is simply not democratic.
I will probably need to explain to readers in Upover about this peculiarity of the Downunder voting system.
At federal level and in this state we have "compulsory preferential voting". This means that, in order to cast a valid vote, you need to mark all the boxes on the ballot paper. They need to be marked in the order in which you would prefer the candidates. So you need to make "My Candidate" as "one" and "Your Candidate" as "two" and "Her Candidate" as "three" and "His Candidate" as "four". If "one" does not achieve enough votes to win outright then the vote is transferred to "two" and so on.
It is said to be "fairer" than first past the post or the candidate with the most first preference votes wins.
But is it really? The obvious answer is "no". I put it to the politics lecturer yesterday in this way. I vote "one" for the candidate that does not support the death penalty. All other candidates support the death penalty and I do not wish to vote for them for that reason. Surely I should not be placed in the position of having to assist any of them obtain office by placing them in any order on the ballot paper? The same could be said of other issues I feel strongly about such as the weakening of gun laws or the weakening of anti-terrorism laws.
The politics lecturer and I agree on this one.
If we must have preferential voting then it should, at very least, be not compulsory. I could then mark just one box if I disagreed strongly enough with the other candidates. It would dramatically reduce attempts to manipulate the outcome of an election.
The topic is of importance at the moment. We have a federal election coming up. The result is an almost certain win for the current opposition. I am deeply concerned about that because the leader of that party is a man who is not fit to lead the country. Many people, even inside his own party, recognise that but will still vote for the party.
He has currently been goading the present Prime Minister on the subject of preferences - will the Prime Minister preference an abhorrent party last? The Prime Minister's answer has been "don't vote for that party". He knows that, the moment he says, "yes, my side of politics will put that party last" the Opposition Leader is going to say, "Got you! You should be saying we will put "X" last."
And he isn't answering the question himself - although he has appeared to do so.
It is time to be rid of compulsory preferential voting. I just don't want to have to acknowledge such people in any way at all.
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3 comments:
I thought the preferences worked the other way. That is, if none of Parties A, B, and C (the major parties, most likely to win) did not get a majority, then the preferences as expressed by Party Z were directed to the other parties (A to Y), and if that did create a definite win for a major party, the process was repeated with the preferences of Party Y. This carries on until a party has a majority or the possibility of governing in coalition with another party.
My understanding of this convoluted system is minimal, though I have tried to grasp it.
I think the best way would be to give every voter say six votes, which s/he could use as s/he wished - all six to one candidate, of one to six candidates, or some combination. I have had to put 116 candidates in order, so as to have a valid vote that would not be at the mercy of how parties (which I did not wish to vote for, and actively voted against) direct their "preferences".
LMcC
No, you decide where your preferences go - even though most people vote according to the party ticket of their first choice. Chris
If we must put a number of preference next to each candidate, why can't we just for example put 1 for the first choice, 2 for the second and so on until we've preferenced who we want and put zeros against the ones we definitely don't want under any circumstance?
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