[EM] Another article on the Australian controversy

[LAYTON Craig]

Mike wrote:

>As I said, that objection implies that Plurality is better than
>rank or approval balloting, but Plurality's corruption problem is
>worse than any crooked how-to-vote card.

I don't think that anyone's suggesting that Plurality is necessarily better
when looking at corruption as a whole, but these are problems that are
specific to preferential voting.

There are solutions to this problem in Australia (ie it's not endemic to
preferential voting per se).  The first (already in place in state elections
in South Australia) is to ban people giving out how to vote cards to take
into the polling booth.  One copy of each party's how to vote card is
encased in glass somewhere in the polling station where everyone can clearly
see it (or in each booth, I'm not sure).  This makes it less likely for
people to use the cards and more likely for people to use their own
preferences.  It also saves many trees, and significantly decreases the
stress of voting (where you have to run a gauntlet of masses of party
people, like David :-), waving how to vote cards in your face, and often,
standing directly in your path pressing how to vote cards into your hand).

Also, abolishing compulsory preferences would help.  The existance of this
provision in Federal law is a bit misguided anyway, and it might be a good
opportunity to lobby to get it removed.  You could place restrictions on
political parties contributing to other parties (or ban it all together).

Compulsory voting makes the problem worse, but it has other advantages, and
I'm a big supporter.