[EM] Australian voting process

[Anthony Duff]

As Forests, says, the "above the line" prxoy voting is only a feature
of the Senate, the PR house.

I agree with James Gilmour the Australian election of federal
senators is a perversion of STV.  The parties do not publicise their
proxy ranking of the candidates, anc consequently, voters don't know
who they are voting for.  There were numerous small parties with
catchy names designed to attract the voter and then to allocate
preferences to whichevev major party secretly
supported/funded/created them.

I don't think that proxy voting should be allowed where it ranks
opponent candidates.  The incentive for running dummy parties is too
great.

I think I even agree further with James, that there should not be any
proxy option, as it comes with such problems as above, and the
benefits are unimportant.

RE: the requirement to rank all candidates, there is no reasonable
case to be made for this.  The instructions on my bollat said that I
had to rank all 78 candidates (for 6 winners).  I didn't even
recognise many of the parties.  I'd suggest that an instruction to
rank at least twice as many candidates as winners (ie. 12), would be
more appropriate, and then to count all votes even if that
instruction is ignored.

I do, however, support the arranging of candidates names into groups
according to party.

 --- Forest W Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu> wrote: 
> As I understand it, voting "above the line" for a party rather than
> 
> ranking the candidates is only a feature of the multi-winner races.
> 
> However in the single winner races, it is common for candidates to 
> publish "candidate cards" which are how-to-vote recommendations
> from 
> the candidates.  It seems that in these elections the vast majority
> of 
> the voters follow these recommendations.

In most seats, the two major parties dominate.  Some ~80% of voters
give first preference to a major party.  Under IRV, if your first
preference goes to one of the top two, your preferences will not even
be read.  Therefore, these ~80% have no reason to fiddle with the
lesser preferences, and they may as well just follow their chosen how
to vote card, as they have to rank every candidate for their vote to
count.

What of the other ~20%?  Apparently they don't necessarily follow how
to vote cards.  I heard one bit of statistics, though I cannot source
it:  "When the Greens direct their preferences to Labor, 77% of
Greens voters do that, when the greens direct their preferences
against Labor, 74% of Greens voters continue to give preferences to
Labor".  In other words: When the preferences are expected to be
counted, the voters don't blindly follow the directions of the party
of their first preference. 


Anthony


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