The Forum > Article Comments > Diminishing democracy: the Australian senate changes > Comments
Diminishing democracy: the Australian senate changes : Comments
By Binoy Kampmark, published 7/3/2016Fruit salad selections to the upper house are made because of an assortment of extraordinary preference swaps and a system known as 'voting above the line'.
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What they should do instead is keep the current system with one minor change to greatly reduce the value of preference deals: allow people to number as many boxes above the line as they want to. So if they number one box, it will be distributed as now. If they number six boxes, it will be distributed according to the voter's preference but if the vote reaches the end of those preferences before all senate seats are filled, any furhter distribution will be done according to their number one group's voting ticket. And if they fill in all the boxes, it will be distributed entirly according to the voter's own preferences, exactly as it would be if they'd voted below the line (theoretically there'd be a difference if the final choice came down to two below the line only candidates, but that's virtually impossible).
Party deals may be undesirable, but they're unavoidable (unless we want to ban How To Vote cards) and they're nowhere near as bad as destroying the value of votes.