Australian Federal Elections Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Australian Federal Elections - Essay Example Put another way, the winning candidate is the "most preferred". An electoral system is biased by the absence of universal adult suffrage that would represent a kind of bias, and most the notion of "one vote, one value" should be implemented in order to avoid a further potential source of bias. The non-partisan bias means is non-proportional representation i.e., differences between the proportion of votes obtained by a party and the proportion of seats won by it. In the Australian context, such bias is most important in the House of Representatives, although even in the Senate a party could obtain 10 percent or more of the vote without winning a seat (depending on the preferences of other parties). This is an example of what is sometimes called a minor party bias. This type of bias is even more obvious in the House of Representatives. In 1998 the National Party obtained 16 seats (10. 8 per cent of the total) with only 5.7 per cent of the first preference vote. There are two chief differences between the situations of the Nationals and the two other parties: the first is that the National's vote is more geographically concentrated and the second is the fact that the Nationals' and Liberals' preferences mainly go to each other. The rewarding of geographic concentration is an essential feature of electoral systems which use single-member districts; it was, of course, a fundamental reason for originally using single-member districts i.e., to provide representation for the electors of a particular area. Many people would still argue in favour of this, despite the growth of strong parties to reduce the strength of link between the elected representative and the district, and also despite communication systems being much faster and more extensive than in the 19th Century. Thus, in 1998, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party obtained no seats despite obtaining 8.4 per cent of the first preference votes. So, here it may be easily pointed out that the non-partisan type of bias arises as a consequence of the type of electoral system used and would apply equally to any party which has important consequences. The another systemic, non-partisan "winner's hunts" as quantified by the cube law has simply a reflection of and is not evidence of bias in drawing boundaries. The "winner's bonus" factor in Australia, known as the cube law which says that in a two-party, single-member electoral system with equal numbers of votes in each district, tile numbers of seats won by the two parties will be roughly in the ratio of the cube of their vote proportions. Single-member systems have another form of non-partisan bias, one which is often referred to as leading to a "winner's bonus". The winning party will generally obtain a larger percentage of seats than it does of votes; this is non-partisan because it usually applies to whichever party wins an election. It is actually a feature of single-member systems which a number of people find very desirable, because it tends to lead to