Talk:Playmander

Image
I added the 2006 image because incidentally its almost identical to what the vote looked like in 1965—except with less districts. The 1993 one is wasted. michael talk 00:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * But doesnt the 1993 image also assist in demonstrating the core Labor areas, and that Adelaide isn't a bunch of automatic Labor voters? Timeshift (talk) 10:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

1975?
According to this page, Dunstan introduced one vote one value form in 1975 because he won on 49.2% of the 2pp vote... however in the 1975 election, Labor got 53.4% on the 2pp... Timeshift 14:29, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You're looking at the 1977 results. michael talk 23:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Why does the article seem to wash LCL hands?
http://elections.uwa.edu.au/ indicates One, two and three member districts when the LCL took government in 1933, with the next election in 1938 showing Single member districts. This article sorely misses the crucial spot which is, how did this occur? Reading gerrymander, how does the 'Playmander' not equate to a gerrymander? Do one of the references clearly state it was not a gerrymander, and what was missing from it that made it not a gerrymander? As it stands I feel the article as at the least, not informing who caused it to occur, at the most is covering up actions by Butler/LCL. Timeshift (talk) 10:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It technically wasn't a gerrymander: a gerrymander is where the districts are redistributed to favour one particular party, whereas what this was electoral malapportionment: electorates of actual different sizes. It probably warrants more discussion of the LCL's role in it, though, as long as sources for that can be found. Rebecca (talk) 10:50, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * To selectively quote from a PDF titled "Under-Representation and the ‘Gerrymander’ in the Playford Era" by Jaensch: The term ‘gerrymander’ was used by opponents of the LCL throughout the period of the Playford era, 1938-1965, to criticize its electoral basis, and it can be shown that this criticism, if not completely valid, has some substance. To Key, narrowly defined, the term gerrymander refers to the deliberate formation of legislative districts in such a way as to gain partisan advantage in the composition of the representative body. Such ‘deliberate formation’ undoubtedly occurred in South Australia in the Playford era.


 * Another quote: The South Australian electoral system was, in this period, clearly biassed in favour of the LCL, and part of this bias, that due to the differences in electorate size, was deliberate.


 * Another: The LCL gained the government benches in seven elections under the system of compulsory voting (CV came in '44), and in six of these gained a minority of votes on a ‘two-party’ contest basis. (what the hell?)


 * And ends with: A report to a conference of political theorists in 1965 stated: "... the only legitimate basis of representation... is people. One man’s vote must be worth the same as another’s. That is not a call for mathematical nicety. It is a statement of the fundamental principle upon which any proper system of legislative appointment must be constructed.", and on this principle is the South Australian electoral system in the Playford era indicted. - Dean Jaensch.


 * I have emailed the source to both your wikipedia email addresses. Timeshift (talk) 16:58, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I've challenged the entire sentence. Jaensch says 2:1 came in in 1936, and the UWA elections link shows that up until that point there were most often not 46 seats in the lower (correction, 46 seats was used 1915-33 inclusive). It writes like the cause of the Playmander was the SA constitution. Timeshift (talk) 05:55, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I have read neither the present SA constiution nor the one drawn by our founding fathers, but I do know one thing: it is alterable by simple majority vote. So what was in the constitution then is not in it today, which may explain some curiosities in the article. I am without internet at home at the moment (in a library... *sigh*) but will be hapyp to take a deeper look when I get a chance in a few days. Hope nothing rash happens until then! Kind regards, Michael talk 05:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

disincentive to vote under malapportionment
Would people find it uncontroversial to note in the article that although Playford lost a few elections on votes despite winning the seats, that it is not a true indicator of the results that would occur under a system of proportional representation? When people are disenfranchised under electoral malapportionment they will often vote for stability, or protest via informal or not turn up. To say that Playford lost the vote X times therefore he validly won the other elections on votes X times is incorrect and intellectually dishonest. Timeshift (talk) 05:22, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Earlier gerrymander?
The Playmander was a gerrymander so i've corrected that. Meanwhile, Trove continues to fascinate. Can someone explain this to me who knows more about it? Was Labor claiming a gerrymander in 1929 multi-member SA? Other times too possibly? Timeshift (talk) 19:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

The current single-member system and the 2PP
Libs outspent Labor 50 to 1 in safe seats, caucus told: InDaily 23 February 2016 - very interesting article covering various aspects, especially ''InDaily revealed yesterday that some members of a 1990 parliamentary inquiry – which also included senior Liberals Stephen Baker and Bruce Eastick – had serious misgivings about the “fairness clause” they nonetheless recommended, even urging a semi-proportional “top-up” system to be reconsidered after the 1993 election; it never was... Dean Brown, who became premier in the 1993 landslide, rejected responsibility for ignoring the top-up option, saying “it had already been rejected” before the poll. “The issue was dealt with by the parliament at the time, and it was agreed back in ’91 that they wouldn’t pursue the top-ups… I was not in the parliament at the time,” he said.'' Though Brown starts to waffle about pro-Lib top-up reform after that... he and the Libs seem to think SA isn't unique, when in fact SA has the most highly centralised population out of all of the states, and the metropolitan area 2PP has been won by Labor at every election since 1993 and is very rarely won by the Liberals, while the outer rural areas are very heavily Liberal. 2014, on a state-wide 47.0% ALP v 53.0% LIB 2PP, saw an average 50.3% ALP v 49.7% LIB 2PP in the 34 metropolitan seats, compared to the 13 rural seats on an average 33.3% ALP v 66.7% LIB 2PP. Average was worked out by adding 2PP vote % of each seat and dividing by number of seats. As 2014 metro came out so close on 50.3% ALP 2PP, I did a more thorough calculation - I used the ECSA 2014 stats ref to add up the number of Labor 2PP votes in all 34 metro seats which gave a total of 380662 formal metro Labor 2PP votes, added the number of Liberal 2PP votes in all 34 metro seats which gave a total of 357861 formal metro Liberal 2PP votes, added them together to get a total of 738523 formal metro 2PP votes, then divided 380662 by 738523 to get the true metropolitan 2PP percentage - 51.5% ALP v 48.5% LIB 2PP in the 34 metro seats for 2014. Now, given that more than 75% of South Australians live in the metropolitan area now (1.3mil metro, 1.7mil total), it's completely fair and balanced for the party that wins Adelaide wins government. Since the post-1989 electoral reforms, when Labor has won government, they have also won the metropolitan 2PP, while when the Libs have won government, they have also won the metropolitan 2PP, the sole exception being 1997 and the Lib minority govt where Labor won the metro 2PP vote. Far better than the state-wide 2PP as an indicator. This is not a coincidence. You can't argue with more than three-quarters of the population. The state-wide 2PP seems quite meaningless and distorted now if Labor is spending money only in marginal seats while the Liberals continue state-wide campaigns. If Labor isn't spending money in any safe seats on either side, they are not winning a substantial number of votes they could have otherwise received. Labor campaigns to the current single-member system while the Liberals seem to campaign to a multi-member or top-up system which doesn't exist. The Libs are moving in early on pro-Lib top-up reform in attempts to ensure neutral multi-member reform doesn't get off the ground. The Libs don't want to reform the electoral system out of good intentions, they selfishly want a pro-Lib top-up system. They are hoping to unlock the concentrated Liberal rural areas again through a top-up as they know multi-member would not work as well to unlock them - multi-member would still recognise the metropolitan area is 75% of SA's population which almost always votes Labor, while an artificial top-up would not and conveniently ignores this unique situation. SA used only one system, multi-member, from the inaugural 1857 election right up until when? The introduction of the Playmander in 1936. Single-member since... the one remaining vestige. The change to single-member rendered a state-wide 2PP meaningless and distorted throughout during the Playmander, times after, and in the 21st century - for various reasons. Go back to multi-member like we used to have, and we'll rightly get state-wide campaigns, a real and meaningful state-wide 2PP, and a system that could not be perceived as advantaging either side. Lastly, it is an "impossible challenge" for the ECSA's current-day redistributions to comply with the Lib-instigated post-1989 electoral changes, per Clem MacIntyre. One vote, one value is democratic and not a malapportionment, unlike the Playmander. We have some information about the history and modern effects of the 2PP in article sections such as here and here but a lot of the above would be noteworthy in this and/or other articles, however the issue is that most of the above could be considered subjective and all sentences would need their own WP:RS, which is a big task. Timeshift (talk) 13:41, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

NPoV
This article reflects a partisan PoV, that enunciated in particular by Blewett, later an ALP politician. Blewett and Jaensch in deriving the table said to show bias had to deal with a large number of uncontested state electorates. They did so by the doubtful means of assuming that voters would have voted similarly to their federal votes (federal electorates were generally contested). This ignores that one of the state results they identify as skewed is so using federal data which yielded an ALP landslide - 1944 - in which the federal "LCL" vote was virtually annihilated (the only non-Labor member returned was Archie Cameron, a Country Party member; there was no corresponding collapse in the LCL vote in contested seats at the state election.

Jenny Stock has a much less partisan interpretation: while there was some skew from Labor to the LCL, the main skew was City to Country: Labor narrowly won many of the small electorates in the country based on "railway towns", offsetting the comparative loss it sufferred by its City seats being "over-sized".

http://www.sahistorians.org.au/175/bm.doc/the-playmander-its-origins-operations-and-effects-on-south-australiaii.doc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.162.149.6 (talk) 06:11, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Citation needed for mechanism
Now I'm sure the Playmander was real but the article seems to imply that the rural 2:1 ratio was implicit in the constitution as of Act 2336 that changed to single member electorates. I've just read the Constitution Act as of 1936, and can't find it. What I can find is that electorates are defined in the Constitution to be of particular areas, and that given the population at the time it probably wasn't real fair. So I'm thinking the article should have more of a thrust that whoever can get the constitution modified can set the electoral boundaries and they can do so unfairly. They are not constrained by some constitutional need to have a 2:1 ratio but can merely do it on a whim. Alex Sims (talk) 01:28, 2 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Reading Jenny Stocks' article above seems to imply that the three member commission invented the rural and metropolitan zones and that parliament followed their recommendation. This requires reference to 1936 Hansard which is not online. Alex Sims (talk) 01:38, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
 * There are reasonable accounts of parliament on 13 August 1936 in the Adelaide Advertiser and The News . Find bruce (talk) 02:16, 2 June 2022 (UTC)