates about what might happen out there.  What we know from the past is to expect the unexpected - we can say that it looks like preference harvesters will win several undeserved seats, but it's hard to say which ones they will be and who.  The whole exercise is incredibly sensitive to starting assumptions - one micro-party you've never heard of might get 1% instead of 0.5% and suddenly something completely different happens.  Snowballs from very low vote shares have a higher chance of crashing because of below-the-line votes, especially as voters for micro-parties, with the exception of the Liberal Democrats, are more likely to vote below the line.  In 2014 the BTL rate for most micros was in the range 8-22%.

At the last Victorian election, five candidates won seats as a result of preference-harvesting:

* In Eastern Victoria, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (2.44%) beat ALP-2 (8.68% over quota) and Green (8.23%)
* In Northern Metro, the Sex Party (2.87%) beat Labor-3 (7.06% over quota)
* In Northern Victoria, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (3.5%) beat L-NP-3 (7.84% over quota) and Greens (7.68%)
* In Western Metro, Democratic Labour Party (2.57%) beat ALP-3 (10.65% over quota) and L-NP-2 (6.90% over quota)
* In Western Victoria, Vote 1 Local Jobs (1.28%) beat Greens (9.19%)