[EM] Election day in Australia
robert bristow-johnson
rbj at audioimagination.com
Sat May 3 13:11:36 PDT 2025
I've never understood, in a free society, the compulsory voting requirement. I also don't understand that for our city councilors, unless they recuse themselves.One *should* be allowed to be neutral or even ignorant of the alternatives in a choice and abstain to vote. It's our right to not take a position on an issue just as much as it's our right to take any position on the same issue.Voters should be allowed to rank as many (as space permits, there might be a limit of 5 or 6 levels of ranking) or as few candidates as they want. And voters should be able to equally rank as many candidates as they want. Of course, all unranked candidates are tied for last place on that voter's ballot.And our votes must count equally. Hence Condorcet for single-winner RCV elections.Powered by Cricket Wireless------ Original message------From: Chris Benham via Election-MethodsDate: Sat, May 3, 2025 10:25To: Etjon Basha;Cc: EM;Kevin Venzke;Forest Simmons;Subject:Re: [EM] Election day in Austra
lia
Etjon,
There is no concept of "approval" in STV. But from my point of
view, no problem allowing voters to rank or truncate as much as
they like (especially in the single-winner case).
But I think the official thinking is that compulsory preferences
are in the "spirit" of compulsory voting. Since everyone has to
obey the laws passed by the legislators and the government will
(very likely)be formed by one or another major party, then the
government is more legitimate if everyone is coerced/cajoled into
expressing a preference for one of the major parties over
another. If people could show up and just bullet-vote for
"nobody", what is the point of them voting? And if there is no
point in them voting then how can we justify forcing them to
vote? (Still possible in my opinion but maybe more difficult.)
What I consulted to help decide how I would vote:
https://www.buildaballot.org.au/electorates/sturt
On 3/05/2025 11:09 pm, Etjon Basha
wrote:
A bit of a bother, especially the 12 on the Senate
side. Showing my ignorance here, but what issue would there be
in allowing voters (who, in this particular case, have to show
up on pains of a fine) to rank as many of as few as they like,
and show approval by proxy that way? Exhausted votes? So what?
On Sat, 3 May 2025, 11:33 pm
Chris Benham via Election-Methods, <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
wrote:
The "Leader of the Opposition" (the leader of the
parliamentary Liberal Party, Peter Dutton ) has conceded
defeat. So the Labor federal government stays in power
and the current Prime Minister keeps his job.
I was compelled to vote today, and if I wanted to have my
vote counted (and possibly affect the result) I had to
strictly rank all seven candidates for the single-member
district I live in (in the state of South Australia) for
a seat in the House of Representatives.
I dislike compulsory preferences, but I don't notice
anyone else complaining about them. I consider them are
far lesser evil than any limitation on the number of
candidates a voter can rank, as happens in some parts of
the world that use some version of Hare/IRV.
The GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) effect of compulsory
full-ranking is much lower with Hare than it would be with
a Condorcet method or Borda. And the days when most of
the voters had an FPP mindset and the way you vote for
party X is to blindly follow X's "how-to-vote card" handed
to you by a volunteer as you enter the polling station
are mostly over (or at least have receded a lot). So is
there is less of the effect of transferring some power
from voters to small parties whose candidates get
eliminated.
As well I voted among 39 candidates to fill six vacancies
for the Senate, using STV-PR (semi-corrupted into a sort
of fixed List PR). The candidates were in 16 party groups
plus one "Ungrouped" group. Each group had a least two
candidates and at most four (but I assume five and six are
allowed). I could either ignore the groups and number at
least 12 candidates, or I could ignore the individual
candidates and vote "above the line" and number at least
6 groups.
Australia has a "Westminster" style parliamentary system
and the house of parliament on which the government is
based is elected using single-member districts. The
election campaigns tend to be quasi-presidential with a
lot of focus on which leader of one of the two major
parties voters want to be Prime Minister and much less on
individual local candidates.
One way I think this can be undemocratic is if the leader
of the winning party fails to keep his seat. Peter Dutton
I gather is not completely safe in his seat. It could have
happened that a majority of voters voted Liberal because
they wanted Peter Dutton to be Prime Minister but were
denied just because the voters in his district rejected
him. So then the PM would be a Liberal MP elected by the
Liberal MPs to be the new leader of the parliamentary
Liberal party, someone the majority of voters may dislike
or know little or nothing about.
The leader of a major party is obviously far less likely
to lose his seat in a multi-member district using PR. And
that problem can't exist in a system where the head of the
government is directly elected.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/peter-dutton-losing-dickson-coalition-leadership/105247916
In
short:
Peter
Dutton will become the first federal leader of an
opposition to lose his own seat.
Mr
Dutton has conceded he has lost Dickson.
What's
next?
The
Liberal Party will have to search for a new leader.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/act-election-results-senate-house-of-representatives-2025/105244060
"I
think we've seen across the country independents doing
well … some who haven't quite won a seat but have made a
seat marginal for the first time, and I think that's
more and more people wanting a different kind of
politics in Australia," Mr Pocock said.
Chris B.
On 3/05/2025 11:38 am, Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods
wrote:
Hi folks,
Australia is holding an election now. Rumor has it (or should I say
"rumour has it") that these are the best places to track the
Australian election results:
* https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025
* https://results.aec.gov.au/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Australian_federal_election
Anyone got other reliable sites to track in real-time? If (by the
time you read this), the important elections have all been decided,
I'm curious to know if you have an opinion on the results (especially
an informed opinion). The math on this one should be interesting...
Rob
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