Optional preferential voting

looks likely to fail to pass in parliament.

Those of you who do not live here may not be aware of our iniquitous voting system. Despite claims to the contrary it is not democratic, far from it. It is still much better than the way elections are run in many other places but there is room for reform.

Let it first be said that I am strongly opposed to any system which requires compulsory attendance at the ballot box. I believe people should vote. It  is our duty to vote. People should be given encouragement to vote. Voting should be made as simple and easy a process as possible.

There is no actual requirement to vote here. You give your name and address, state that you have not voted in the election before, take the papers and enter a flimsy semi-enclosed space. There you can mark the ballot papers in any way you wish and then you put your papers in the boxes for the different houses. 

There is of course a great deal which can go wrong with this system. Nobody asks for ID and people can and do vote more than once, usually in someone else's name. (There are little oddities like the elderly person I know who has dementia. He had a postal vote which was duly completed and then, forgetting all about that, he went off to vote on the day.)

But the bigger problem still is the way we are required to vote if we want our vote to count. It is called "preferential voting". You have to mark every square next to every candidate's name with a number in the order in which you would like to see them elected.  You put a "1" next to the person you would most like to see elected, a "2" to the person you would like to see elected if your first choice does not get in and so on. It is a system which is wide open to all sorts of wheeling and dealing and other manipulations. It is quite simply wrong. 

I hope I am a thinking voter. I find out what the policies are, especially on the issues I am particularly interested in and I vote accordingly. I may not agree with everything the candidate I choose stands for. It is likely s/he will be the least objectionable to me. After that I am likely to struggle. I do not want to be responsible for voting in someone who holds views with which I strongly disagree. 

When asked about this I always give the example of the death penalty. If we were to try and reintroduce that abhorrent practice here I would be looking to see who did not support the reintroduction. Why should I then be compelled to continue voting down the line for candidates who would support such a policy? 

There are other people who feel the same way. The present state government has been making another attempt to do away with compulsory preferential voting at state level. It is almost certainly going to fail. It will fail because politicians, especially those from minor parties, believe compulsory preferential voting benefits them. This isn't about democracy. It isn't about giving people a voice. It is about allowing people we didn't vote for to speak for us.