New voting system not preferred choice

The state government’s decision to introduce a new voting system for local government elections last month has been criticised by the Western Australian Local Government Association.

WALGA fears the replacement of the existing first-past-the-post voting system with a proportional preferential system of voting will not improve democracy, leading instead to an infiltration of party politics and factional alliances in local elections.

Association president Bill Mitchell said that, given the overwhelming opposition to the change from councils, it was disappointing to see that the opportunity to build bridges between local and state levels of government had been lost.

“The new voting system will place resource and financial pressure on councils to conduct proportional preferential elections in October, at a time when the minister is well aware that the sustainability of 83 of the state’s 144 local governments is in question,” he told WA Business News.

Mr Mitchell said councils across WA had opposed the change out of concern it would lead to confusion among voters and discourage voter turnout on polling day.

The proportional preferential system requires voters to number a list of candidate preferences, which are then distributed and the candidate with the highest number of votes wins.

Under the outgoing first-past-the-post system, however, voters may chose only one candidate and that candidate must secure more than 50 per cent of total votes to win.

The system was implemented following the introduction of the Local Government Act 1995 by the then Liberal government, after the previous preferential system was found to be unsustainable.

Local Government Managers Association president and City of Melville CEO, Eric Lumsden, revealed local government was nervous about the change and believed it would require a large campaign to educate voters.

Mr Lumsden said the association acknowledged party politics already existed within some larger councils but was convinced the system would make it worse and impact on lord mayoral, mayoral and ward elections.

“When you examine the system in the context of local government rather than the upper house, it appears to be a quite complicated system using quotas,” he said.

Mr Lumsden said the proportional preferential system had been used at a local level in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia for some time, with mixed reviews.

University of Western Australia associate professor of political science David Denemark said under a voluntary electoral process, the new preferences system would be reasonably complex and voters could be faced with long list of names.

“Under the simpler system, people can go and vote for who they think is doing the best job delivering local services and vote against them if they wish to punish them,” he said.

“The trick for local areas now is in the amount of information provided to electors on who stands for what. Parties or factions could very well play off that ignorance.”