Australia held a parliamentary election on August 21. Although all the votes are not counted yet, it appears the neither major party won a majority in either house.
The House has 150 seats. The tentative results are: Labour 72, Liberal 72, Green 1, and 4 independents, with one seat too close to call. Assuming the Greens do win that one seat, it will be the first time in history they have won a seat in the lower house. This story describes the 4 independents and the one Green elected to the House. The Green, Adam Bandt, was elected from Melbourne. Australia uses a system very similar to Instant-Runoff Voting for House elections. This story shows how that system made it possible for Bandt to win.
In the Senate, which is elected somewhat proportinately, the Greens may also have the balance of power. See this story. Greens already had five Senators and they may have eight Senators when all the votes are counted.
Technically, it’s 72 for the “Liberal/National Coalition”, not just “Liberal”; they may as well be one party, but IRV supporters tend to get pissy when you make that claim. But hey, good on IRV for, for the first time in 3 election cycles, giving a seat to a real third-party candidate. (I’ll have to laugh a little less loudly now when anyone says IRV is “a GREAT way for third parties to win elections”. But only a little.)
And the house elections aren’t “similar” to IRV, they are IRV… unless you’re talking about the “above the line” option? (Where you can choose to pick one of the pre-determined preference ranks supplied by the parties? Most voters vote this way, since if you vote “below the line” you have to rank ALL the candidates, which gets to be a bit onerous.)
There is no “above the line” option for the house seats. Voters rank the candidates. Typically a lot of candidates run in every race, with ranked choice voting giving voters an easy way to indicate their sincere preferences.
The senate uses the ranked choice voting form of proportional representation – that’s where the “above the line” option is available, and given the unnecessary requirement to rank all candidates, most voters go with their favorite party’s rankings.
Gerrymanders and IRV = more party hack arrogant party hack MONSTERS – Aussie version.
P.R. and App.V. — in ALL regimes.
For an excellent short video explaining how people vote in Australia go to this link:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/2007/indigenous/dvd/formality.htm
It was made for Australia’s indigenous populations, hence the warning at the beginning of the video. The warning is out of respect for their traditions.
The three “Down for the count” links on the Australian Electoral Commission’s webpage show how the votes are counted.
http://www.aec.gov.au/Education/Video.htm
Interestingly the Democratic Labor party has taken a seat in the Senate for the state of Victoria. This is the first time that they have been represented in the Federal Parliament since 1975.
@JB
Ah. Then my question still stands: how is that, in any way, different from IRV?
(And I’d debate your use of “easy” and “sincere”, since IRV has significantly higher ballot spoilage rates and still has the possibility of spoilers, thereby forcing voters to choose between sincerity and “the lesser of two evils”.)
How many IRV elections will have the final top 2 candidates be Stalin and Hitler clones ???
Thus the very hostile party hack monster folks in the Aussie regime — each IRV winner acts as if he/she/it got 100 percent of the votes in his/her/its gerrymander district.
Spare me and the list about the use of IRV in ANY regime NOT causing MAJOR problems — even worse than in plurality regimes.
P.R. and App.V.