 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All 72 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland 37 Assembly seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnout | 78.91 ( 7.30 pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Elections were held in the Australian state of Queensland on 5 February 1908 to elect the 72 members of the state's Legislative Assembly. The election, held less than 9 months after the previous election, was made necessary by a series of events which had seen former premier William Kidston, who commanded a majority on the floor of the Assembly, resign following an attempt to convince the governor of Queensland to appoint sympathetic members to the Queensland Legislative Council, which had blocked key legislative measures. Following Kidston's resignation, Opposition leader Robert Philp was sent for and formed a ministry, but the ministry almost immediately lost a vote of no confidence in the Assembly, and as such, a new election had to be called.
This election used contingent voting, at least in the single-member districts.[1]
Five districts were two-seat districts - Mackay, Marlborough, North Brisbane, Rockhampton and South Brisbane. In the two-member constituencies, plurality block voting was used -- electors could cast two valid votes but were allowed to "plump".[2]
- ^ Bowler, Shaun; Grofman, Bernard Norman (2000). Elections in Australia, Ireland, and Malta under the single transferable vote: reflections on an embedded institution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 40. doi:10.3998/mpub.16507. ISBN 978-0-472-02681-4.
The contingent vote … was used in Queensland from 1892 to 1942 and for Democratic primary elections in the U.S. state of Alabama between 1915 and 1931. It has been used for presidential elections in Sri Lanka since 1978 and in 1996 … the United Kingdom … called it the 'supplementary vote'.
- ^ Hughes and Graham, "Voting for the Queensland Legislative Assembly 1890-1964" (online) accessed February 20, 2025