Canada is beginning to look seriously at alternative voting systems. Supporters of the status quo in Canada have pointed to flaws in Australia’s voting system as a reason for Canada to keep “first-past-the-post” voting. This article in the Canadian Press points out peculiarities in Australia, and notes that just because Australia’s system is flawed, it does not follow logically that all alternate voting systems are flawed.
The Australian flaws are: (1) for Parliamentary elections for lower house, Australia uses instant-runoff voting, but with the peculiar rule that voters are required to rank every candidate on the ballot, or the ballot is invalid; (2) for the Australian Senate, which uses ranked-choice voting for parties (not candidates), voters who don’t express a full range of choices are deemed to have voted according to the wishes of the party they do vote for.
ALL sorts of defective election systems in the world due to the EVIL ROTTED robot party hacks in ALL regimes.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The second flaw you list in the Australian political system no longer applies. Reforms to the Senate voting system mean that votes no longer automatically flow according to party preferences, but must now be stipulated by the votes (or else the ballot exhausts if all of the voter’s choices are eliminated).
A totally incompetent article in the Toronto Metro.
The reason for requiring a ranking of all candidates is to ensure that the winning candidate has true majority support. It is pretty bizarre for someone who lives in San Francisco to claim that another form of IRV is “peculiar”, when in San Francisco it is impossible to rank more than three candidates, because they insist on machine-conformant voters, whose confusion is quite evident.
As you probably know, the purpose of preferential voting in Australia is to keep 3rd parties from electing representatives. When it was first put in place, it was intended to let the Liberal and Country (now National) parties keep Labor out. If the Liberals and Nationals split the more right-wing vote, it would permit election of Labor candidates with a plurality. With preferential voting, the Liberal and National voters would usually vote for the National or Liberal candidate, and rank the Labor candidate last. Parties distribute “How to Vote” cards to encourage a particular ranking.
Nowadays the two-party competition is between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Coalition (Liberals and Nationals). The official election agency reports the preferential vote for top two candidates, distributing other ballots according to their highest preference for either of the two. If the Top 2 in a division (i.e. district) are not for ALP or the Coalition it is regarded as exception (non-Classic).
In the most recent election, 145 of 150 seats were won by ALP or The Coalition.
The Senate elections are held Statewide. Each State has 12 senators. Ordinarily, six are elected at alternate elections. But this was a double dissolution (both House and Senate), so all 12 senators were elected in each State by STV. In New South Wales (NSW), there were 151 candidates arranged in 41 groups (and 20 ungrouped candidates). To be a group, it had to field each candidate. It is literally a bed sheet ballot (voters who are uncertain of their rankings, are told to sleep on it). Candidates are listed in columns by group, with the columns selected by lot, with the ungrouped candidates listed in a separate column. Ungrouped candidates are mainly independents, but may also represent a party that doesn’t have two candidates. Groups are typically a single party, but sometimes a fusion. Regardless, the party of each candidate in the group is listed.
In the past, a voter was required to rank a large number of candidates (IIRC, 55) to have their ballot be considered “formal”. (“informal” means that the ballot is not counted). There is a heavy horizontal line on the ballot, with the candidates listed in columns below the line. If you ranked individual candidates, you were said to be voting “below the line”.
Above the line was a box for each group. If you voted “above the line” you would select one box. You were not voting for the group, but rather were voting the group’s ticket, their ranking of at least 55 candidates. It was in effect a way for the How To Vote cards to be embedded in the actual election machinery. The rankings of each party’s ticket were published before the election. So if you marked
[X] No Parking Meters Party
You were adopting their entire set of preferences, which would include their candidates as the first two preferences. You might look at their list and decided you didn’t like their 37th and 38th preference, and then copy all but those two; or you might look at all the ticket lists and vote for the one you liked best; or you might make your own list; or you might simply vote based on policy and trust that they will have ranked candidates who they believe will best support that issue.
One reason for having a “group” is to be able to have a group ticket. If you are a party agent, the trick it make transfer deals with groups that will be eliminated before you. If you are clever, you can offer a higher preference for them, than they give for you in return, so long as their candidates are eliminated first.
But this election, the rules were changed. You only had to vote for 12 candidates below the line, which you might be able to do with a major party candidates, or you could rank the groups above the line. If you ranked a Group as a 1st preference, it would be the same as having voted for all candidates of the party in the order provided by the party; if you ranked a Group as a 2nd preference, it would be the same as having ranking the candidates of the group following the candidates of your 1st group, and so on. A voter only needed to rank six groups above the line.
The article could have pointed out that the Trudeau government has no intent whatsoever of having an elected Senate.