Dear Is Mise,

How about asking people to fill the ballot paper with consecutive prime numbers, or perhaps with a Fibonacci series? This will at least require a slightly higher level of intelligence...

Perhaps the ballot paper should look like:

X+2Y+5Z=45
3X-2Y+2Z=20
5X+3Y-Z=22

Place X in your first-preference box.
Place Y in your second-preference box.
Place Z in your third-preference box.
Place X squared in your fourth-preference box.
place Y squared in your fifth-preference box.
Place Z squared in your sixth-preference box.
Place X cubed in your seventh-preference box.
and so on... Good luck!

Now lets see how the "how to vote" cards will look:

The coalition will know the answers, but due to its strong ego will ask the voters to fill in double those numbers "double the vote to make it stronger!".

Labor will say: "Since we should be the winners, put '1' in our box and '0' in all other boxes".

The greens wouldn't have a clue in algebra, so they would ask Senator Lambie, which will tell them: "Just do as instructed: put the letter 'X' for the greens, 'Y' for labor and 'Z' for the coalition".

As it stands, almost every Australian voter is intelligent enough to write 12 consecutive numbers - most do so from left to right (columns A-L). As a second thought, perhaps using a roulette instead can save us $200,000,000.

Dear Is Mise,

That's the sort of system we would expect to be proposed by an engineer.

But it doesn't take into account the fact that Australia is not a nation any more. People seem to be slow in realising that Australia is now a multicultural country with increasing segregation along lines of race and ethnicity.

I would propose a multicultural electoral system which allows voters to cast their votes along cultural lines. For example, ballot papers could be printed in different languages.

Suse,

"I think this Bill will help weed out most of those mad little political parties that were surely started with a joke!..."

Of course, the crowning irony is that the Greens started out as a "mad little political" party that required other preferences to reach the quota.

As one commentator said, now that they are established, they're pulling up the ladder.

Has anyone taken notice of the expected increase in donkey votes, of many lazy people who will mark 1-6 in columns A-F above the line without even reading the party names?

To correct this, we should have 'trap' columns on both sides of the ballot paper, featuring parties that clearly and obviously do not exist above the line and celebrities of past centuries below. Voting for these should render votes informal.

Poirot, the Greens have been that way for a decade of more, try opening a new party branch and see how you go, they're nothing but Tories on bikes these days.

Poirot, I think a party that forms for environmental issues would surely be less 'mad' than the Pirate Party Australia, The Sex Party, Pauline Hanson One Nation Party, The Shooters and Fishers Party, and Katter's Australian Party?