...We had a referendum on alternative voting in the UK in 2011. It was rejected and we keep the first past the post system.
It's a bit different in Australia and in our states.
At the Federal level our House of Reps is like the HoC, and the Senate equivalent to the HoL (except that its members are elected).
For the Reps, we have preferential voting, which is similar to FPTP, except that a candidate has to get more than 50% of the vote to be elected. To do this, we voters number all candidates in order of preference. Then, if no candidate gets 50% of the vote, the candidate with the fewest first preferences is eliminated, and their votes distributed among the remaining candidates on the basis of their second preferences. If still no candidate has 50% of the vote, you repeat the process, and so on until one of the last two candidates must reach 50%.
For the Senate it's a bit more complicated, and also since the last election more controversial. The Senate has 76 seats - 12 for each state and 2 for each territory. At each election half the state-based senators and all the territory-based senators face election, meaning each state's voters have to choose six senators. In order to be elected a candidate has to achieve a quota of 1/7th of the popular vote. If they get more than one quota the excess is transferred to the next party candidate on the ticket. This is usually good enough to elect five of the six senators. Working out who gets the last seat is tricky, and this is where the controversy has arisen.
Once all the quotas have been distributed a process of elimination similar to the preferential system for the Reps is used, with the candidate attracting the lowest popular vote being eliminated and their preferences distributed. Lather, rinse and repeat until finally one of the remaining candidates accumulates enough votes to get a quota.
Because of a rise in the number of candidates in Senate elections, back in the 1980s there was a change to the electoral process. Instead of numbering all the candidates in numerical order (potentially over 100 candidates in some cases), voters were allowed to place a 1 against one party, and the preferences would be distributed in accordance with a preference list determined by that party. Now the order of preferences determined by each party became a secret game before each election, with all the various parties lobbying each other to get favourable positions on each others' preference tickets.
Then came along this guy about 10 years ago, whose name I forget, but whose nickname is The Preference Whisperer. His skill was maths, and he seemed to have a far better instinct for how the voting system worked than anyone else. What he did was facilitate negotiations between minor parties and so-called micro-parties to lock in preference deals that seem to have a lot more power than people would expect.
As a result, a couple of candidates were elected to the Senate at the last Federal election despite getting minuscule primary votes. Instead they got their quota by accumulating the transferred votes of other micro-parties as they were eliminated from the count.
The sinister aspect of this is that few voters knew anything about these micro-parties, and almost certainly not their preference lists. However many of these parties had names which would be likely to appeal to
some aspect of the community.
Hypothetically it wouldn't take much work to set up a perfectly legal bunch of parties, say, the Loonie Left Party, the Crazy Right Party, the Maisy Middle Party, the [name your hobby] Party, then arrange preference swapping deals between all of them. Come the election, some voters will vote for each party simply on the basis of the party's name. Then, when the votes are counted, their swapped preferences will give one of these parties' candidates a good chance of getting the last Senate seat in that state.
The significance of this lies in the power of the Senate to block the government's proposed legislation.
Back in 2004 the Liberal-National coalition won control of both the House of Reps (thus forming government) and the Senate, meaning in theory they could guarantee the passage of all their legislation. But in the four elections since then the party in power has not had control of the Senate, with the balance of power held by some combination of minor and micro parties.
Arguably, the Labor government of Julia Gillard following the 2010 election did the best job of getting its legislation passed in the Senate. This was despite operating as a very rare minority government in the Reps (you might remember that on the old Apollo Hoax board I started a thread about that election and the aftermath).
By contrast, the current Liberal-National coalition government under Tony Abbott has a solid majority in the Reps, but has had a devil of a time getting its legislation through a hostile Senate. The government's first budget was delivered in May last year, and now, eight months down the track still some of the associated legislation hasn't been passed. The main problem seems to be the government's unwillingness to, you know, negotiate. They seem to have the attitude that because they have a majority in the Reps, the Senate should just sit back and do the government's bidding. The thing is that the minor and micro party Senators represent such a broad swathe of political views it surely shouldn't be too hard to find some combination of Senators to support each piece of legislation.
And a bigger problem for the government is that things are likely to get worse. Over the last 40 years the proportion of votes given to non-major parties in the Senate has grown steadily from ~10% to ~30%.
I'm not sure any voting method is entirely fair, but I'm glad of one thing. At least I get a say in who I choose to lead my country, despite it not being completely perfect.
Quite true.
Another difference between Australia and most other countries is that voting is compulsory. Yet despite most people only having to spend half an hour or so twice every three years undertaking their civic duties, we still manage to find some people willing to complain about having to vote.
Most voting centres in Australia are local government primary schools. Election day is therefore an opportunity for schools to run a sausage sizzle and maybe a raffle to raise some cash from locals. So my message to people whingeing about having to go out and vote is to look at it as an opportunity to do something for your local school.
