Ludwig,

Thats my point, that we seem to be heading the French path with one vision and voters should chose between 'pro' and anti.

At my work, if we decide to get a contractor to do a $50K-100K piece of work, I check their references and they are subject to strict inteviewing process. Once they are in, they are managed on weekly milestones to ensure they deliver.

Should there be a process to qualify MPs and candidates for their job. How do we benchmark politicians performance against promises, action and budget?

Not sure if there is an answer, maybe communities of interest interview and a rating card. I am still thinking but would love to hear some ideas.

Hi CJ Morgan,

I like the greens but I wouldn't go as far as saying they have an alternative vision and policy. They are a good 'tilting' vote though.

Boaz,

I am scratching my head. How on earth did the election conversation become a Jesus conversation:-) ? You are incurable but we luv ya.

Peace,

CJ, your vote would still end up counting for one of the major parties, whichever one you put highest on the ticket. If you put them last and second last, your vote would count for the clowns you put second last, unless the greens were actually one of the two highest scoring candidates in your seat.

Thus, voting for a minor candidate doesn’t fix anything… in the vast majority of seats.

You presumably would be voting green because you specifically don’t want to vote for either major party. You could hardly say; “it certainly fixes the problem for me” if you then willingly allocate your preferences to one of the major parties. But you are forced to allocate preferences. So in your case the compulsory preferential system will directly steel your vote and make it count where you don’t want it to.

Besides, as far as I’m concerned, neither the Greens nor the Democrats deserve my vote either.

Indeed, Ludwig - but in my electorate it wouldn't make any kind of difference in practice - the long serving Nationals seat warmer invariably wins with more than 60% of the primary vote anyway. Of course, the Senate is a different question.

Your only option is to null your House of Reps vote, mine is to quixotically squander it.

Are you intending to vote informally in the Senate as well as the Hous of Reps?

There is nothing stopping you from voting for a minor party. Rank the two major ones last if you must. You should be able to tell enough difference between them to put one ahead of the other.

Freediver, CJ Morgan and Ludwig,

OK, you brought a very interesting challenge to the system in the last 3 posts:

- What happens if a minor party (ie Greens) would be a favourable party on top of two main ones? How would it govern or scale?

Actually from what I can see in country areas at least, its more likely an independent will win over a minor party. There are more and more indpendents running in country electorates, and many are winning, at both state and fed levels. From what I can gather its mostly because of a large disatisfaction with the Nationals, who would have traditionally held all of these seats. The Nationals were always traditionally much closer to the centre of politics than the Libs, and the revolt against them in the electorate has much to do with them basically being the same as the Libs. Most country people still cant bring themselves Left enough to vote Labor, so they instead turn to independents who echo much of the "old" national party values. I am actually quite interested to see how the Nat's fare in this election in NSW, particularly given there have been some big electorate boundary changes.