No. They have to actually have financial members and the Australian Electoral Commission audits the membership.
I am a member of the Socialist Equality Party and the AEC ring me up to check that I really exist. I think (not sure though) that they need 500 financial members.
I’m okay with the “WLP” vote getting some bizarre and somewhat random candidates into parliament. Basically, what the WLP voters are mostly saying is “we don’t really give a stuff about either of you two big buggers and we want to punish BOTH of you for being completely crap”. Which, they have.
The changes I’d make to the voting system are:
*Ban How To Vote Cards. Same deal - it’s all about the backroom politics and often parties direct preferences specifically to try to game the system, rather than as any sort of reflection of who they are aligned with politically
The simplest solution is to reduce the number of Senators per state from the current 12 back to the originally allocated number of 10.
That’s not a solution; the problem being discussed is the number of candidates, not the number who actually get the job.
Nitpick: the original number was 6 per state. It was changed to 10 in 1949.
And if you reduce the number of senators, you also have to reduce the number of members of the House of Reps, since the Constitution sets that as twice the numbder of senators.
If you don’t understand the cause of the problem, how the hell do you know what constitues a solution?
The combination of half senate elections and the size of quota because there are 6 spots mean that is mathematically improbable that the majors can take all 6 spots. So because there will always be a free 6th spot it’s an inevitable and direct consequence that there will be this flock of vote harvesting seagulls fighting over the last chip. They might have 1 chance in 10,000 that the combination of a catchy name (and selecting that name is the only policy decision these parties make) and a lucky draw on the ballot paper presents them with a 6 year term in Canberra (or State parliament) and a parliamentary pension. It’s better odds than the lottery, so why not give it a burl?
The Senate can be cleared with a double dissolution election. But then the situation will rebuild over a couple of cycles because the root cause remains.
I have no problem with one hundred genuine single issue micro parties being on a ballot pa[er over a metre long. But these guys aren’t in it for the politics, they are gaming the system. So rather than do something undemocratic that prevents the genuine single issue party from testing support for their issue, remove the reward for simply .
You could also clear the problems by increasing the number of spots to 8 (with the flow-on effect of increasing the number of seats in the HoR), but in a country profoundly overgoverned now, there isn’t anybody whose name wasn’t on one of those senate ballot papers who thinks that a proposal to increase the number of politicians has merit.
Exhausting preferences will prevent “you” as an individual electing a micro party candidate you’ve never heard of. But the final spot is going to be filled whether “your” vote is counted or not.
Point taken. Carelessness on my part.
I think your solution is a good idea. I hate voting above the line because I don’t like feeling like a sheep. But the work involved in filling in (in my case) 82 preferences is ridiculous - though that’s what I did on Saturday - and the chance of making a mistake and making your vote not count is high. And counting ballots where the voter has voted below the line must be a nightmare.
I don’t really care which person from the parties I support gets my first, second etc preference, and so I’m prepared to be a sheep to that extent. As you say, if we could just number above the line we could cut the number of boxes that had to be numbered down massively, while still controlling our own preferences at least between if not within parties.
I don’t really know anything about it and maybe one of the electoral [del]tragics[/del] (;)) historians participating in this thread can fill me in. However I can’t help wondering if the current system was fairly deliberately designed to make it as hard as possible for anyone not wanting to go along with the above-the-line “just give us your proxy and we’ll decide who gets your preferences” system.
Just following on, I guess it’s pretty clear to all what happened?
Labor lost, Krudd retained his seat but stepped down as leader so the party will have internal processes to elect the next leader.
Abbott is now PM with a majority of around 30 seats in the lower house.
Some of the potential new senators look…interesting to say the least:p
For anyone interested in understanding how you can get 1,908 votes, be the 21st most popular party on the ballot in your state and still end up in the Senate, the full counts are here.. After 9 counts Wayne Dropulich was still 21st and headed for elimination but 762 votes being reallocated for the second time saved him.
Pretty weird system that means PUP got the Australian Greens home ahead of Labor in WA and got Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party home ahead of the LIbs and the Sex Party in Victoria.
This was raised by several submissions to the recent Queensland Electoral Reform white paper and the official response was basically “Lol, No.”
I feel pretty much exactly the same way - if I vote for the Silly Party in the Senate, I really don’t care if they pick Jethro Q. Walrustitty or Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel for that seat (assuming they win) as long as it’s a Silly Party senator. But I do want to make sure my vote doesn’t end up with the Very Silly Party or even (quelle horreur!) the Sensible Party somewhere along the line, if I can help it.
I figured it was a holdover from the days when there may have been 20 names at most on the list and many of them were people you were vaguely aware of (perhaps having heard them on that newfangled wireless or read about them in one of those big city newspapers that assayer’s kid was always reading with his high-falutin’ book-learning), and by the time it ballooned to the horror we’ve got now, it was too complicated and politically inexpedient to change it.
Are there any WLPs whose primary platform is to make this change? That way, you get some idea as to how much popular support there is for it.
I’m also surprised there isn’t a significant number of people who give the lowest numbers to their party’s candidates, the highest numbers to the main opposition candidates, and the rest of the numbers to everybody else - you would think more minor party candidates would get elected this way.
I was told at the polling station that if I voted below the line (110 candidates in my state), that I only had to do 90% to have my vote qualify. I’m assuming this is so that if you accidently write number 96 twice, for example, your vote still counts and isn’t thrown out.
But I can’t find any mention of that anywhere. Does anybody know if this is correct information or not? I did vote below the line (always do), and double-checked to make sure there were no errors, but would still be interested in knowing if this is true or not. And I feel sorry for the vote counters - if it was painful numbering them from 1 to 110 when I actually cared about the issue, how painful must it be counting them, when you don’t care about 1 random strangers vote! Poor bastards
The relevant law is section 270 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. A translation of that into English is found in this PDF document. And yes, you only need to get 90% of the numbers below the line correct.
Thanks Giles!
So at least some of the concerns about ‘one tiny mistake’ invalidating your vote should you choose to vote below the line are misplaced, which is good to know
ooooh…that’s a nice site. I was wondering exactly how it went.
Since they haven’t yet counted the below the line votes though, and those are likely to be quite diverse, isn’t the count quite likely to change dramatically at some point?
Also - what’s going on there at step 5 where the SEP distributed its preferences three different ways? I had heard about preference splitting, but I had always thought it just meant for the Reps, the party printed up two equal sets of how-to-vote cards. Are they actually allowed to register any number of different preference allocations for the Senate? Is there a limit?
Yes. Johnston, Bullock and Cash are definitely in (since the Liberal and Labour parties had 2.76 and 1.89 seats just from the first preference votes), but anyone else might be out. At one point Mr. Dropulich was just one step away from being excluded, before receiving 2,467 votes from the Rise Up Australia party. If the below the line votes push things 204 votes in Rise Up Australia’s favour, Dropulich will not be a senator.
I don’t know if there are limits but the SEP had 3 tickets for above the line voting, splitting the vote. They said
The preference flows are here at the AEC site. Unfortunately they are PDFs of the actual ballots. They were far easier to follow online up until the election as they listed the flows in order.
I wonder if this is the right thread? Kevin Rudd has retired from politics www.heraldsun.com.au/news/former-prime-minister-kevin-rudd-calls-shock-end-to-turbulent-career/story-fni0fiyv-1226759371780