I voted in a pre-polling centre on the way to work
this morning. It’s much more convenient than trying to on the day.
I voted on election day a few years ago. I had to go
early because I was on my way to play cricket. I turned up about 15 minutes
after the polls opened and there was already a queue of 50 or 60 people, mostly
old age pensioners. What the fuck were they doing? It’s not like most of them
had a day full of activities ahead and really had to be somewhere very soon.
“Oh well, we thought we’d better vote early and get it
done” … and then go home and have a cup of tea and read the paper, you selfish
old coffin dodgers. If I had my way, I’d make the old age pension half the dole
and force you all to survive on cat food and boiled potatoes.
Anyway, there were no queues this morning. Just mark
off my name, fill out the two ballot papers to reflect my wishes and be on my
way. At least, that’s the way it should have happened.
How many candidates were on the Senate ballot paper?
110 … and you only have two options: choose a single
party above the line and have them allocate YOUR preferences according to THEIR
tactics, or allocate your preferences according to YOUR wishes and be forced to number ALL 110 boxes below the line.
If you want to encourage some of the minor parties or
independents, but don’t like the preference deals they have done, or most
likely, don’t know what they are, then be prepared to either:
1.
Spend
10 – 15 minutes filling out all the boxes.
2.
Let
your preferred minor party get away with whatever preference deals they have
arranged.
3.
Give up
and vote for a major party above the line.
The problem with options 2 and 3 is that the party you choose
will eventually have their preferences distributed to other parties, mostly as
a result of negotiated deals. Your vote will be transferred to another party
who is ahead of your chosen party in the count. If they are eliminated, your
vote will then be transferred to your party's next uneliminated strategically chosen preference and so
on, possibly along a chain of more than 10 minor parties.
Is this what you intended? Can you even know where
your vote is likely to end up?
Not prior to voting, because it depends not just on the order
in which the minor candidates finish in the primary vote, but also who leapfrogs the others as preferences begin being distributed.
Each party is required to lodge its preference allocation order with the Australian Electoral Commission some weeks prior to the election. You can see them here if you scroll down to Senate Group Voting Tickets. If you voted above the line, find the party for which you voted and compare their official preference order with your own wishes. I bet the two will be some distance apart.
Your vote will move from candidate to candidate, down your first choice's list of preferences until all senators are elected. Its path only depends on your first choice's preference order; it does not become a proxy for another party once your choice is eliminated. However, how do you know where in this chain it will finally come to rest?
This is true even if you vote Coalition or Labor above
the line. Suppose they obtain 3.2 quotas. The overhanging 0.2 of a quota will
all go to whichever party they have preferenced and eventually end up … who
knows where?
Blocks of votes are traded amongst 30 – 50 minor
parties and independents as part of a game theoretic strategy which each
believes (rightly or wrongly) will maximize their chances of winning a seat.
The chance the particular path eventually followed in the complex graph of
preference swaps is even close to your own preference order is minute.
The ABC has tabulated the full distribution of preferences in each state, showing how the preferences were allocated as each candidate was eliminated. The Victorian example of Ricky Muir from the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts party continually being near last and rescued from elimination by another candidate's preferences makes for an excellent case study.
We’ve seen lefties Wikileaks preferencing the Shooters & Fishers and the white nationalist Australia First Party ahead of Labor
and the Greens, followed by those arch hypocrites the Greens doing a preference swap deal with Bob Katter and self promoting coal mining baron, Clive Palmer.
Each is prepared to do deals almost certainly contrary to the wishes of the
majority of their supporters, risking their enemies being elected in order to
better their own chances.
What a grubby farrago of rorts! An insult to democracy
… and all to save time and expense when tallying up the votes.
I filled out all 110 boxes. I thought: “Fuck you. I’m
going to put everyone in the order I want”. When I got to about 20, I had
exhausted all the minor parties I wanted to encourage, such as the Liberal Democrats and Drug Law Reform, so put the
Coalition 21 – 26. After that, my preferences can exhaust, for all I care. Yet
I had to go through the largely meaningless exercise of filling in boxes 27 – 110. I put the Greens 105 – 110, where they belong.
Had I been in a hurry, I wouldn’t have bothered. I
suspect this is how the overwhelming majority of people react. That’s exactly
what the people who designed this system are counting on.
Forcing this choice on voters, knowing full well the
majority of them will respond by voting 1 above the line is in direct
contradiction to the fundamental purpose of a democratic election. Voters
should be able to choose as many candidates as they wish, in the order they
wish, without being punished for it by being forced to exhaust the list in a
meaningless set of choices from 30 to 110.
There’s an easy solution: optional preferential voting
in all elections, with the choice of numbering groups above the line or
individual candidates below the line in the Senate. Add to that the option of not choosing any candidates at all and we’d be a lot closer to a genuinely
democratic election.
Optional preferential voting should also allow
preferences to exhaust, rather than defaulting to proxy preferences. An example
of what I mean by this is the following:
Suppose a voter numbers 3 minor parties above the line
and leaves it at that. They are effectively saying that they don’t like any of
the remaining parties and would rather their vote go unallocated if it cannot
be to any of their 3 choices. Suppose now that their first choice is eliminated
in the count, but their second choice is also already out. Their vote is then
transferred to their third choice.
Suppose this third choice party is subsequently
eliminated. Should the vote exhaust and not be allocated to anyone else, or
should it then follow the official preference order of the third choice party,
or maybe the official preference order of their first choice, effectively allowing one of those partys a proxy? I believe exhaustion would be the
intention of most people voting in such a manner.
How much simpler would it have been to just list as
many numbers as you want above the line on the Senate ballot, then vote 1 in
the House of Representatives if your preferred candidate is going to win a safe
seat, or maybe 1, 2, 3 if they aren’t? How much simpler to exercise your right
to reject all the candidates by staying at home, rather than turning up under
duress and voting informal?
How much simpler to both vote and count the votes if
you could log in and do it online? There could even be automated checks to
prevent people accidentally voting informally.
The tax department has sufficient security to let you
submit your tax return online. The RTA lets you sort out pretty much all
aspects of your vehicle registration online. People do most of their banking
and share trading online. If this is all acceptable, how is it we cannot vote
online? How many of our tax dollars would it save?
If citizens are sick of feeling gypped in the polling
booth, then we really need to campaign for optional preferential voting in all
elections to stop being corralled into these cynical and grubby preference
swaps.
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