DEMOS, that's part of the reason that we have two houses. At the moment with a majority in both, its a sho-in, but for many years prior to the current term, we had governments that had to live with independents/minor parties that controlled the ability to pass legislation. To me that's an ideal situation. Even with the majority the current government has, senators with a concsious can still act up and get issues into the spotlight before being pulled back into party line.

As to education, there should be compulsory schooling on the Australian voting process in say Y10 at highschool. Maybe Y9 to catch the drop-outs, but starting to get too early to have any meaning once voting age is reached. There should be no reason why anyone is allowed to not understand the process. Even when I was at highschool, it gave me the s*#@'s to hear people say "I'm going to vote for John Howard" (insert alternative leader). I went on a personal crusade for a while to try and educate my fellow students about who we actually vote for - I eventually gave up. American TV has a LOT to answer for!

“There seems to be a lot of confusion about how preferential voting works.”

You’re not wrong there freediver! Even those who are really interested battle to get a handle on it. The average voter hasn’t much of a clue and is very often horribly misled in what they believe to be the case.

I’ve just tried to seek clarification from the Australia Electoral Commission helpline regarding the allocation of preferences and what really happens to your vote. They couldn’t tell me! And they couldn’t refer me to anyone who knows.

I rang the office of my local member, Peter Lindsay. His staff couldn’t tell me. They didn’t know!

I looked it up on the AEC website and found the answer.

So the answers are there (http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/count.htm)…….but no one seems to give a hoot about how the system actually works!

Neither politicians nor the AEC seem that interested at all in making the system clear to voters!

“You can really only say you are voting for your first preference and against your last.”

You are not necessarily only voting for your first preference. If you really liked two candidates and put them first and second, you would be perfectly happy if your second choice won. If you really only liked one choice and strongly disliked the rest, you would be very unhappy if your second ranked candidate won. It comes down to where you are happy with your vote ending up.

But yes you are effectively only voting against your last ranked candidate, because it is possible that your vote could end up counting for the second last ranked candidate, as per the example from the Division of McMillan in 1972 on the AEC website. So if you specifically wished to vote against two or more candidates, you might find that your vote ends up counting for one of them.

continued

A system in which there is any chance of your vote counting where you don’t want it to fundamentally undermines democracy and the very purpose of voting.

It comes down to being able to exercise real choice when ranking candidates…which we can do in the optional preferential system that we have in some states, but can’t do in the compulsory preferential system, unless we are happy to rank all candidates and to have our vote count for any of them except the last one, which most thoughtful people certainly aren’t.

“People get upset because they think they are being forced to vote 'for' someone they don't like. This is not true.”

Again, if you only really like one candidate, and strongly don’t want any others to get up…but your chosen candidate is a minor candidate, then your second-ranked or third-ranked ‘choice’ could very likely get your vote. So, depending on how you might like to vote and whether preferences will need to be allocated, you may in effect be forced to vote for someone you don’t like.

And if you don't like any of the candidates, you have no formal channel through which to express it. You are legally obligated to vote for someone you don't want to vote for!

“Your vote only goes to your second preference after your first preference is excluded from the race.”

No. Your vote may not go to your second preference if your first choice wins or if one of the other candidates gets a clear majority (50% +1). But then it could go to your third or fourth preference if no candidate has a clear majority after the first and second rounds of preference allocations.

Freediver you say "Whatever candidate you would most like to win, you rank first". And indeed, that's what most people do. But in most cases, they pick a major party candidate, because they assume (not entirely unreasonably) that the minor parties couldn't possibly handle running the country on their own. The problem is as soon as you put a major party candidate first on your ballot paper, the the rest of your votes are completely wasted.
So I explicitly do not put the candidate I would most like to win 1st, because I want to get the full value of my votes. To do this you have to vote:

[1] Party/parties with policies that you'd like your preferred major party to adopt
[2] Your preferred major party
[3] The other major party
[4] Remaining parties/candidates

(Of course [1] might actually be [1], [2] and [3], but you get the idea. Situation is different for seats with strong independents, which can then be treated like major parties).

"it works to assure labor or liberals control of reps, without the need to consult minority views

Compared with the msot likely alternative for single member electorates (first apst the post), it does the opposite to what you describe.

"A system in which there is any chance of your vote counting where you don’t want it to fundamentally undermines democracy and the very purpose of voting.

But that isn't possible. That is the point I am getting across.

"Again, if you only really like one candidate, and strongly don’t want any others to get up…but your chosen candidate is a minor candidate, then your second-ranked or third-ranked ‘choice’ could very likely get your vote.

That doesn't mean that you vote 'for' them instead of voting for your favourite. Your vote only goes to them in an election where your favourite is no longer participating. it is no loss to your favourite candidate.

"And if you don't like any of the candidates, you have no formal channel through which to express it. You are legally obligated to vote for someone you don't want to vote for!

Wrong. Donkey votes are perfectly legal. And besides, you are not asked to say who you like or dislike, you are asked to rank them in order of preference. This says nothing at all about who you like.

"No. Your vote may not go to your second preference if your first choice wins

This does not contradict the satement you responded to.

Freediver, I wrote;

"A system in which there is any chance of your vote counting where you don’t want it to fundamentally undermines democracy and the very purpose of voting.

And you replied;

“ But that isn't possible. That is the point I am getting across.”

Well…..I’m almost lost for words!! The compulsory preferential system so obviously can make your vote count where you don’t want it to. It is completely beyond my comprehension as to how you can insist that it isn’t so. We’ve apparently reached a total schism on this fundamental point.

“Wrong. Donkey votes are perfectly legal.”

You are confusing a donkey vote with a null or informal vote. A donkey vote is the marking of your ballot paper sequentially from top to bottom. Of course that is legal. But a deliberate null vote is not legal, although you can easily do it without penalty.

“And besides, you are not asked to say who you like or dislike, you are asked to rank them in order of preference. This says nothing at all about who you like.”

Yes, EXACTLY!! This ROTTEN compulsory preferential system COMPELS us to rank all candidates, and for most of us that means ranking two or more that we really don’t like! SURELY, in a real democracy, if we don’t like candidates, then there should be NO WAY that we should be expected to rank them and hence risk our vote counting for one of them! We should be able to leave the boxes next to their names UNMARKED so that there is NO CHANCE of our vote ending up scoring for a candidate where our intent was to vote AGAINST them!

Freediver, I don’t think you’ve ever had anything to say about the optional preferential system. Can you tell us what you think is so bad about it and why it would not serve us better than the compulsory preferential system.