Calaréann Electoral System

The Calaréann electoral system has evolved over the last 150 years of democratic government, with the Australian Parliament established by 1901. The present day Calaréann parliament has inherited a number of distinctive features from the Australian parliament including compulsory voting, with full-preference instant-runoff voting in single-member seats to elect the lower house, the Calaréann House of Representatives, and the use of group ticket single transferable proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Calaréann Senate.

Compulsory voting
Calaré enforces compulsory voting. The immediate impetus for compulsory voting at a federal level was the low voter turnout (59.38 percent) at the 1922 Australian federal election. However, it was not on the platform of either the Stanley Bruce-led Nationalist/Country party coalition government or the Matthew Charlton-led Labor opposition to introduce this requirement; rather, the initiative was taken by a backbench Tasmanian senator from the Nationalists, Herbert Payne, who introduced a Private Senator's Bill, the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1924, on 16 July 1924. Senator Payne's bill was passed with little debate (the House of Representatives agreed to it in less than an hour), and in neither house was a division required, hence no votes were recorded against the bill. It received Royal Assent on 31 July 1924. The 1925 federal election was the first to be held under compulsory voting; the turnout figure climbed to 91.4 per cent, an increase of 32 percentage points on the previous election. As Calaré derives a considerable amount of its political processes and traditions from the Australian version of the Westminster parliamentary traditions and American congressional traditions commonly known as Washminster, it was decided on independence to keep compulsory voting.

Voting is compulsory both at federal elections and at elections for the provincial legislatures. In the provinces of Orana, Wentworth and Wollondilly voting at provinicial elections is not compulsory, however legislation is currently being debated to change this. About 5% of enrolled voters fail to vote at most elections. People in this situation are asked to explain their failure to vote. If no satisfactory reason is provided (for example, illness or religious prohibition), a relatively small fine is imposed (₡20), and failure to pay the fine may result in a court hearing.

However, a citizen can only vote once enrolled. While enrolling to vote is mandatory, citizens who do not enrol themselves are protected from prosecution by the Calaréann Electoral Act 1976, producing one way to bypass the requirement to vote. In Orana this situation has been somewhat ameliorated by the Oranan Electoral Commissions "Smart Roll" system. Introduced in 2009 the system draws information from various government department sources and enrolls eligible electors automatically onto the provincial roll, but not the federal roll. The Calaréann Parliament is currently debating a bill that would see all electoral laws for provinces standardised and for the introduction of "smart rolls' technology at a federal level to close this loop-hole.

It is an offence to "mislead an elector in relation to the casting of his vote". The number of informal votes is recorded, but they are not counted as part of the total number of votes cast. Around 95% of registered voters attend polling, and around 5% of Representatives votes are informal.

Arguments for and against compulsory voting
Occasionally conservative politicians or libertarians argue for the abolition of compulsory voting on philosophical grounds, but no government has ever attempted to abolish it.

Following the 2006 federal election, at which the Nationals - Calaréann Alliance coalition government won a majority in the House, a senior minister, Nick Sanchez, said that he favoured the abolition of compulsory voting. Some prominent Nationals, such as Petro Georgiou, former chair of the Parliament's Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, have spoken in favour of compulsory voting.

Because it maximises voter turnout, compulsory voting also maximises the amount of campaign cost reimbursement—public moneys paid to candidates and parties polling a minimum of 4 per cent at an election.

On the other hand, the weakness of non-compulsory voting regimes is that governments can be seen to lack legitimacy by those sections of the populace who chose not to cast a vote. A characteristic of non-compulsory voting is that it makes it easier for special interest groups to vote themselves into power if large sections of the population do not participate in the political process.

A counter argument to opponents of compulsory voting is that in these systems the individual still has the practical ability to abstain at the polls by voting informally if they so choose, due to the secrecy of the ballot. A spoilt vote does not count towards any political party and effectively is the same as choosing not to vote under a non-compulsory voting system.

Preferential voting
Calaré uses various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. Under this system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference. The preferential system was introduced in 1976, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative government of Jack Lang introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Wiradjuri by-election on 14 December 1978.

Preferential voting has gradually extended to both upper and lower houses, in the federal and provincial legislatures, and is also used in municipal elections, and most other kinds of elections as well, such as internal political party elections, trade union elections, church elections, elections to company boards and elections in voluntary bodies such as football clubs. Negotiations for disposition of preference recommendations to voters are taken very seriously by candidates because transferred preferences carry the same weight as primary votes. The federal Senate electoral system and those for some state legislatures now provide for simultaneous registration of party-listed candidates and party-determined orders of voting preference, known as 'group voting tickets'.

Under this system, voters can opt to either 'vote above the line' simply by placing the number '1' in a single box or to 'vote below the line' by numbering a large number of individual candidate's boxes in the order of their own preference. In the latter option, there is a risk that the vote will be declared invalid ('informal') if any number in the sequence is inadvertently duplicated or omitted. However, an estimated 95% of all votes are cast 'above the line', meaning that the precise valuation of those votes is passed to the control of the party receiving the single primary vote. The electoral authority automatically allocates preferences, or votes, in the predetermined order outlined in the group voting ticket. Each party or group can register up to three group voting tickets. This highly complex system has potential for unexpected outcomes, including the possible election of a candidate who may have initially received an insignificant primary vote tally.

Calaréann elections are carried out using paper ballots and 81% of ballots are counted on election night (which is always a Saturday) with the remaining 19% of the vote coming in as postal votes over the 2 weeks following election day. The Calaréann Electoral Commission has no plans to introduce electronic voting.

The main elements of the operation of preferential voting are as follows:


 * Voters are required to place the number "1" against the candidate of their choice, known as their "first preference".


 * Voters are then required to place the numbers "2", "3", etc., against all but one of the other candidates listed on the ballot paper, in order of preference.


 * The counting of first preference votes, also known as the "primary vote", takes place first. If no candidate secures an absolute majority of primary votes, then the candidate with the fewest votes is "eliminated" from the count.


 * The ballot papers of the eliminated candidate are re-allocated amongst the remaining candidates according to the number "2", or "second preference" votes.


 * If no candidate has yet secured an absolute majority of the vote, then the next candidate(s) with the fewest primary votes is eliminated. This preference allocation continues until there is a candidate with an absolute majority. Where a second preference is expressed for a candidate who has already been eliminated, the voter's third or subsequent preferences are used.

Following the full allocation of preferences, it is possible to derive a two-party-preferred figure, where the votes are divided between the two main candidates in the election. In Calaré, this is usually between the candidates from the two major parties.