[DG...] Neither would
do well to press for abolition of the tick-a-box Senate voting system
brought in by the Hawke-Keating government. The pretext for it was
simplicity -- OK, then, allow optional-preferential party by party above
the
line (so that a "1" refers only to that party and not to preferences its
power brokers have allocated) while retaining the option of votiong
optional-preferential below the line.
[AL]
Ok, that's the first plausible development of the existing Neither
policy
for PR that I've seen so far.
Impact is fairly marginal though. Each party nominates more candidates
than it can hope to win so the only votes transferred are the leftover
fraction of a quota. Advantage of this proposal is that it weakens the
power of party machines to negotiate over preferences e.g. Democrats
succeed in getting a full quota depending on how many ALP, Coalition
and other voters give them preference before the Greens and how many
give the Greens a preference before them, rather than on what deals
are negotiated. Likewise if minor parties fail to reach a quota and
are excluded their preferences may top up an extra quota for ALP or
Coalition depending on the actual wishes of those voters rather than
the deals arranged between the parties. (In both cases only to the
extent
that voters choose to ignore "How to Vote Cards" but without the
artificial incentive to follow those cards provided by having to
fill in dozens and dozens of boxes if you don't).
Effect would still be fairly similar to the Party List system of PR used
in European countries with the same big problem that has made
Hare-Clarke
the preferred form of PR in English speaking countries.
Problem is that the parties still get to decide which of their
candidates will be elected
without any direct influence on that by the voters. This strenghtens the
party machines far more than their ability to direct preferences for
OTHER parties. Means
factions have to decide whether to break away from the party completely
rather than first testing the water by competing for more support than
other factions among the voters.
My proposal for single ticket voting as at present but with ANYBODY able
to
register a ticket achieves the same goals as yours plus more. Voters
need
not be restricted to the tickets registered by the party candidates but
can follow any ticket they like e.g. a Democrat then ALP ticket or a
Democrat
then Coalition ticket - with the effect you desire of making the
wheeling
and dealing between Democrats ALP and Coalition less important.
Also allows for "Dion Giles faction of the Democrats", then the other
Democrats
then the Greens, then... whereas your proposal leaves you stuck with
only being
able to vote for the Democrats in the order that they are recommended by
the
party machine.
Advantage of yours is that it is much easier to explain.
However your proposal would work for the present Senate but not for a
single electorate
House of Representatives with 150 seats and possibly 1000 candidates.
Mine enables that with a ballot paper space for voters to write down the
registered
ticket number they support.
Big problem I see is that if we can't offer a system that would work
with a single
electorate for the House then the quotas would still be too high to even
give the
Greens representation so there would be nothing to motivate anybody but
One Nation
and the Democrats to support it - and as you have noted, the Democrats
are more
interested in preference deals so are unlikely to support your proposal.
PS. May try to respond to other parts of your message (and other
messages) later but
it's 4:30am and I'm planning to do less pounding away obsessively all
night, now that
the list seems to have actually "got going".
