runner,

It's cute how you think the trappings of religion ("doctrines", "high priests") are derogatory terms. :-)

And if you really believe God sent bushfires and floods in retribution for policy and speeches by Mr Rudd, then I'm afraid there's no point in engaging with your further... we're operating in different planes of existence, my spooky little friend.

Take care!

Jimmy

you obviously chose to misrepresent my post. Standard practice for those in denial.

Rhian,

Why shouldn’t 2-5 per cent of the vote be “enough to get a senator elected”? It has been enough for at least 64 years, and no one who understands the single transferable vote system that we use could possibly object to it.

Stephen Conroy of the ALP (with 780 votes or 0.03 per cent), Julian McGauran of the National Party (with 1190 or 0.04 per cent) and Judith Troeth of the Liberal Party (with 829 or 0.03 per cent) were all elected in 2004 (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/) yet no one objected to those three getting into the Senate on preferences. Bridget McKenzie of the National Party was elected in 2010 from an initial 1045 votes (or 0.03 per cent of the vote). No one objected to that. The fact that their preferences came from within their own group is irrelevant. The single transferable vote is designed to elect individuals, as required by Section 7 of the Constitution, which states senators must be “directly” elected. Under STV, all votes are equal. The vote of someone who supports a minor candidate is not of less value than the vote of someone who supports a major candidate. That voter is entitled to have his or her vote remain in the count until the end. To exclude it or discount it because it went to a minor party candidate is the antithesis of democracy

It is also an infringement of the democratic rights of other voters to have candidates excluded because they fall below a certain threshold as those other voters may prefer them to others allowed to remain in the race and yet would be denied the right to have their true preferences counted. Once candidates with quotas are elected and their surplus votes distributed, the process is a contest to reach a quota of 14.3 per cent (just as in single-member seats the contest is to reach 50 per cent plus one). The candidates are ranked from the highest to lowest in votes and the lowest is eliminated because, obviously, the lowest has the least support. The votes of the lowest then move to their next choice. This may mean that the second-lowest jumps ahead of the third-lowest, which is telling us that the originally third-lowest actually has more support than the originally second-lowest. To eliminate the second-lowest because of an arbitrary threshold would thus distort the result.

There would be nothing undemocratic even for a person to win a seat from an initial zero per cent. No one wins a Senate seat until they reach a quota – 14.3 per cent for everyone. The vote they start on is immaterial, as is whether or not they get their preferences from their own party or another one. The micro-parties got around 20 per cent of the vote in every state, so it is perfectly democratic that they end up with a senator from every state. If they had scored 5 per cent in total, no number of preference swaps would have seen any of them elected.

Chris C

I would agree with you if the senate voting system allocated votes in a way that reflects voters’ preferences. But it clearly doesn’t. The great majority of people vote above the line. For these voters, even the ordering of candidates within the larger parties is at the whim of party bureaucracies, which is why for example popular and competent senators so often lose out to party hacks. I very much doubt that more than a tiny fraction of voters bothers to check the way their preferences are allocated, let alone endorses it.

I’m happy with a system that delivers a seat to a minor party that attracts hardly any first preferences so long as it really is a lot of people’s second or third choice. But from what I can see there is almost zero relationship between the distribution of preferences among minor parties and the actual preferences of voters, except for the rare tragics like me that vote below the line . That cannot be democratic.

Rhian,

People choose to vote above the line and thus to follow the preference allocation of their chosen party. If they do not wish to do so, they may vote below the line. I accept that some people are put off doing this because they fear they may make a mistake in numbering 110 candidates, so I think we ought to make preferences below the line optional after, say, the first 20, but I do not have a problem with above-the-line votes.

I have said a lot more at http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2013/09/25/senate-call-of-the-board/?comment_page=6/#comments (Post 288).