School of Public Health University of Alberta
By: Dana Wagner on
Rona Ambrose, Interim Conservative Leader and MP for Sturgeon River — Parkland, in an opinion piece on September 26, 2016
Many Australians voted with a ballot measuring over one metre in length to elect senators during the July 2016 election. Ballots for the House of Representatives (equivalent to Canada’s House of Commons), were closer to the size of a leaflet, or roughly the same as Canadian ballots.FactsCan Score: True
The pending electoral reform promised by Justin Trudeau’s government has generated criticism that it will proceed without a referendum.
Rona Ambrose, the interim Conservative leader, is calling for a referendum and in an opinion piece, defended Canada’s current system against the spectre of a more complex system. She used the Australian model as an example of complexity.
In that country’s recent elections, Ambrose said Australian voters used “ballots the size of dorm-room posters.”
Dorm room posters are about three feet tall and two feet wide. One might assume Ambrose was exaggerating.
It turns out she is partly right.
(Earlier we checked the use of referendums in electoral reform. In this check, we’re not looking at whether or not referendums introduce complexity or simplicity, or the merits of big ballots, we’re just checking ballot size).
Australians each had two ballots in the last election on July 2, one for candidates of the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, the dimensions for the Parliamentary ballot were about 8 by 4 inches, or the size of a leaflet. The Senate ballot differed across states and in some of them, was much bigger. In New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and other big states, the ballot was about 40 by 12 inches. That’s over a metre lengthwise, or roughly the size of a dorm room poster.
Why so big?
The short answer is that there are lots of names and boxes to fill. Australians have 12 senators to elect for each of their six states, and voters rank their choices.
Australians elect people to both the upper and lower houses, unlike Canadians, who elect members of Parliament only while the Canadian prime minister appoints senators. For both houses, Australian voters number their choices from top to bottom. First choice gets a “1”, second choice a “2”, and so on to the end of the candidate list. Contrast this with Canada, where voters mark an “X” beside their top choice only.
Contributing to an even larger ballot, the rules for electing senators changed in the recent election so that Australians had a choice between two ways of voting. Voters could rank their Senate choices by party, in which case they had six party choices. Or, using a second method, they could rank their choices by candidate, giving them 12 choices of individual candidates. Each ballot contained both methods, leaving it up to voters to choose their preferred method. The name of the system used for Senate elections is a mouthful, called single-transferable proportional voting.
Source: Australian Electoral Commission
All this to say, Ambrose is right. For the election of senators, many Australians had very big ballots.