Wrong. A complicated voting process makes it harder to vote strategically and Condorcet voting makes it impossible to vote strategically. The opposite of what you said is true. A simple system like First Past the Post means that people need to compromise their principles just to elect their prefered candidate from the two most likely to win, that is strategic voting or 'rigging'. On the other hand, preferential voting and more ideally Condorcet voting allow you to honestly express your preferences for every candidate, regarless of percieved chances of winng.

What I was alluding to in my first post was that we should not sacrifice a good system (preferential) or the chance of a better system (Condorcet) for 5% of the population who forget how to vote or didn't double check to see that they had numbered their preferences wrongly. I believe that such a sacrifice would be to involve any form of optional preferences, which would lead to a cardinal system of voting and thus strategic voting, which is a core criterion that a democratic voting method must prevent.

I'm now posting from London, where I am observing the UK's election, which make my response time a little lagged. Interstingly, the election here does not appear as undemocratic as some in this post suggest.

Now Penekiko, your argument is getting muddled. Optional preferential voting will not necessarily lead to first past the voting. Parties and candidates can still win on preferences, and it will still be in the interests of parties and candidate to encourage voters to give preferences, or not give preferences. It simply provides another otpion.

I get back to my original point. The engineering of results using optional preferential voting is no worse than with compulsory preferential voting. Perhaps Labor has used the system to encourage exhausted preferences at recent Qld elections. But why is that any worse than under compulsory preferences when parties encourage voters to ape their preference tickets and engineer a result.

Optional preferential voting means voters in the end do not have to vote for candidates they do not wish to choose between. I don't see that giving voters the right to vote for the candidates they want and reject shonky candidates is anything other than an improvement to the system.

OK, I am coming around to your way of thinking Antony, it does make sense and I suppose it is only strategic in that people are chasing their honest preferences, which may be no preferences at all for some candidates. I think I have been a little brainwashed by http://www.electionmethods.org/. But I still believe that an optional preferential condorcet voting method would be the best system.

Some questions about this optional system. How would it affect our notion of 'two party prefered', invented by Malcom Mackerras? It would make polling questions more tricky. Would it only require federal government legislation to change? And do you think it will be changed this federal term?

Mr Google reckons that Penekiko has been a Greens candidate. She might be interested to know that optional preference voting would stop Greens getting elected to the lower house (admittedly, Greens rarely are). The Greens would not have won the Cunningham by-election without compulsory preferential voting. In NSW, the majority of voters do not give a full set of preferences when it is optional. Labor would have won the Cunningham by-election easily under optional preferential voting.

Optional preferential voting is a bad undemocratic solution to the problem of unintentional informal voting.

A much better solution is optional preferential voting dressed up as compulsory preferential voting. Under this system, you have laws saying that a valid vote gives a full set of preferences, that how-to-vote cards must show a full set, and that it is an electoral offence to encourage anyone to give less than a full set of preferences. But you also have a law saying that votes are only rejected if absolutely necessary.

If someone just ticks Family First and gives no preferences, then the vote has to be discarded when the Family First preferences are distributed. But if someone just ticks Liberal or Labor and they are the last two candidates left in the contest, there is no reason to reject the vote. This system would massively reduce the informal vote without introducing a capriciously undemocratic optional system that takes us half way to first past the post.

That Blair is a bastard. He could have waited two months so that visiting psephologists could have had a bit of warmth and some Wimbledon strawbs.

With both optional and compulsory preferential voting, approximately 50% of voters end up represented by someone they voted AGAINST.
Such systems are 'representative' in name only.
To be genuinely representative, voters must be represented by someone they voted FOR. Only full proportional representation can meet that criterion.
Of course, full proportional representation is not sufficient for a democratic outcome. The Dutch lower house demonstrates that.
For a democratic outcome, there must also be ongoing accountability of representatives to their constituents.
The idea that genuine democracy can be easy or simple is an illusion.
The acceptance of minority interests never being directly represented in parliament is profoundly anti-democratic.
Why do psephologists in the public media persistently ignore these issues?

Penekiko In any democratic system a degree of compromise with others is unavoidable. Presenting what is the “obviously insurmountable” as a justification for proportional representation is to presume the degree of compromise is diminished under proportional representation. When it is clear compromise will not be diminished you still end up with a number of elected individuals under a complicated and questionable quagmire versus a clean and clear FPP process.

The difference between first past post versus proportional representation is

FPP = the representative is responsible to a defined electorate who can then hold their representative to some degree of accountability

Prop Rep = the representative is responsible to some party machine who first selects and decides who will be offered for public consumption, after due process and appropriate branch stacking has intervened to ensure the interests of the party machine is entrenched in any future decisions the representative may need to consider.

Similar to Antony Green, I have participated in the UK FPP and consider it, after comparison to the three ring circus of second preference deals and skulduggery, to be a superior process simply because it is simple, understandable and unambiguous.

To quote dear Baroness Thatcher regarding ‘consensus’ and applying it to its electoral voting equivalent, “proportional representation” –
“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.” – such is the outcome of proportional representation – the representative who seems least objectionable – not the best person for the job

Aker – for reasons of the above, regardless of your pursuit for the perfect, it will not and should never happen – since your desired outcome would result in the elected representative being divorced and devoid of all responsibility or accountability to any electorate.

To put it simply - we are all minorities of one - so why should some "minority interests" be accommodated at the obvious expense of the "majority interests"?