Boothby has been judged ‘a landmark in the development of electoral
administration, not only in Australia, but in some ways the world’. His
example and authority were such that he was the inevitable appointment
as returning officer for thefirst election of the new Commonwealth, in
- In the following year, legislation created a salaried and full-time
Chief Electoral Officer, a position ‘not to be found outside Australia’
(Brent 2009, p. 414). It instituted a Napoleonic bureaucracy by creating
for every electorate a Divisional Returning Officer (DRO), subject to the
direction of the Electoral Office. This institution of the DRO has been
judged‘unique’(Brent 2009, p. 405).
The Commission was busy, formulating seventy-six redistributions
between 1901 and 2004. But until 1984, if either House disapproved or
negated the proposal, the Commission could be directed to make a fresh
proposal; and such was the case in 1912, 1936, and 1968. In 1984 the
Australian Electoral Commission was instituted as an‘independent statutory
authority’, a favourite creation of Australian law-making. It was to be gov-
erned by three persons, who once appointed were not removable, and its
redistributions were no longer subject to the approval or disapproval of the
parliament.
The independence of the Australian Electoral Commission is without
parallel, but has an obvious justification. As one American observer
puts it:
In Australia an allegation that a redistribution plan for seats in the House of
Representatives in any state or territory was‘a political product from start tofinish’
is almost unimaginable. (Engstrom 2005, p. 8)Unimaginable, yes; but untrue?‘Rational actor’models give no license to the
supposition that parties draw boundaries with more partisanship than inde-
pendent commissioners. On the contrary, the value that a political party
places on the predictability of the number of seats it wins encourages it to
corral votes in‘safe seats’thereby creating buffers that will withstand ill
winds, but at a cost to its average harvest of seats (see Crain and Tollison
1990). But such an a priori analysis ignores many considerations. A more
empirical method might be more telling. Consider the state where electoral
commissions had their genesis, South Australia. After a long experience of
gerrymanders, that state has gone to a greater length than any other by
having its constitution ordain that itselectoral commissioners will ensure
‘as far as practicable’thattheparty thatwinsmorethan 50 percentof the vote
will win government (Constitution Act, part v, division 2, section 83). The
most recent elections, in 2014, were conducted under that provision. But the
party that won 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote won only twenty-
two of the forty-seven seats.
Australia’s Electoral Idiosyncrasies