Antony Green’s Election Blog

The most astonishing result of the 2013 Australian election was the extra-ordinary election of Wayne Dropulich of the Australian Sports Party in the Western Australia Senate.

With a first preference vote for his party of just 0.23%, it took an astonshing sequence of exclusions and preference flows to allow Mr Dropulich to increase his vote more than fifty fold to reach the quota of 14.3%. He was elected to fill the fifth seat ahead of the Greens who had polled 9.5% of the first preference vote.

At this stage whether Mr Dropulich will take his Senate seat depends on proceedings before the Court of Disputed Returns. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has petitioned the Court to void the result and order a new election for the WA Senate.

As will be outlined below, Mr Dropulich was initially defeated on the distribution of preferences performed after the initially tally of all first preferences. After the AEC permitted a re-count, Mr Dropulich was elected on the distribution of preferences that followed the completion of the second count.

However, 1,370 ballot papers could not be located for the re-count and these were not included in the second count and distribution of preferences. If the tally of the missing votes from the first count were added to the second count, the result would change again, with a critical one vote difference at a crucial point in the count resulting in Mr Dropulich failing to be elected.

Having been duly declared elected, Mr Dropulich is entitled to be sworn in as a Senator on 1 July if the Court has not decided the matter before then, or if the Court chooses to let the second count excluding the missing votes stand. If the Court orders a fresh election, Mr Dropulich would no longer be entitled to his Senate seat. If the Court does not issue orders for a fresh election until after 1 July, Mr Dropulich would be entitled to hold his seat until a judgment is given.

What was remarkable about Mr Dropulich’s victory was how a party that finished 21st out of the 27 parties on the ballot paper managed to get elected. Of the 20 parties that contributed ticket votes to his quota for election, 15 polled more votes than the Australian Sports Party.

The path by which Mr Dropulich passed those 15 parties and gained their preferences was perilous. At three points in the count Mr Dropulich was the second lowest polling candidate remaining, and on each occasion he picked up preferences from the excluded candidate that allowed him remain in the count by avoiding last place.

At another critical juncture in the count Mr Dropulich was the third lowest polling candidate ahead of the Australian Christians and the Shooters and Fishers Party. Depending on the order in which the Australian Christians and Shooters and Fishers Party finished, Mr Dropulich either became the lowest polling candidate and was excluded, or he leap frogged other parties and went on to win the fifth vacancy.

The table below list the source of all votes that made up a part of Mr Dropulich’s total at the point where he was elected. The table has been derived from the detailed vote count data file released by the AEC. The first 20 entries in the table are total number of ticket votes that made up Mr Dropulich’s total on election. The final two entries are below the line first preferences for Mr Dropulich, and a total of all below the line votes received from multiple sources as preferences during the count. The total of votes from the Liberal Party is calculated by applying the transfer value following the election of the third Liberal Senator to the total of all Liberal ticket votes from the first count.

The ‘% Vote’ column is the votes in the second column expressed as a percentage of the total formal vote. The ‘% of Quota’ is the votes as a percentage of the 191,219 votes held by Mr Dropulich at the point when he passed the quota. The ‘Preference number’ is the preference number for Dropulich on the group ticket vote of the party that sent the votes to Dropulich as preferences. The ‘Received at Count’ column is the stage of the count at which Mr Dropulich received each parcel of votes.

2013 WA Senate Election – The Votes that Elected Wayne Dropulich

Party	Votes	% Vote	% of Quota	Preference Number	Received at Count
Liberal Democrats	44,274	3.4	23.2	3	154
Australian Christians	19,676	1.5	10.3	11	146
Sex Party	17,830	1.4	9.3	11	150
Liberal Party	16,495	1.3	8.6	15	162
Help End Marijuana Prohibition	12,740	1.0	6.7	3	150
Shooters and Fishers Party	12,586	1.0	6.6	3	142
Animal Justice Party	9,004	0.7	4.7	13	150
Family First Party	8,303	0.6	4.3	9	126
Wikileaks Party	8,129	0.6	4.3	3	130
Smokers Rights	8,081	0.6	4.2	5	154
Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party	7,334	0.6	3.8	5	118
Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party	5,511	0.4	2.9	17	146
Australian Independents	3,687	0.3	1.9	13	142
Rise Up Australia	3,473	0.3	1.8	7	98
Australian Democrats	3,266	0.3	1.7	17	154
Australian Sports Party	2,866	0.2	1.5	1	1
Stop the Greens	2,074	0.2	1.1	5	154
No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics	1,389	0.1	0.7	5	146
Australian Voice Party	1,082	0.1	0.6	5	94
Stable Population Party	1,040	0.1	0.5	5	114
Wayne Dropulich BTL first preferences	108	..	0.1	1	1
All other BTL votes received as preferences	2,271	0.2	1.2	..	..
Total votes on election	191,219	..	..	..	..
Total Formal Vote	1,310,278	..	..	..	..

On the first count the Australian Sports Party had 2,997 votes or 0.23%. These consisted of 2,866 ticket votes, 108 below the line first preferences for Wayne Dropulich, and 23 below the line votes for the second candidate Al Lackovic. Lackovic was excluded at count 12 and 13 of his 23 votes flowed as preferences to Dropulich.

At the end of Count 89, only one candidate remained from each of 23 parties. During the distribution of below the line votes from the excluded candidates, Dropulich had gained 26 votes and had a total of 3,023 votes, 0.23% of the vote. At this stage he lay in 21st place of the 23 candidates on the ballot.

At the end of Count 93, Mr Dropulich was ordered at 21st position out of 22 candidates with 3,027 votes to 2,598 for the last placed Adrian Byass of the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics. Byass was then excluded and his total included 1,082 ticket votes from the Australian Voice Party and these had next preference for Dropulich. This allowed Dropulich to escape last place to sit 18th of 21 remaining candidates.

Last position now fell to Jane Foreman of Rise Up Australia. Her total of 3,950 votes included 3,266 ticket votes with next preference for Dropulich. This was the first of 15 bundles of votes from candidates with more votes than Dropulich. At the end of Foreman’s exclusion at Count 101, Dropulich now sat in 16th place of the 20 remaining candidate.

By the end of Count 113 Dropulich had received no more ticket votes and had slipped back down the ranking to sit in 16th place of 17 remaining candidates. Dropulich trailed Richie Howlett of the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party by 193 votes, 7,843 to 7,649 from Dropulich. Count 114 saw salvation arrive for the second time at the last possible moment. The exclusion of the Australian Democrats released 1,040 ticket votes from the Stable Population Party with next preference for Dropulich. This put Dropulich ahead of the Australian Motorists Party for the first time and lifted Dropulich from the bottom of the pile and into second last place.

Now salvation arrived for the third time. With the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party now in last place and excluded, 7,334 ticket votes from the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party flowed to Dropulich, preferences from a party that started the count with two and a half times as many votes as Dropulich. Dropulich was now lifted to tenth place of the sixteen remaining candidates.

At Count 126 Dropulich received 8,303 Family First ticket votes and at count 130 received 8,129 ticket votes from the Wikileaks Party, two more parties that started out well ahead of Dropulich. These two bundles put Dropulich ahead of both the Australian Christians and the Shooters and Fishers Party for the first time. This was a critical result for what was to follow.

At this point, the end of Count 141, Dropulich was in eighth place of the ten remaining candidates. The two parties behind him were the Australian Christians and the Shooters and Fishers Party. If the Shooters and Fishers were in last place and excluded, Dropulich received Shooters and Fishers preferences and stayed in eigth place and then gained Australian Christian preferences at the next count. If the Australian Christians were excluded first, their preferences went to the Shooters and Fishers Party putting them into eighth place, ahead of Dropulich, resulting in Dropulich being excluded.

The count at this point was incredibly close, and the table below shows the order of the three lowest candidates and eventual outcome on the first and second counts, as well as the possible outcome if the first count of the 1,370 missing votes were included.

2013 WA Senate Counts – Three Versions of the Crucial Exclusion

	First Count	Second Count	Including Missing Votes
Dropulich (Sports Party)	32,829 (8th)	32,819 (8th)	32,819 (8th)
Bow (Shooters and Fishers)	23,515 (9th)	23,514 (10th)	23,532 (9th)
van Burgel (Christians)	23,501 (10th)	23,526 (9th)	23,531 (10th)
Critical margin	Shooters by 14 votes	Christians by 12 votes	Shooters by 1 vote
Last two Senators elected	Wang (Palmer United) Pratt (Labor)	Dropulich (Sports Party) Ludlam (Green)	Wang (Palmer United) Pratt (Labor)

Having survived this critical count according to the accepted second count, at Count 142 Dropulich gains the ticket votes of the Australian Independents and Shooters and Fishers to pull ahead of the Australian Christians. At Count 146 he receives the Australian Christian, Fishing and Lifestyle Party and No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics ticket votes, putting him into fourth place of the eight remaining candidates. At count 150 he receives more ticket votes from the Sex Party, Help End Marijuana Prohibition, staying in fourth place of seven remaining candidates.

Count 154 saw the exclusion of the Liberal Democrats, a party that polled more than 12 times the number of votes recorded by Dropulich. He now received the ticket votes of the Liberal Democrats, Smokers Rights, Australian Democrats and Stop the Greens to move into first place of the six remaining candidates.

Counts 158-161 exclude the National Party, putting the third and only remaining Liberal candidate over the quota. Count 162 then distributed the surplus vote of the Liberal candidate, delivering the final 16,495 ticket votes that elected Dropulich to the fifth vacancy.

This result was entirely determined by ticket votes and the chance order of exclusion in the critical race for 9th between the Australian Christians and the Shooters and Fishers Party. Of Dropulich’s votes, 98.7% were ticket votes, entirely under the control of pre-arranged preference deals.

The oddity of the system is revealed if you consider what happened to the votes of anyone who voted the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party. Depending on the contest between the Christians and Shooters, votes for the Motoring Enthusiasts Party elected either Dropulich or Wang of the Palmer United Party. Yet those Motoring Enthusiasts Party preference played no part in determine the result, they were merely directed one way or the other depending entirely on the contest between the Christians and Shooters.

It is always a possibility that preferential voting can produce odd outcomes because of the order in which candidates are excluded. However, that possibility is made much more likely in the Senate because of ticket voting. Under non-ticket voting systems, this problem would only occur in the exclusion order of high polling candidates, not candidates at the bottom of the pile.

In systems where voters fill in their own preferences, the order that low polling candidates are excluded rarely matters, as a party with low votes tends to have more random preferences.

However, under ticket voting, a low polling candidate still has strong preference flows. In the case of WA, the contest between the Christians and Shooters produced preference flows that were tangential rather than random. The contest between two candidates with 1.75% of the vote each determined the last two seats in the contest, and both parties were already long excluded by the point in the count where the final two seats were decided.

The WA Senate count is an example of what is wrong with the current Senate electoral system. Ticket voting, which means that more than 95% of preferences are pre-determined at each exclusion, makes the order of exclusion much more important than it should be. The count becomes unstable, and whether you want to fall back on the analogy of ‘butterfly wings’ or ‘black swans’, the almost random event of the order low polling candidates finish, can have an impact that is magnified through the count.

A change to the system that required voters to enter their own preferences under an optional preferential system would give much more weight to candidates with a significant tally of first preference votes. Candidates that struggle to attract more than  a tiny fraction of the vote would struggle just as much to attract more than a fraction of the preferences.