Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

I think we need major voting reforms for Federal elections in Australia. This is not because of the election's result on the weekend, but because the system's misleading and confusing as is.

Currently at a Federal election you get two ballots - one for the lower house (House of Representatives), and one for the upper (The Senate). The House of Reps has candidates based on a regional electorate and seldom has more than a dozen candidates. Currently a vote must enter a unique number for each candidate, from "1" to "x" (where "x" is the number of candidates). If a candidate has an absolute majority of "1" votes then they win outright. But if that's NOT the case (and usually it isn't) then the candidate with the fewest "1" votes is eliminated, and each vote is then added to the candidate that was marked "2" on the ballot. If there's still no clear majority then the lowest scoring candidates continue to be eliminated one by one, with their votes going to the the next preference on the ballot. This means at some point there WILL be a candidate with a majority of votes (extremely rare to have ties). A ballot might be deemed invalid if it's unclear about the order of voting, like missing numbers, or duplicated ones.

Now that seems a reasonable way of doing House of Reps ballots, because there are seldom too many candidates Even so, when it comes to State elections, there are variations on this. Both Queensland and New South Wales have an Optional Preferential Voting System, where the voter only has to mark at least one box with a "1". They can add "2", "3" and so on, but that's not compulsory.

The bigger issue is the Senate which has "State Wide" representation. Each State has the same number of seats (10 at the moment) and normally at each election 1/2 of these are up for re-election.  That seems reasonable, but at the last election in NSW there were 110 candidates for just five seats!!! The other States had roughly the same numbers of candidates as well. Currently the voting for the Senate uses the same rules as that for the House of Reps - with one addition. You can either vote "1 to x" by placing numbers in the boxes of each candidate, or you can "vote above the line".
The parties, and even independents, are grouped in columns and there's a line above this with boxes above each column. Instead of placing a number in EVERY box (which for me last election was 1 to 110!) with the chance of invalidating your vote if you make a mistake, you can place a "1" in one of the boxes above the line. What this means is that you have decided to vote in a manner that party has predetermined (which undoubtedly means voting for their candidates first). But there are issues with this - it gives the parties a lot of power in deciding how they swap preferences with other parties and candidates. It's not really a "fair choice" because voting below the line seems tedious and confusing. There are however, two ways this could be reformed.

The first is mentioned in this article by LifeHacker:

"In the long term, we need to change the rules of elections. This should be done by first abolishing above the line voting and the Group Voting Tickets. In its place, Partial Optional Preferential voting below the line should be introduced. Voters then only have to vote for as many candidates as there are positions to be filled for your vote to be formal."

The second is to actually extend the above the line voting system:

"NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon said the Greens would talk to other parties about introducing an optional preferential above the line vote for the senate, saying the current voting system could deny the Greens a seat in the ACT. Under the proposition, voters would be able to rank parties in order of preference above the line, similar to lower house ballots, instead of just putting a '1' before their preferred party. 'It's actually a very simple way to give the preference decision back to the voters,' she told reporters in Sydney on Sunday. 'It removes the incentive for the preference deals that are now doing so much damage.' "

Maybe BOTH could be implemented. It's often said that a people gets the government it deserves, but if a system's so complicated that folk either don't understand it, or vote a pre-determined way because otherwise is too frustrating, then it's time to change.
 

Was watching the news shows this morning, who all had reporters in Canberra this morning after the leadership change last night.

One said "And we'll be talking with Tony Abbott (leader of the opposition) who'll be telling us if he can beat Kevin Rudd and Labor in the election". Like he's going to say "NO"???!!!!

And another was "We'll have to see if the events of the last few years (internal faction fighting in Labor) have 'DAMAGED THE LABOR BRAN' or not". I immediately thought of an old episode of The Goodies, where Tim Brook Taylor was marketed as a brand of soap.

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS IS RIDICULOUS. It focusses on meaningless personality conflicts and avoids hard questions like Marriage Equality and real changes to refugee policy.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I was going to go down the street to Barnsley Primary School today and vote in the State election. However, voting day is on the 24th of next month!

D'oh!

Just as well I stopped to chat with Jenny across the road. Not a good trot this week.