[AL]
>I believe the electoral reform we insist on should be explicitly
limited
>to PR for the
>House of Representatives. Linking that to changes to the Federal
>structure would only
>give opponents an opportunity to reduce support for that in the smaller
>states.
[AA]
You don't think that we'd only be looking like we're doing half the job?
[AL]
Far less than half. But a popular movement declaring that the current
Parliament is unrepresentative and successfully forcing a major change
in the electoral system would be a real breakthrough from which much
else could flow.
Anything that might make it harder to achieve that breakthrough should
be avoided.
[AL]
>b) A system of ticket voting would be necessary for a House of
>Representatives with 150
>members
[AA]
Pardon my ignorance - what's a system of ticket voting?
[AA]
As in Senate elections where parties register a ticket listing
preferences for
the candidates and more than 95% of voters tick the box for a party
ticket
rather than number the candidate boxes. It would be unfeasible to number
the
boxes for 150 seats among perhaps 2000 candidates in a single national
electorate and equally unfeasible to do so if there were State wide
electorates in larger states. (Ticket voting is already essential for
the Senate and would therefore be essential for House of Representatives
electorates with twice as many representatives and a corresponding
larger number of candidates).
My suggestion was for anyone to be able to register a ticket (e.g.
multiple different orderings recommended by factions and issue oriented
groups as well as parties) and for the ballot paper not to list the
candidates but just have a single box to write down a ticket number.
Additional boxes could be used used for say the 20 tickets that were
registered with the largest numbers of signatures.
The problem is that this would be difficult to explain - as confirmed by
your question.
