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Proportional Representation System - Legislative Council
Surplus Votes
Excluding Candidates
Proportional Representation is a voting system used in multi-member electorates such as the Western Australian Parliament's Legislative Council Regions. It is designed to ensure that the mix of successful candidates in a multi-member electorate reflects as closely as possible the proportional break-up of all the valid votes cast in an election. To be successful, a candidate is required to receive enough votes to reach a quota (not an absolute majority) which is based on the number of formal votes and the number of candidates to be elected.
In very general terms, under the notion of proportional representation, if a party or group of candidates receives 34% of the formal vote, that party or group will gain 40% of the seats in the parliament. Thus if a political party received 34% of the vote in the North Metropolitan Region, it could expect to gain 2 of the 6 seats allocated to this region.
The quota required is calculated using the following formula:
For example, at the 1996 State General Election for the North Metropolitan Region the formula gave the following result:
In this case a candidate needed at least 37,402 votes to be elected. Note: the fraction 299,215 / 8 is rounded down before the 1 is added to obtain the quota required - i.e. 37,402.
Surplus Votes
Candidates, who receive a number of votes equal to or greater than the quota, are elected immediately. Any votes of these elected candidates, which are surplus to the quota, are transferred to the remaining candidates at a reduced value known as a transfer value. The transfer value is calculated as follows:
Excluding Candidates
If at any stage there are no candidates with a surplus of votes and not all Council seats have been filled, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded from the count.
The excluded candidate's ballot papers are distributed to the remaining candidates at the same vote value as they were received. In some counts this will mean ballot papers are transferred at the value of 1 while others will have various transfer values.
This process of distributing surplus votes from elected candidates and excluding the candidate with the fewest votes is continued until all vacancies are filled.
