Quick Hit: How I'll Be Voting 2010

[thorfinn]

I'm in Higgins: http://www.aec.gov.au/election/vic/higgins.htm

We appear to have a Greens house of reps candidate, so my $2.31 worth of primary vote will be heading to them. Then in order, Independent I.T. Nerd, Blind Young Labor Guy, Liberal Ms I'm Not Costello Honestly, and Family First Goes Last.

For the Victorian Senate, I started with the Australian Sex Party ticket, and played with it until it made me happy... ;-) So my ticket looks like:

https://www.belowtheline.org.au/editor.html#vic-GFEDC76543fhjlnokmTSRpqVUabcQPvwxYXON0ZMJLK21BWAzydegirstuIH

Thus, my $2.31 primary senate vote goes to the Australian Sex Party - who are standing up against pretty much everything that I consider very wrong with what's going on in Australian Politics.

The rest of the ticket is scattered around issues parties, and preference flow will no doubt primarily wind up landing on Labor in the middle of my ticket. I've put Conroy towards the bottom of the ticket, but not last.

The switch-over point on my ticket (where I go from numbering in group ticket order because I'm "for", instead of numbering upside down because I'm "against") is at the Lib/Nat coalition ticket, starting at number 36.

Pretty much everyone below that point, including the Lib/Nat coalition, are mostly religious nut cases of one stripe or another that wish to do things that are bad for me and my friends. I have absolutely nothing against religious people, but the groups in politics are truly nut cases who wish to do harm to me and my friends.

Comments

[kraig]

Looking at that link, and judging by other comments I've seen on .auian elections... I can't, for the life of me, figure out how you all vote. Above the line? Below the line? What is this madness? The obvious pages on Wikipedia seem mostly interested in demonstrating compulsory voting arguments. If I understand what I found correctly, you get to put a number in the box next to every candidate in descending order of "I want this person representing me," and you seem to have a ton of candidates. Are you voting for a rep for your region and you have that many possible reps? Or are you ranking all possible representatives? What does 'below the line' mean?

[thorfinn]

Federally (and most States have the same system, just a "level" down) we have two houses of parliament:

1. The house of representatives, which is a composed of members of parliament elected for your local geographic region, divided up approximately by equal chunks of population. This is where legislation is generally introduced first, and it's often referred to as the "lower" house.

2. The Senate, which is considered the "States House". That is composed of a fixed number of 12 Senators for each State (6 states), and 2 for each Terrority (2 territories), and operates as the house of review - legislation is passed "up" to here from the House of Reps to be voted on again, and possibly amended and passed back down. It's often referred to as the "upper" house.

We have no president - the Prime Minister is voted for by the house of reps, which means the party (or coalition of parties) with a majority in the lower house gets to have the Prime Minister.

So, come election time, we have two votes to cast, one for each house.

In both cases, this is a compulsory preferential run-off vote.

The lower house is relatively simple: Whatever parties or independents are running candidates in your local region (electorate) are simply randomly ordered on the ballot paper. You then number all candidates on the ballot paper in order of your preference. If a candidate has 50%+ of the primary vote, they win. If no candidate achieves that, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and their ballots redistributed according to the number 2 preference on those ballots. Repeat until a candidate has 50%+ of the vote and therefore wins. Most parties hand out a sheet with how they would like you to vote near each electoral booth, so if you want to vote according to a party ticket, you simply copy that onto your voting sheet. You can vote whatever preference order you choose to though, including "donkey" (which is just 1-n from top to bottom).

The upper house is a little more complicated - each state has a 50% of senators being voted on at each election (so 6 positions for states), territories have both senators elected each time. However, it is also a preferential run-off election - you cast your preferential vote in the same way, by numbering all candidates in order of your preference, from 1 to however many candidates.

However, as a convenience measure, and because in the bigger states you can have 70-80 candidates on a Senate ticket, each party entering candidates can select in advance a full set of preferences. The senate ballot ticket is then divided by a line. You can choose to simply vote "above the line", putting a single [1] in a party ticket box, and your preferences are then ordered according to the advance declaration of preferences by that party. If you want to vote "below the line", you number every candidate box individually in order of your preference, instead of simply picking a party ticket.

The same process then occurs - candidate with the least votes is "eliminated", and their ballot preferences redistributed amongst remaining candidates. It's a little complicated how state senate preferences flow because there are multiple positions being elected. In the end, the counting process isn't the relevant part.

The point of having the preferential voting is that you list all your candidates in order of your preference, and if your first preference doesn't get up, your vote still counts, because it is redistributed.

The meta point of having compulsory preferential voting is that it generally leads to the "least hated" group(s) being voted in.

This is considered better than other voting systems which often lead to the "most liked" group(s) getting in, because the "least hated" group(s) are more likely to be able to negotiate in good faith with almost everyone.

The "most liked" group(s) often also have significant groups of "haters", so even though they may be able to enact legislation, that will often lead to significant groups of people being very very unhappy with the outcomes, as opposed to merely being mildly-annoyed.

The reference site for all of this is the Australian Electoral Commission: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/index.htm
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/Voting_HOR.htm
http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm

is probably the best links to explain how the ordinary voter ticks their boxes.

In addition a friend of mine created for this election a handy dandy website to help with voting below the line in the senate. Go there to see how the process might work and to see the party tickets: https://belowtheline.org.au/


It all sounds a bit complicated, but it's kind of not actually complicated in practice for each voter. You just decide which parties and independent candidates you like and/or hate based on whatever reasoned or emotional arguments you use to decide these things, and number your preferences accordingly.

[thorfinn]

Incidentally, the thing about the Prime Minister is why we recently had a change of Prime Minister without an election.

The Labor Party, who currently hold the majority of seats in the House of Representatives, decided that the current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was doing a terrible job and would probably cause them to lose the upcoming election... so they held a party vote a couple of months ago and decided to dump him as Prime Minister in favour of one Julia Gillard, who thus became our first female Prime Minister.

For added confusion, the Labor Party is our "left wing/unionist" party, and the Liberal Party is our "right wing/conservative/libertarian" party. Crazy, I know. :-)

[loosechanj]

Is voting for non-major parties as hopeless as it is here in the U.S.?

[thorfinn]

No, not at all. Because we have preferential voting, voting for a minor party is not wasted - even if your candidate doesn't get up, your vote still counts. See my other response for the details about that.

In fact, our Senate often is not controlled by any of the major parties.

In fact one of the "major parties" isn't a party - it's a coalition between the Liberal Party (right wing/conservative/libertarian, and the National Party (farmers).

It's rare for a minor party to win a House of Representatives seat, but it can and does happen, and we can in fact get independents (non party affiliated) winning seats in both houses on occasion too. Right now the Greens have a very strong Senate presence, and we have a few independent Senators from around the country.

The "majors" pay a lot of attention to how the voting preferences fall - because most of the minor parties are "issues" parties, focused around one or another issue or group of issues.

If one of those issues parties or an independent gets into the Senate, the government is going to have to negotiate with those senators to pass any legislation. So it really matters, down here. :-) Voting minors is the correct voter strategy when you have preferential voting.

[kraig]

Sorry for not replying earlier, been a busy week. Thanks for the writeup, most helpful. :)

We can also have PM changes without elections - here, the PM is (almost always) the leader of the ruling party. It's possible to have a PM who wasn't elected by the public at all, in fact, if the ruling party's leader didn't win their riding. I'm a poor historian, but I think if that's happened the situation hasn't lasted long.

Our PM isn't actually our head of state though; that's the Governor General, the Queen's representative. Practically speaking, the GG is appointed by the PM and approved by the Queen.

[thorfinn]

You're in Canada, right? We also have the Governor General, same deal. :-)

The fun situation we have right now is that the vote counting is 80% done, we need to count postals and away votes, because we have a very likely hung parliament, for the first time since 1941. There's a lot of jostling going around whilst we wait for the final numbers to come in and any High Court challenges to get finalised.

The Senate looks like The Greens (environmental/progressive party) will be firmly holding a solid balance of power, legislation will not pass the senate unless it's either supported by both major parties, or the greens plus a major. This is good, but the lower house is going to be real interesting once the next week or two is over and the final counting is done.

[thorfinn]

Oh, and the mysterious unexplained reference to $2.31 in my post? Each primary vote results in a CPI indexed amount of "election funding" to the candidate that receives it, provided that candidate receives at least 4% of the primary vote. So my [1] senate preference will be giving $2.31 to the Australian Sex Party, and my [1] House of Reps preference will give $2.31 to the Greens.