This seminar will reflect on some results of the inaugural Shire elections held in the Northern Territory in October 2008. It will observe that, in a number of large multi-member wards in various Shires, those elected to second and subsequent positions often:

• came from the same locations as those elected first, and
• had quite low primary votes.

Conversely, some candidates from other locations who had quite high primary votes did not go on to be elected to second and subsequent positions.

The seminar will argue that these results reflect a poor electoral system. When electoral systems move from single member electorates to multi-member electorates they generally also move from a 'majoritarian' system of vote counting to a 'quota' system which allows candidates to be elected by reaching a substantial minority quota. However, the Northern Territory local government electoral system retains majoritarian vote counting in multi-member electorates/wards, leading to repeated large group dominance of available positions.

This seminar will elucidate the conceptual rationales of:

• single member electoral systems with majoritarian vote counting (as in the NT Legislative Assembly and the Australian House of Representatives)
• multi-member electoral systems with a 'single transferable vote' and minority-quota vote counting (as in the Australian Senate).

It will argue that the NT's Local Government electoral system illogically combines multi-member electorates and majoritarian vote counting. The result is a very poor electoral system which could threaten the legitimacy of Northern Territory Local Government and which needs to be changed.