<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
James Gilmour,<br>
You wrote (answering a question from Alex Small about PR in Australia)
on Sun.Aug.29:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Alex Small > Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 9:34 PM
><i> Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that people
</i>><i> have the option of voting either their own preference order,
</i>><i> or else a preference order that a party decided upon in
</i>><i> advance.
</i>
This is correct, but the overwhelming majority of voters take the party option - for reasons
explained in response to your next comment.
><i> I was under the impression that it was a response
</i>><i> to the complexity of the system.
</i>
Yes, but only because the Australians made it complex. They made voting compulsory, so even those
who had no preferences had to participate, under legal penalty. Then they made the voters mark a
preference against every candidate on the paper, else the vote would be declared "informal" (=
invalid) and therefore be rejected. So the Australian complexity arose from two unnecessary and
fundamentally anti-democratic requirements they imposed on the voting system. Add to these, the
desire of the political parties to exert more power over their supporters (to make sure they voted
"the right way") and they had the perfect "justification" to introduce block party voting.</pre>
</blockquote>
CB: I am an Australian citizen/voter, and I strongly disagree that "compulsory
voting" is "fundamentally undemocratic".<br>
What is called "compulsory voting" is in reality just compulsory polling-booth
attendance, and I see it as something which<br>
in an otherwise perfect world might be counted as a miniscule evil, but in
this one it safeguards against potential far greater<br>
evils. This view of mine is near-universal in Australia. It is widely
accepted that voluntary voting would favour the conservative<br>
parties over the Labor party, and on the very rare occasion that someone
proposes voluntary voting, it is seen as a squalid partisan <br>
attempt by the conservatives to gain a permanent unfair advantage.<br>
<br>
I agree with you about compulsory preferences and whats here called "above-
the- line voting" (where the voter just votes for a party).<br>
The worse thing about it is that voter usually doesn't even know how his
preferences are directed. There is the potential for small<br>
fake parties which have no chance of winning a seat, but are set up just
to funnel prefernces to one of the major parties, perhaps not<br>
the one that the voter would expect, or would have voted for if the small
party hadn't been on the ballot. <br>
<br>
Chris Benham<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>