Antony Green has thrown his clout behind growing calls to scrap group voting tickets in Victoria, as vanquished independent candidates call for a donation law exemption.
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Facing Victoria's Electoral Matters Committee on Friday, the renowned psephologist and ABC election analyst said the system distorted voters' will.
Mr Green called for group voting tickets to be dumped and noted Victoria was the only Australian jurisdiction still using the system, which allows parties to distribute upper-house preferences when people vote above the line.
"Voters have trouble finding the candidates they know amongst the flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the ballot paper for the purposes of manipulating preferences," he told the committee.
"If you abolish group voting tickets, you will shrink the size of the ballot paper, have fewer parties nominating and (that will) result in more candidates being elected in proportion to their votes."
Manipulation of the voting system was laid bare before last year's state election after so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery was covertly recorded boasting about his method.
In the footage, Mr Druery asked representatives from the Angry Victorians Party to pay $55,000 for each candidate he managed to get elected through his backroom dealings.
As it stands, Mr Green estimated at least one and sometimes two members are elected to each of Victoria's eight upper house regions because of political deals.
Animal Justice MP Georgie Purcell was elected to the Northern Victoria region last year after receiving 1.53 per cent of the primary vote.
Appearing before the inquiry on Thursday, outgoing Labor state secretary Chris Ford indicated the party's in-principle support for abolishing group voting tickets.
The Greens and Liberals also back scrapping the system, which was used in the Australian Senate from the 1984 federal election until the 2016 federal election.
NSW, South Australia and Western Australia have all done away with group voting tickets over the past two decades.
Outside of upper house voting reform, Mr Green said the Victorian Electoral Commission is suffering from an outdated election management system.
Cryptographer and election security expert Vanessa Teague warned against Victoria adopting online voting after NSW's iVote system failed during council elections in 2021.
The issue led to the Supreme Court overturning the results of three local government elections but Prof Teague suggested the scale of voter disenfranchisement went well beyond that.
"It was not 50 to 100 people disenfranchised that messed up three councils," the Thinking Cybersecurity chief executive said.
"It was thousands and thousands of people disenfranchised - probably upwards of 10,000 people disenfranchised - leaving probably 30 or 40 local council results in doubt."
Despite the success of teal independent candidates at the 2022 federal election, none were able to secure a Victorian state seat last year.
Hawthorn's Melissa Lowe, Brighton's Felicity Frederico and Melton's Ian Birchall presented a joint submission to the inquiry on behalf of themselves and seven other independent candidates on Friday.
Ms Frederico said Victoria's campaign laws didn't offer a level playing field, with major parties able to draw on five funding sources and independents limited to raising money through donations, which were capped following the 2018 state election.
"There are no independents in the lower house and I wonder if you can't see that, structurally, this has had a bit of an impact," Ms Lowe said.
Under the joint proposal, the $4320 donation cap would only be enforced on independent candidates once they raise $250,000.
The committee is reviewing the 2022 Victorian state election and will report by May 2024.
Australian Associated Press
