Signs encouraging for preferential voting
By Patrick Matbob
Published December 7th 2006 in Islands Business International
The preferential voting system is not new; it was used previously in the territory of Papua and New Guinea elections in the 1960s.
However, since independence, PNG has opted for the simpler First Past the Post (FPP) system where people had only one candidate choice and the winner scored more votes than others (plurality of votes).
When FPP was first used in 1977, which was the first national election after independence, 18 percent of the candidates commanded an absolute majority of more than 50 percent of the votes to win.
However, 10 years later, only seven percent of candidates won with an absolute majority and this was reduced to four percent in 1997.
Majority of the candidates in recent elections won by a small percentage, some as low as two percent and that often resulted in disputes that had to be settled in court.
A number of candidates won their seats by challenging the results through the court of disputed returns.
Candidates have also manipulated the FPP system to try and gain an advantage. A common way was to field candidates within their rival�s voter base with the aim of splitting the votes and eliminating their opponents.
The practice resulted in large numbers of candidates contesting a seat and the eventual winner scoring only a fraction of the votes cast.
Members of parliament winning with a small percentage of votes in turn felt obliged to represent only their minority voters and neglected the rest of the electorate.
The government decided that FPP was not a democratic way of electing representatives in a system of government where the majority are supposed to rule.
The LPV system would ensure the winner scored a majority of the votes.
So far, the signs have been encouraging in the lead-up to the election in June next year.
Some provinces in the country including the National Capital District have used the LPV system in their by-elections and have had encouraging results.
Danny Aloi, the Strand Head of Public Policy Management in the School of Business Administration at the University of Papua New Guinea, has been one of the experts assessing the use of LPV in the country.
He said there have been no disputes so far with the results of the counting in the by-elections, and he believes there is a degree of content with the results.
He also believes voters are content because they have three preferences compared to one as in the past.
Voters also witness an exhaustive counting process before the winner is declared, thus lessening the likelihood of disputes because the winner has clearly scored majority of the votes.
Aloi also pointed out that LPV seems to be a more transparent system in that the total tally of votes cast is checked throughout the primary, secondary and tertiary counts, thus eliminating suspicion of cheating.
The LPV system has also encouraged candidates to form alliances to woo voters, thus breaking down barriers amongst candidates and their supporters.
There are however, some teething problems that have to be addressed. For instance, the latest by-election held for the National Capital District (NCD) seat in Port Moresby did not gone quite as expected. It revealed some worrying trends.
The election for the NCD seat was expected to proceed smoothly because voters had easy access to voter education, polling stations and security was guaranteed.
However, surprisingly, a high number of informal votes were recorded in the NCD compared to the by-elections in the remote electorates of PNG.
Citing some lessons from the NCD and Komo-Magarima by-elections in remote Southern Highlands, Aloi said what was surprising was that NCD had around 20 to 30 informal votes per ballot box, compared to Komo-Magarima which recorded only 5 to 7 informal votes per ballot box.
He could not say why a high number of informal votes were recorded in NCD where most of the nation�s literate voters resided.
However, he suspected that some people might have deliberately cast informal votes in the hope of influencing the election results.
While the LPV system seemed to have solved the issue of majority rule, there are still other election issues remaining.
There is still fear that there will be a repeat of the problems faced in the 2002 national election where there was widespread violence and abuse of the electoral process that marred the election results in some highlands provinces.
The abuse is likely to occur with the electoral roll where there have been experiences of ghost names being recorded and numbers of eligible voters not tallying with the actual number of the voting population in the area.
So far, the Electoral Commission is planning to get around the problem by breaking up the electoral roll into wards and getting ward officials such as village recorders, councillors and leaders to be involved in compiling the roll.
While the change is likely to work well in the rural areas where residents are well known, it is uncertain how it will work in urban centres where an influx of voters are expected.
Another major change will involve voters having to use two documents when voting�a ballot paper and a candidate poster with pictures and code numbers of each candidate�which will be displayed in the polling booths.
Voters can write either the code number or name, or both on the ballot paper when voting. These changes are necessary to avoid having large-sized ballot papers to accommodate the high number of candidates that normally contest the election.
Large-sized ballot papers are also a problem to move and store and not practical to use. With the high illiteracy rate in PNG, it is not certain whether the new voting procedure will be successful.
The campaign period has also been reduced by Parliament from 8 to 4 weeks and while this is ideal for candidates, it will be a problem for the Electoral Commission because it has less time to print ballot papers and prepare for the polling period.
The counting and declaration of results is expected to be a long and tedious process with the LPV system and the Electoral Commission is planning to use electronic counting in some areas which would enable results to be known within 24 hours.
The commission has also been given the powers to withdraw writs in areas where there is a possibility of disruptions of elections.
This change has come about after the experiences in the highlands in 2002 where there was widespread lawlessness affecting the election process.
