A great article.

If we had to vote on a solution to this problem then my vote would be to introduce a system that allowed both:-

Optional preferential voting below the line or
Optional preference voting above the line

I agree with all of Antony's criticisms of the Senate voting system. All of the perversions he describes warrant correction.
However, I disagree with the implication that the perversions in Senate elections are worse than the perversions of House of Representatives elections.
Perhaps the worst aspect of PR-STV elections mentioned by Antony is the OCCASIONAL election of micro-party candidates with minuscule primary votes, while other minority parties with much larger primary votes remain unrepresented.
This perversion is far less important than the worst perversion of the TPP [Two-Party-Preferred] system of, e.g., the House of Representatives where 100% power is ALWAYS given to a candidate with nowhere near 100% support, and often considerably less than 50% of the primary vote.
The issue of quotas was not addressed by Antony. The quotas for the Senate are about 14.3% for the States, and 33.3% for the Territories. Both of these are large enough to exclude all minority interests from ever being represented.
Even Hare-Clark with 9 members would have quotas too high to allow minority interests representation. Antony's reference to Hare-Clark as "romantic" suggests to me hostility towards allowing minority interests even a chance of representation, let alone a right to representation.
A fully proportional system - where every formal vote counts - would not only be far better, but also far simpler, completely eliminating any need for 'preferences'.

I can only think of voting as now being like playing a pinball machine. One fires the ball into the machine, and after many rebounds, dings, pings, bells and whistles, a score is achieved. Someone could become more expert and can learn how to direct the ball to where they want it to go, but for most people, the score that is achieved is rather random.

The same with voting, because there are so many preference vote deals being made between the candidates, the voter has very little idea of where their vote is going to go, and what score will be achieved.

The Senate should be particularly important in a democracy, as it should operate as a check and balance on any excesses from the House of Representatives. It should operate as an impartial jury, and it would be best that the members of the Senate are as diverse as possible, so that that the Senate eventually becomes impartial as a whole.

How to achieve that diversity is the question. Eliminating preference deals from the Senate is a possibility, together with having only independents in the Senate. At least there would be less necessity for “How to Vote” cards.

I'd like to see a minimum primary vote required for election to the Senate. Every ticket with a primary vote of less than, say, half or a third of a quota is eliminated in the first round and their preferences go to the next ticket remaining in the race.

I can't see how it is democratic that a party with a senate primary vote of 2.2% (Family First in Victoria) can have a candidate elected ahead of a party with 8% (the Greens). A mininum primary quota will end the byzantine system of preference swapping, as the vast majority of minor parties will be eliminated from the senate race straight away.

The real problem with the Senate is that it is supposed to be a state's house but it has become another house for the major parties - plus a few independents thrown in because of proportional representation.

Falcon - talk of Family First getting two per cent compared to the Greens getting 8 per cent may be some what of an injustice but consider the absolute numbers of votes garnered by Senate candidates.

Stephen Fielding may have polled a quarter of the votes of his Greens counterpart in Victoria - but this was still more votes than Bob Brown polled to get elected as a Tasmanian Senator.

In fact the Greens' candidate in Victoria polled four times as many votes as Bob Brown has in two elections - yet Tasmania's huge bias in terms of Senate voting power has Brown elected.

This would not be so bad if Senators were actually representig their state but Bob Brown is a Green's Senator, not a Tasmanian Senator.

Similarly, other senators act in the interests of their party before their state.

t.u.s

A comment on Falcon's post. If you introduce a threshold level below which all parties will be excluded, then you will cause the larger parties to do even more preference swaps because they will know the deal can never be reversed. It will also encourage even more parties with peculiar attractive names to register in a bid to grab preferences. Don't put it past the major parties to create these front parties.

Micro parties could not be elected EXCEPT for ticket voting. Without ticket voting, preferences could not be swapped tightly.

My argument about restricting the number of preferences on registered tickets will have the same outcome, preventing preference harvesting as a tactic for election by micro parties. Allowing voters to give their own preferences in an easier manner will also help this. Both of these tactics will overcome the need to introduce a threshold quota.

My comment about 'romantic' supporters of Hare-Clark refers to the full Hare-Clark system of rotating ballot papers and personal voting. I can't see how this can be made to work in the Senate in large states with huge quotas where all the attention is on lower house candidates