Australian election questions

Factual Questions
1

Hi…Not hailing from Australia, I hope somebody from that end of the ocean can answer some questions I have after reading some newspaper coverage of their national election Saturday.

  1. I understand that the Liberal and National parties, and their predecessors, have a tradition of being election allies. How do they decide which party runs candidates where? Do they run against each other in seats where there is no way that a non-right candidate can get in?

(Don’t the Nationals get tired of not electing their leader as PM, and not getting a chance at the really good cabinet posts?)

  1. A great deal was made of parties suffering from not having other parties “preferences”. I think (do correct me if I am wrong…) that Australia has a preferential voting system, and that the voter ranks his or her preferences like this:

Cecil Adams 1
Slug Signorino 2
Some Doofus 3…etc.

The second, third etc. choices of the bottom candidates are doled out until someone gets a majority.

My question is this: I’m sure that each voters get to fill out their ballot as they like, correct? Perhaps “preferences” come into play for the devoted party voter. If you’re a memmber of, say, the Straight Dope Party, you’ll take the party’s “how to vote” sheet into the booth with you, and vote accordingly. If you really want to hurt a party, you’ll rank them dead last. Is this right?

  1. I saw notations for “informal” votes. Are these ballots spoiled or cast for no-one in order to avoid fines for not voting?

Thanks for your help…

2

The usual way: backstabbing, blackmail, lieing, threats etc. Commonly called consensus. Seriously the National/Country party traditionally got the rural seats and the libs the urban. It just came down to who had the better chance of winning.

Occasionally. They have also occasionally run against each other in seats they could win. It’s been a shaky alliance at times. The Nats are all but dead these days so they basically do what they’re told.

It’s better to get a share of something than all of nothing. Basically the Nats know they can never govern in their own right, or even pick up significant votes without being part of a recognised coalition. As junior partners they used to get some say in policy and at least some ministers (traditionally Primary Industries). Their power has been based on their spoiler ability and their rural support, not on any real degree of popular support.

Yep. At least for the lower house.

Yes.

The actual value of candidate preference distribution is unknown, It’s always assumed to be important but no-one really knows.

It’s illegal to take any written material into the booth. People are assumed to memorise the how o vote cards. Normally only 1, 2 and 3 are actually ranked and emphasised, the rest are donkeyed.

Yep, though in reality anything below four is an equally dead vote.

Yep.

3

It seems you have a pretty good understanding of our system and I don’t want to seem patronising in saying that. First of all, the Nationals’ (formerly known as the Country Party) constituency is in the bush (rural and regional areas). In these areas, it is the National Party that fields the candidate. The Liberals (who are conservatives by Australian standards) take the city seats. Because Australia is one of the most highly urbanised countries in the world, this makes them the senior member of the Co alition. This is how their alliance is referred to. Therefore, to avoid splitting the vote, they never run candidates against each other and it is usually fairly obvious which party should field a candidate in a particular seat.

It seems to me that the Coalition is usually fairly solid and there is less resentment from the Nats than could be expected given their smaller role. It’s understood that without the Libs, they would never have a role in government at all. However, concessions are still made and they do get important Ministry and Cabinet (the important part of the Ministy) positions. John Anderson heads the National Party and is also Deputy Prime Minister. It’s possible that the Nats’ leader is traditionally Deputy PM.

Now, if I wasn’t on shaky ground before, I will be soon. Preferences. In the lower house (party with majority here forms the government) they use preferential voting. When you go to vote, volunteers stand around with campaign leaflets and what are called How to Vote cards. Each party prints a mocked up ballot indicating the way they want you to vote for them to achieve success. Things get really tricky and bitchy here. Usually it is a given that the 2 major parties will tell you to put their oppoment last. Howeve r, there was a case a while ago where the Coalition refused to put One Nation last rather than Labor. This was considered to ne the correct and decent thing to do because One Nation espoused some rather ugly but essentially stupid and pointl ess beliefs. These guys have really withered away as the electorate has come to realise what a bunch of morons they are but at the time, the nation was hysterical about the prospect of them attaining any real power and influence. Think David Duke but less astute and with more inbreeding. This is how the preferences game adds a little drama to the increasingly bland political soapie.

Informal votes are votes that aren’t completed correctly in any way and for any apparent reason. Apathy, stupidity or the p roducts of Carlton and United Breweries.

Now I await the arrival of a better informed doper to tear my explanations to pieces. Please be gentle.ey

4

You don’t have to follow anyone’s how to vote cards. A party may direct preferences, but its supporters don’t have to vote that way. In the Senate though, most people vote “above the line” to avoid filling in all 50 or so numbers. Voting above the line votes your party’s ticket. Contrary to what Gaspode says, you can take how to vote cards into the booth (unless things are different in Queensland).

As for informal votes, the booth where I was scrutineer on Saturday night had about 10 informals out of 400 votes for the House of Reps. Of these, about 3 were blank, 1 had a number repeated (instead of 12345 they had put 12335), 3 had only a first preference shown and 3 featured only a tick or a cross. The other category of informal that you can get is where the voter attempts to identify him or herself. Other writing - even if abusive - is fine as long as the paper shows a clear preference.

5

I’m shocked but pleasantly so by that 10:400 ratio of informal votes. Is that representative of overall voting patterns? May I ask which seat it was for? I’m thinking a working class seat (like the one I proudly reside in) would probably have a higher rat e of informal votes than somewhere like Kooyong.

With regard to Gaspode’s statement about How to Vote cards, I thought I saw people openly take campaign material in but then things are always different in QLD aren’t they? :smiley: {

6

Wierd.
I just checked the AEC website and it appears I’ve been living under a misapprehension for some time.

When I first started voting there was a bin beside the registration desk and if you didn’t request assistance and have a scrutineer explain to you what was on the card and who had produced it etc. you had to throw it in away before voting. Obviously changed at some time.

On a national level we have a grand total of 4.7% informal votes. One in twenty people who bothered to turn up either screwed up or couldn’t be bothered voting. Don’t know how many didn’t turn up yet.
And merasvets since this is GQ and we’re here to dispel ignorance please provide a cite for the ancestral makeup of, oh, three One Nation memebers supporting your claim of inbreeding.

Alo provide cites demonsatrating that the party memebrship are clinically able to be defined as morons.

Also provide cites proving that puting One Nation last was the decent thing to do.

Also provide a cite that support has fallen because people have determined that One Nation mabeship are morons.

You stated all those things as facts in GQ, now back them up.

It’s just a little sanctimonious and egotistical to dismiss One Nation and its as being pointless, ugly, made up entirely of morons and supported only by those who were uninformed or misled.

This is a party that garnered the third highest primary count at the last election, more than the National Party or the Democrats. A party at least 8% of the population voted for. A party that has picked up only 1% less votes than either the nationals or the Democrats at the current election despite the lack of prefences you mentioned and the lack of a coalition agreement. Obviously a fair percentage of this democracy thinks the veiws of the party are relevant, pointed and worthwhile, and that the candiates and membership are intelliegent enough to support. At least as worthwhile as the views of any of the other minor parties.

Please keep the witnessing for GD.

7

Jesus! Ooops. I forgot. No witnessing in this forum. My post really got you frothing at the mouth didn’t it? I can tell by the saliva you started dripping on your keyboard after you started getting stuck into me. Almost faultless spelling and then all of a sudden you just lose it!

Don’t tell me you are a member of One Nation! If so, and if you have siblings, then I think I might have found the three examples you requested in your first rebuttal. :smiley: Cheer up mate, only pulling your leg.

I’ll provide all the cites you requested (cunningly structured as petulant demands) when you give cites for all your statements. The use of backstabbing, threats, blackmail. How about support for your view that the National Party is close to death?

Actually, forget it. I took what you wrote for what it was. Opinion. Scribe seems like an intelligent enough person that he can probably discern for himself where I was being facetious and where my own political views came into the telling. He could have gotten dry fa cts and regulations from any number of sites but these won’t give him a good idea of what the feeling of the country is in regards to politics. You don’t like what I had to say but the fact remains that it is a feeling shared by many other voters in the electorate, and a reason for the decline of Hanson and her party. It wasn’t me saying it was correct and decent to put her last in the preferences, it was the Labor party and liberal editorialists. I was just relating this to illustrate my point regarding the dangers involved with preference deals.

I fully expected to be pulled up on a point of fact and was ready to accept a valid correction but I think your post was a little ridiculous. If there are two or three other posters who believe I was factually incorrect or misleading (and not in the silly, pedantic way you mean) and out of line, I’ll retract the lot and make an apology.y

8

The answers above sound OK to me.

[aside]BTW hawthorne, did your man get up? [/aside]

*Originally posted by Scribe *

The Nationals only contest on their home turf. The Liberals will stand a candidate in every electorate, except those where there is a sitting National member. If the National member is retiring e.g. Tim Fisher in Farrer, a “three cornered” contest is fair game. The Libs tend to pick up these contests. This agreement gets a bit murky when electoral boundaries change.

From the National’s perspective they do get the really good cabinet positions i.e. Trade, Agriculture, Transport. And I don’t think any National/Country Party leader has ever had ambitions to be Prime Minister. Even the old time heavy hitters like “Black Jack” McEwan and Doug Anthony preferred to work behind the scenes rather than being the front man.

9

**Easy now folks. **

On informality, it does vary a fair bit. It was 2.84% in the electorate I was working in, 3.95% in Victoria, 5.02% in Queensland. You can get these numbers from http://election2001.aec.gov.au/night/ Why high in Qld? One reason might be that the state electoral system is optional preferential, so you would expect more people just to vote 1 as they did in relecting Beattie recently. Other reasons for high informal votes:[li]number of candidates on the ballot. In the Senate for Vic, the number is 7.08%, despite the option of voting above the line. People struggle to get to 52 without repeating a number.[]proportion of UK migrants (UK elections require just a tick or cross in one square)[]Proportion of migrants, particulaly non-English speakersUnion electors (most union ballots are by multiple crosses [approval voting])[/li]
As to the issue of whether preferences matter, it’s tricky. Except for about 5 electorates (like the 3-cornered contests and those where independents have a chance) the only thing that matters for the lower house is whether you put the ALP above the Coalition or not. So minor parties’ preferences matter insofar as their voters follow the how-to-vote card, but Coalition and ALP preferences mean nothing. So whether the ALP put One Nation, the Citizen’s Electoral Council or the Coalition last has no effect on the result or the conduct of the count whatsoever. But of course, their is symbolic value in preferences and it does count for the Senate. In the Senate the ALP’s decision in how it ranks the Liberals, PHONP, the Democrats and the Greens could well determine the last Senator in the state.

(In preview) Actually woolly, my man’s a woman. And yes, she got up.

10

Huh? I’ve never heard of this one. not doubting you, but I need some clarification. Does this mean that if I want to vote for Party X according to their how-to-vote, I can’t go to the booth and read for myself that it says “Mark your ballot 2,7,5,1,6,3,4,8”, but I can take an AEC assistant with me, give them the how-to-vote card, and they “assist” me by saying, “They want you to mark your ballot 2,7,5,1,6,3,4,8.”? That seems too weird even for Queensland. Have I got the wrong end of the stick?

11

Hey, Hawthorne mate, SIMULPOST! In a little ol’ Aussie thread, no less. Strewth!

12

My apologies, I was talking generically, not genetically :wink:

It must have been a bit of a buzz, being in the electorate that was the shining light on the night, despite the overall result?

13

A small buzz. I seem to have the knack of campaigning for winners against a backdrop of loss, and I’d rather factored in the win. Just meant I got got depressed half an hour earlier than everyone else. But it was something: the new member is very good and stands a much better chance of holding the seat in 2004 as a consequence of being in opposition.

14

Thanks all.

I see a couple of Australianisms. “Above the fold” means just voting 1 for the candidates of your party and leaving the rest, correct? “Donkeying” means just doing the first few carefully, then filling out the rest at random.

(Hijack begins). Say hawthorne, I would have had to keep an eye on the likes of you :), as I manned a poll for Elections Canada during the last federal election, counting ballots. I have the opposite problem as you do. I have voted for the winning candidate once in eight provincial and federal elections(hijack ends).

Preferential ballots have an interesting history in Canada. They changed history. In British Columbia, they were used in the 1952 and 1953 provincial elections to great effect. This is IIRC…the Liberals and Conservatives had been governing together in a coalition aimed to keep the CCF (the local socialist party) out of power. They decided to bring in preferential voting with the idea that the Liberals would vote second for the Conservatives and vice versa. However, along came the populist conservative Social Credit party to muck up the works.

On election night in 1952, had the votes gone first past the post, the CCF would have won the most seats in a minority government/hung parliament situation. However, once second and third choices kicked in, Social Credit nipped past the CCF 19 seats to 18 and was able to form a minority government.

In 1953, preferential voting gave Social Credit a strong majority and wiped out almost all of the Conservatives voting strength and much of the Liberals voting strength, make them the new “coalition” party. The Socreds then returned to first-past-the-post and governed, except for a 3 year NDP term, until 1991.

All this is just to point out that, IMO, Australia seems to have somewhat stable politics given its voting system.

15

No, I think they assume you can read, I assume it was more along the lines “You are aware that this card has been produced by the Ausralian Labor Party ofr their own pruposes and that they have a vested interest in it and if you follow these instructions you will be doing what the ALP wants?”

Mersavets,

You obviously don’t read too many of my posts, I think I’ve been nominated for a ‘Wally’ ™ for 'Worst Spelling by an Established Doper."

Did you see where I said ‘Seriously’ after the backstabbing comment? That tends to imply that the preceeding comment was a joke.

You want a cite that the Nats are all but dead? No worries mate:

National Party of Australia, primary vote:
1993: 7.17
1996: 8.21%
1998: 5.29%
2001: 5.51%

National Party of Australia, seats held:
1975: 23
1980: 20
1984: 22
1987: 19
1990: 14
1993: 16
1998: 16
2001: 13

The party has lost 23% of its primary vote in the last 8 years (I’m just sorry I couldn’t find figures for how much it’s lost since its heyday in the 70s, around 70% I guess). It’s lost 44% of its seats in the last 25 years and there’s a strong downward trend. That’s good eneough to say that although they’re not dead, they’re all but.

So, I’ve provided my cites, the facts behind my conclusions, are you going to make good on your promise to “provide all the cites you requested when you give cites for all your statements”?

And no, it wasn’t the Labor or Liberal parties syaing those things, it was you. Please don’t try to shift the blame for making unsupported and unsupportable staements. You stated them as facts known to you, not as beliefs held by others, now please either back them up or admit they were unsupported. Now that you’ve reiterated the statement that such facts are the reasons for the decline of One Nation, please back these assertions up with facts or else keep the witnessing over in GQ.

I don’t like what you said mersavets, not for any political reasons but simply because they are they are ignorant and egotistical.