Amusing political advertisement (NSFW!)

[Peter B]

First a bit of background...

It's federal election time again in Australia, and we go to the polls this Saturday.

Things are a little interesting, because for the second election in a row the incumbent Prime Minister has only been in the job a few weeks. On this occasion, Kevin Rudd replaced Julia Gillard, reversing roles from last time. What has added a little spice to things is that there are a couple of new minor parties on the scene and there's at least some chance that they'll win seats.

But the funniest thing I've seen so far is an advertisement by the Australian Sex Party (yes, that's the party's name). The party has actually been around for quite a few years, and they came close to winning a seat in the last election.

Lest you think that they're just a joke party, have a look at their website to see the things they stand for.

Ah, heck, don't worry about doing that - just watch the ad, as it says it all anyway.

Finally, before I give you the link, a last warning: a certain four letter word is used quite frequently although it's bleeped out: it's a confronting way of making their point, but I think they do it effectively.

[Echnaton]

They've got my bleeeepin vote. 

How is the WikiLeaks Party doing?

[Peter B]

How is the WikiLeaks Party doing?

A surprisingly tricky question to answer...

As far as I know they were only running candidates in the Senate, and then only in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.

According to this Electoral Commission page: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateProvisionalQuota-17496.htm they're way short of getting a quota (1 quota of votes = 1 guaranteed seat in the Senate). But parties with much smaller proportions of the vote apparently are likely to get Senate seats.

Because of the complicated voting system it may be a couple of weeks before the results are officially announced.

= = = =

For those nerdy enough to be interested, here's how it works...

In the Senate, each of Australia's six states elects 12 Senators and the two territories elect 2 Senators each (76 seats altogether). At each normal election (including this one) half of each state's Senate seats are up for election, along with both Senate seats in the two territories.

To get elected, a Senate candidate has to get a quota, which is equal to the state's voting population divided by the number of Senate seats plus 1 (that is, divide by 7 for the states and by 3 for the territories).

For us ordinary voters, the problem used to be that you had to number every candidate in order - if you didn't number all the squares, or if you missed a number, your ballot was wasted. This got bad in the 1970s as the number of candidates in the states got larger. So in the 1980s "Above The Line" voting was introduced: you simply put a number "1" in the square of your preferred party, and you voted in accordance with voting preferences nominated beforehand by that party. These days I understand that over two-thirds of voters vote above the line.

The thing is that these party-arranged voting preferences have effects far greater than you might imagine: carefully arranged voting preference deals, known as vote harvesting, mean that a canny candidate can be elected with a tiny fraction of a quota of primary votes, by harvesting preferences from other parties.

The reason this is important is because of how the final Senate seats in each state are allocated. If you look again at the link I provided above, and run down the column for a state, say New South Wales in the first column, you'll see that only two parties achieved full quotas - the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal/National grouping each got two quotas, meaning four of the six Senate seats are allocated. What about the other two seats? In that case the party with the smallest primary vote is eliminated from counting, and their votes are given to the second preference parties on their ballot papers. As the small vote parties are eliminated, the quotas of the remaining parties gradually creep up. (And if a second preference on a ballot paper is allocated to an already eliminated party, go to the third preference, and so on.) Careful vote harvesting means that a micro-party with a tiny primary vote may sweep up such a large number of second preferences from other previously eliminated micro-parties that it achieves a quota as a result.

Hence the Australian Sports Party, running only in Western Australia, with only 0.0155 quotas, is apparently likely to have a candidate elected. Why the Wikileaks Party has apparently failed with much larger quotas suggests they had less luck in getting good preference options from other micro-parties.

[ka9q]

Sure is a lot more complex than how voting works in the USA, but given the stranglehold that the two major parties (Democratic and Republican) have long had here, and their surprising indistinguishability on many important issues, I would be in favor of more complexity.

[gillianren]

I'm not sure I would, but I certainly wouldn't like that system.

[Echnaton]

Given how much trouble we got into when one county in Florida used a butterfly format on the ballot, I hesitate to think of the possibilities for problems associated with that kind of system.  Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts.  Yikes.

[qt]

Given how much trouble we got into when one county in Florida used a butterfly format on the ballot, I hesitate to think of the possibilities for problems associated with that kind of system.  Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts.  Yikes.

You could have Amazon.com run your elections.

People who voted for this candidate, also voted for . . .

[gillianren]

Given that Amazon recently suggest that, because I like Darkwing Duck, I might be interested in True Blood, I'm not sure that's a good idea.

[raven]

Given that Amazon recently suggest that, because I like Darkwing Duck, I might be interested in True Blood, I'm not sure that's a good idea.

Darkwing Duck=Terror that flaps in the night=bats=vampire bats=vampires=True Blood.
Makes perfect sense.

[ka9q]

Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts.  Yikes.

The idea of prioritizing your choices seems so natural and obvious to me that I can't imagine the benefits being outweighed by whatever minor confusion it might cause.

During nearly every US election season everybody, and I mean everybody, complains of being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. The one time in recent history when we didn't complain (the 2008 Presidential election), it turns out that we should have.

Many Americans would like to vote for third party candidates but are afraid they'll simply help the worst candidate win. It's not for nothing that US third party candidates are always referred to as "spoilers" for the closer main party candidate. The popular vote counts are often so close that many elections really have been swung by the presence of a third party candidate.

[Echnaton]

Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts.  Yikes.

The idea of prioritizing your choices seems so natural and obvious to me that I can't imagine the benefits being outweighed by whatever minor confusion it might cause.

During nearly every US election season everybody, and I mean everybody, complains of being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. The one time in recent history when we didn't complain (the 2008 Presidential election), it turns out that we should have.

Many Americans would like to vote for third party candidates but are afraid they'll simply help the worst candidate win. It's not for nothing that US third party candidates are always referred to as "spoilers" for the closer main party candidate. The popular vote counts are often so close that many elections really have been swung by the presence of a third party candidate.

With electronic voting machines, prioritizing could be a relatively straight forward process, I suppose.   Any lack of complaint about the 2008 election was simply because the McCain/Palin ticket was so bad that it made the Big O look like a prince. 

We really need one state to implement prioritized voting and prove the concept.    But the cost of doing so would be relatively high because it will (likely) require new voting machines and a significant investment in voter education on polling day.

While it could be beneficial in many ways, I don't see the politics leading toward this because there is little public call for a change in the election process.  In the interim, I just hold my nose and vote for third party candidates where I feel they are a better choice.  It is not like outcome of most legislative elections isn't gerrymandered into the system anyway.

[gillianren]

If third parties really want to start having an impact in US elections, they shouldn't start at the national level.  It's a waste of their money to run a Presidential campaign (especially when it's mathematically impossible to be a successful one) instead of, say, a potentially successful mayoral election in a mid-sized city.  Maybe a state office or two.  I have no interest in third parties; most of them strike me as being worse than the major party for which I vote most of the time anyway.  But they're doing it wrong, and until they do it right, I see no way that they'll ever start having real influence on the system.

[Peter B]

Sure is a lot more complex than how voting works in the USA, but given the stranglehold that the two major parties (Democratic and Republican) have long had here, and their surprising indistinguishability on many important issues, I would be in favor of more complexity.

It's not as complex as my explanation makes it sound. Essentially it's a proprtional representation system with a chunky number of candidates (that is, not many candidates). Parties generally end up with a number of seats in each state in proportion to the size of their vote counts. It's just that it's tricky when there are only six seats up for grabs in each state.

Up to the 1970s the Liberals/Nationals and the Australian Labor Party would often split each state's Senate seats evenly, meaning party numbers in the Senate were often very close. This changed in the 1970s with the rise of the Australian Democrats as a centrist minor party alternative. It would often then be a competition between the Democrats and one of the major parties for the sixth seat in each state.

These days the Democrats are no more, but their place has been taken by the Greens, who are out to the left of the Labor Party.

The rise of minor parties means that it's been rare for whichever party is in power to also control the Senate. This means some level of negotiating is necessary in order to get controversial legislation through Parliament.

It seems likely that some sort of voting reform is likely to happen in this Parliament: a few Liberal politicians have been making noises in that direction, and it's likely the Labor Party would support them out of self-interest. The simplest method would be to get voters to number all boxes above the line. That way voters, rather than party negotiators, determine how their preferences get allocated.

[Echnaton]

If third parties really want to start having an impact in US elections, they shouldn't start at the national level.  It's a waste of their money to run a Presidential campaign (especially when it's mathematically impossible to be a successful one) instead of, say, a potentially successful mayoral election in a mid-sized city.  Maybe a state office or two.  I have no interest in third parties; most of them strike me as being worse than the major party for which I vote most of the time anyway.  But they're doing it wrong, and until they do it right, I see no way that they'll ever start having real influence on the system.

We have a few parties that run candidates at local levels.  The Libertarians are very active and the Greens are quite active in Texas.     But it really comes down to the cost of media exposure.  Local TV coverage sometimes includes third parties but is so segmented that one station can have very little effect.  If you are trying to establish credibility, it is very important to have national news coverage which is cheaper on an eyeball basis and more effective than local media because one can pay more to get a better commercial produced when using national media.   

The other way national candidacy works is the credibility of getting a place in the national presidential debates. Thus the major party debate format is set to exclude third parties except under the rarest of circumstances of very well funded groups who can buy the attention they need.

One real problem for third parties is that insurgent movements lose steam when they have to compromise with the ruling parties in order to get their agenda on the table.  Libertarians are a prime example of maintaining a party by not doing this and thus remaining a group that nominates based on ideological purity rather than electability and effectiveness.  Politics is about compromise, getting the best deal you can in order to stay in the game and fight another day. 

[gillianren]

I explained the "politics as compromise" thing to a bunch of hardcore Nader voters in 2000, and they told me it was one of the things they liked about Ralph Nader--he wouldn't compromise.  I told them that, even if he did get elected (which he wouldn't), by not compromising, he was just ensuring that he wouldn't get anything accomplished.