Talk:Electoral system of Australia/Archive 2012

Question about compulsory/optional preference systems

Please excuse me if I make a mistake here - I'm not Australian, and the terminology is largely unfamiliar to me - but as I understand it, in a federal election one must complete all the boxes for a House or "below the line" Senate vote to be valid, whereas in (most?) state elections it's okay to fill in just 1, 2, 3 or whatever. What I'd like to know, and doesn't seem to be in the article, is why federal elections have not moved over to an optional-preference system? What is the defence against the argument that for an election with 10, 20 or (in the Senate's case) even many more candidates, requiring the voter to rank all the way down is simply going to lead to random and/or "donkey" choices or (in the Senate's case) choosing the "above the line" option and thus effectively (given the overwhelming choice of voters to do this) reducing the Senate elections to a closed party list system? Loganberry (Talk) 15:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

My guess (not being Australian either) is that it's an extension of the principle of compulsory participation in voting to compulsory participation in all stages. I think the switches between compulsory and optional full preferencing in state elections have not been devoid of partisan advantage - the Coalition benefits from full preferencing because it allows the two parties to run without risking losing votes for one that don't transfer to the other, Labor benefits from optional because it can increase pressure on Coalition tensions. Look at the history of the Coalition in Queensland, under optional preferencing, with the two parties eventually going for a merger to end the problems.

There's also the issue of which significant minor parties are about and doing what - leaving the Coalition aside, roughly from 1918 to the mid 1950s preferencing made little difference federally, then from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s preferencing (from the Democratic Labor Party) benefited the Coalition, then in the mid 1970s it was back to not much influence, then from the late 1970s the Australian Democrats generally sat on the fence and issued multiple How To Vote cards, but from the early 1990s onward preferencing (from the Greens) has benefited Labor. Timrollpickering (talk) 17:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a debatable subject, I guess, but the underlying philosophy for compulsory voting is that the elected leaders can claim support from a majority of the population. Preferential voting is in theory equivalent to a series of elections, the last of which is between two candidates and the winner requires support of 50%+1 of the population to win. Under voluntary voting systems, a candidate can win with much less than 50%+1 support from the population (they only require 50%+1 of the vote). Expressing preferences is serious stuff - the Albert Langer article is worth a read if you are interested in this topic - Langer got jailed for encouraging voters to vote in such a way that their preferences exhausted. --Surturz (talk) 23:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

A point argued by Langer and others is that the 50%+1 arrived at is not really "support" when votes are dragooned in this way from people who would not otherwise dream of supporting a candidate who may get their last-but-one or effective pref. vote. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 09:03, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I am not aware of any philosophical rationale for it (and I am Australian and incidentally a habitual Labor voter). Whether it was introduced for this reason or not, optional preferential voting makes it possible to deals with a voting paper with dozens (84 at the 2010 election) of unfamiliar names and parties on it in a sensible manner. In the 1980's the Labor Government (Mick Young to be exact) what tasked to find a way to make voting in the Senate, with it's huge ballot paper, a more practical proposition. Rather than introduce Optional Preferential Voting, as existed in some States (where it worked well), they instituted the "Above the Line"/"Below the Line" system. You could vote for a predetermined distribution of preference (as nominated by each party) by putting '1' in one box (above the line), or you had to number sequentialy every single candidate (below the line).

My impression (anyone care to disagree?) is that optional preferential voting was ignored because it leaves the possibility that people may vote for a independent or minor party candidate and not give any preference between the two major parties. This would mean that big parties (like the Labor Party or the Liberal Party) would not benefit from the vote of people who really didn't like any of them. As it is after voting Communist, Socialist alliance, Christian Democrat, and Sex Party, eventually everyone has to ultimately make a decision, preference Labor before Liberal, or vice-versa. In all likelyhood the minor parties will get few votes, be eliminated, passed on to a slightly less minor party, who will still have too few votes and also be eliminated and ultimately passed on to one of those two parties. Also it makes it easier for parties good at making deals (no I didn't say LABOR), to benefit from preferences. 95% of people vote above the line so 95% of preferences flow in exactly the way the party nominates.

The objection to being forced to number all the squares, is because some people believe that they should not have to be forced to vote for parties they absolutely don't like. For example, if there are 8 candidates, and you hate both major parties, you are still forced to number them 7 and 8, and you choice of which is 7 and which is 8 will determine how your preference is allocated, in a close election, where all 6 of the minor party or independent candidates that you prefered, has been eliminated.

There is also the folly of having to number 100 or more squares on the paper correctly.

The result is that in some State elections, a partially completed numbering process is a valid vote, but the same vote in a Federal election would be invalid.

The parties support the current Senate voting scheme because it allows them to make dodgy deals, by making it almost impractical for anyone but the most determined voter to actually vote for parties in the order of their preference.Eregli bob (talk) 08:56, 17 October 2012 (UTC)