Just to clarify, when Freediver said you could effectively not vote for anyone by way of a "donkey vote" I believe he meant you could vote informally (ie invalidly). A donkey vote, on the other hand, refers to simply distributing your preferences in the order the candidates occur on the ballot form, ie, number them 1 - 5. This differs in that you are casting a valid vote, just without using your brain. If you want to protest the system, voting informally is a much better idea.

Freediver, although you are right that for most practical purposes, it doesn't matter that people are 'forced' to distribute their preferences, is there any sensible reason why people shouldn't be permitted to distribute preferences only as far as they wish to - or indeed not at all if so desired.

If people validly voted by choosing the "none of the above" box wouldn't this give useful data regarding the electorate's disatisfaction with the system? Your idea of voting informally, and while achieving the same direct practical effect (ie not voting for anyone) does prevent such a vote from registering as real voter disapproval of the candidates. Such votes are generally written off as those of people too stupid to understand how to fill in the ballot forms, rather than being genuine protest votes.

Shouldn't we all be favouring changes that enhance voter expression, rather than obscuring deliberate voter choices by mixing them with accidental informal votes?

“So if a voter decided to exercise their choice to fart on the ballot paper rather than writing anything down, that wouldn't be wasted?”

(:>|

If a voter chooses to not vote for any candidate, he/she should be able to…legally. If a voter exercises his/her free choice, then how can their vote possibly be construed as wasted. It is a realistic indication of their position.

If a voter is in any way coerced into voting in a manner that they do not wish to, then the whole principle of voting has been violated. In this case, their vote is worse than wasted – it is a false indication.

This is surely obvious freediver.

“No it hasn't. And they are not forced to do anything.”

I’m not sure you understand compulsory preferential voting. Voters are forced to number every box. Their fundamental democratic right to allocate preferences freely has been denied to them.

Worse than this, if a voter specifically wants to vote against both of the two major candidates/parties, they CAN’T!! !! !!. Their vote will end up counting for one of them! In this instance, they are forced to effectively vote where they specifically don’t want to vote!

I’m sure that if you understood this freediver, you wouldn’t be debating the merits of compulsory preferential (or two-party-preferred) voting.

continued

“If their vote counts for their second last preference, that means that they succeeded in preventing their last preference from getting elected. The voter got what they wanted.”

Ohmygoodness! How many voters do you think would be happy with their vote counting for the candidate/party that they marked second last??

Given that the two major parties are of very similar political doctrine, those who wish to vote for a different approach effectively CAN’T!! !! Sure their vote counts for the Greens, Democrats or whoever in the final weigh-up. But it can’t count for one of these minor entities without also counting for a major candidate, unless a minor party candidate happens to be one of the two major candidates, which is very rare.

“Yes it is.”

No it isn’t (:>/)

“You do not vote for someone you don't want.”

You certainly can be forced to vote for someone you don’t want to vote for, as explained above. Either this, or pass up your vote altogether by making it null. And all you need to do to nullify your vote in the CP system is to miss marking one square, even though your intentions might be perfectly clear.

CP is indefensible, especially when the optional preferential system is well established in some states and obviously works well.

"is there any sensible reason why people shouldn't be permitted to distribute preferences only as far as they wish to

Yes. See the link above. Basically the same argument for voting also applies to ranking all candidates. In practice you only need to rank down to one of the two main candidates, if there are two clear favourites. However given the ignorance among voters of the technical spects of vote counting, it is better that they rank all candidates.

"If people validly voted by choosing the "none of the above" box wouldn't this give useful data regarding the electorate's disatisfaction with the system?

Not in any way I can see. If I was a politician looking at the data, I would just assume it was someone who was too lazy to vote properly or a crank who couldn't be pleased no matter what.

"Your idea of voting informally, and while achieving the same direct practical effect (ie not voting for anyone) does prevent such a vote from registering as real voter disapproval of the candidates.

No it doesn't. Having a 'non of the above' box would not separate the conscientous objectors from the lazy.

"Shouldn't we all be favouring changes that enhance voter expression, rather than obscuring deliberate voter choices by mixing them with accidental informal votes?

Requiring people to rank all candidates enhances voter expression. Just like demanding that they turn up to a polling booth does.

"Their fundamental democratic right to allocate preferences freely has been denied to them.

There is no fundamental democratic right to allocate preferences in any particular way.

"Worse than this, if a voter specifically wants to vote against both of the two major candidates/parties, they CAN’T!! !! !!.

Yes they can. You just put them at the bottom of the list.

"Their vote will end up counting for one of them!

Only when all other options have been exhousted. Their vote still worked against the major canidates to the greatest extent possible.

"Ohmygoodness! How many voters do you think would be happy with their vote counting for the candidate/party that they marked second last??

It only counted to the extent that it was a vote against the last candidate. There is no rational reason for voters to give up this choice.

"Given that the two major parties are of very similar political doctrine, those who wish to vote for a different approach effectively CAN’T!!

Yes they can. It is the popularity of the major candidates, not the voting system that is working against them. The vote still counts against the major parties to the same extent it would under any other system.

"You certainly can be forced to vote for someone you don’t want to vote for, as explained above.

But the explanation was wrong.

Basically, the argument in favour of OPV rests on an incorrect assumption that ranking both major parties last somehow gives them some kind of advantage, or gives a disadvantage to the parties that were ranked above. It doesn't.

Some more problems with OPV:

http://ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1187572706

Using my my own voting practices as an example, I am one of those obnoxious people who insists on determining my preferences all by myself and never, ever, ever, as a matter of principle, allow a party to distribute my preferences.

Unfortunately, whilst reasonably politically informed, I find the upper house ballots in both State and Federal elections usually have in the order of 70 or more candidates. Whilst I usually have some knowledge of 20 or 30 of these, the rest are completely unknown to me.

It seems to me that when faced with a ballot sheet like this, it is unreasonable to expect voters to give informed preferences to every candidate. But nor do voters like myself have an option of giving preferences only to the limit of our knowledge.

A middle ground might be to allow preferences up to a point and then default to the preferences of a particular party (unfortunately the current system doesn't allow this).

Freediver, you said there was no rational reason why a voter would want to give up his right to choose between the last two candidates. Well I think when there are 70 plus candidates on a ballot sheet, a very valid reason to give up the right to a preference vote is that the candidates are completely unknown to you.

Surely you agree with that people shouldn't be expected to give informed preferences for every candidate in a ballot with 70 candidates?