The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Informal voting - don't blame the voters! > Comments

Informal voting - don't blame the voters! : Comments

By Antony Green, published 13/4/2005

Antony Green argues adopting optional instead of compulsory preferential voting could result in less informal votes.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. All
Parliamentary parties choose their leaders democratically. There is a poll. If no candidate gets an absolute majority, the least favoured candidate is eliminated. Polls continue until there is a winner.

This would be too expensive and time consuming for lower house elections. So we choose from one of four systems. First, there is the UK / USA "first past the post" system. This is easy to understand but is an undemocratic joke. Second, there is compulsory preferential voting. If voters understand the system, it works in the same way as the parliamentary system - the vote in each poll is specified in advance. However, many voters do not understand. Third, there is optional preferential voting. This is nearly as bad as "first past the post". Most voters do not understand that they can disenfranchise themselves by only recording a first vote. Fourth, there is the French system. If no candidate gets an absolute majority, the top two candidates compete again two weeks later. This is not quite the same as the parliamentary system. But it is very close and it is easily understood.

If we want fair lower house elections, we should go French. If we want a fair upper house proportional voting system, we can go whistle. No-one has invented one.

On another point, Antony said that the Greenway informal vote was high because there were 13 candidates. Wrong. In 2001, the informal vote was 6% and the remaining 2PP was 50% Labor, 44% Liberal. In 2004, the informal vote leapt to 11% and the remaining 2PP was 44% Labor and 45% Liberal. The 6% who left Labor went 5% to informal and 1% to Liberal. Five percent of the electorate said, "I'm not voting Liberal and I'm not voting for our (Labor) bloke because he's a (non-practising) Muslim." Their informal votes were prejudiced and deliberate.
Posted by Paul Murphy, Saturday, 16 April 2005 2:09:38 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It is depressing to read "In the end, neither side is likely to offer voters what they would most want, which is the right not to have to vote for candidates they don’t know or don’t care about."
Maybe you're right, Antony. If so, then democracy is an impossible dream.
For democracy to be possible, voters would want to vote for candidates:
1. they know;
2. they care about;
3. who will certainly be their representative in the parliament; and
4. who will be thoroughly accountable to their constituents all of the time, not just on election days [i.e. less than 0.1% of the time].
Why are the issues of proportional representation and accountability so completely ignored by you and your expert colleagues in the media?
Cheers
aker
Posted by aker, Saturday, 16 April 2005 3:22:56 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Nice theory about the informal vote in Greenway Paul, but it is not based on any evidence. I'm mystified how you can be so positive about why 5% of people changed their vote without access to any research on the ballot papers.

I'm old fashioned and believe in evidence based research on this topic. Wait a week or two and read the report by the AEC, who have gone through all the informal votes in Greenway, and every other electorate, and analysed why they were informal.

The Liberal Party in part blame themselves for an overly complex how to vote card in Greenway, caused by trying to put One Nation last. I understand there has also been some rise in deliberate informals in Greenway, something that might back your theory except there aren't enough deliberates to account for it. There was an increase in deliberate informals in most electorates in 2004.

I understand by far the biggest category in Greenway is votes with a single preferences or with numbering errors. The vast majority of these votes were cast for the major parties, so the idea it was an anti-Liberal or anti-Labor protest doesn't quite stack up. It's hardly a protest against the Labor candidate to vote for him and then muck up your preferences.
Posted by Antony Green, Saturday, 16 April 2005 9:52:12 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method thanks Deuc and Antony, this system is really interesting and if you look at the two examples they provide it appears a better system for reaching consensus than preferential voting.

So far we have three systems: compulsory preferential, optional preferential (without and without candidate tickets upper house style) and this condorcet method.

So what is your position on this Antony?
Posted by Penekiko, Saturday, 16 April 2005 2:17:50 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Antony, you are right to say that I should have presented evidence about Greenway informal protest votes. The informal vote rose 0.70% in NSW at the 2004 Federal election. In 42 of the 50 seats, the informal vote moved by less than 2%. One seat recorded a fall in the informal vote of more than 2%. The informal vote in Fowler fell by 3.64%, probably as a result of the reduction in the number of candidates from 11 to 5. Seven seats recorded a rise in the informal vote of more than 2%. The informal vote rose by 2.10% in Mitchell (candidates increased from 8 to 9). It rose by 2.29% in Kingsford-Smith (candidates increased from 6 to 9). It rose by 2.32% in Parramatta (8 to 11). It rose by 2.52% in Paterson (8 to 11), by 2.61% in Warringah (7 to 10), by 3.15% in Dobell (7 to 12), and by 5.04% in Greenway (9 to 14).

Some of the informal voters would have been protestors. There would have been protests against the green rocker in Kingsford Smith, the alleged love rat in Parramatta, and the Christian and (non-practising) Muslim in Greenway. However, the numbers suggest that a couple of extra candidates add at least an extra percentage point to the informal vote.

So, I will half take it back. But 5.04% is startling and I still reckon that half of the new informal voters in Greenway meant it.
Posted by Paul Murphy, Sunday, 17 April 2005 2:10:27 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Glad to hear that electoral reform is slowly moving out of the domain of psepho-nerds like myself and into the public domain, where it belongs.

The fear I have with allowing votes that do not fully express preferences as formal is that it essentially creates the voluntary preferential system by stealth. This is unhealthy for democracy, since it allows for candidates who clearly lack majority support (either through primary votes or the expression of preferences) to be elected. We would be moving toward the deeply problematic first-past-the-post system, which penalises like-minded candidates, throws up counter-intuitive results, and just generally screws around with the voter's intention.
Posted by absharp, Sunday, 17 April 2005 2:26:37 AM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy