I'm glad my interests fit and I take your point about general disillusionment since labor and liberal (I like to call them laberals) parties are so entrenched.
But the next federal election is not so far away. I'd like to air my views and hopefully persuade folks there is some merit in them.
As I see it the Neither campaign has the following structural problems.
1. It is pitched to individuals.
2. It is focussed on an issue that is not related to dinner on
the table or other things that get people upset and therefore is only ever
going to be important to a few.
3. A 1-2-3-3-3 vote destroys most of the potential value of a
vote (more later)
4. Ignores that whilst labor and liberal parties might be nearly
omnipotent, their individual candidates are very vulnerable in the House
of Reps and that is the way to hurt them.
Last point first. Only 57 labor and liberal party Members of Parliament can withstand a 10% swing against them as individuals. The remaining 84 labor and liberal Members of Parliament would take a holiday on the dole queue if they each had a 10% swing against them.
And it only takes 5% of electors to produce a 10% swing because a changing vote counts twice. It is one vote less for the incumbent and one vote more for the opponent. That is where a 1-2-3-3-3 vote loses power. It is only one vote less. It only counts once. (Note there is a simplistic assumption that the 5% are all changing their voting direction. In reality it is probably good.)
Technically it is possible for 5% of the Australian Electors to kick out of office 84 labor and liberal MHRs (based on the last election results). That is a high degree of vulnerability. It is a lot of leverage for 5% of the votes. It is a lot of power for 5% - forget the Senate. Sure they would be replaced with a new batch of 84 labor and liberal MPs and the liberal/labor parties would still be supreme but the laberals would be badly hurt and destabilished.
This could be achieved by getting the electors to direct their vote AGAINST their sitting labor/liberal member. If 5% do so then there will be 84 labor/liberal ex-MPs gnashing their teeth. Even 2% of the vote directed against the sitting member would unseat 34 of the laberal bastards. In contrast, to have the same effect, you would need to have 10-20% of the vote going 1-2-3-3-3 to minor parties.
What are the chances of this happening? Bugger all. Because 5% of the vote is a lot of people to convince without a lot of money. And the issue is not dinner related. Electoral systems will never be a populist issue.
But the point is that there is no need to directly convince 5% of the people to vote a particular way. At the last election the 22% of the national primary vote went to minor parties. If minor parties could be persuaded to direct their preferences in an appropriate way then potentially up to 22% of the vote could go to unseating incumbent labor and liberal MPs.
As a for instance take One Nation. You may not like One Nation's ideas but the liberal and labor parties declared war on One Nation so it possibly does not feel kindly disposed to either of them. Perhaps One Nation could be persuaded to direct the preferences of its votes against the sitting labor/liberal member in order to deliberately unseat them and damage it's enemies.
What would happen? Well One Nation retains about 4-5% of the vote so there would be a serious threat. Newspapers would rail about it and generate a lot of publicity on electoral systems. Labor and Liberal parties would be scared. A lot of ordinary Australians would enjoy that and perhaps be motivated to kick the laberals in the balls just for the fun of having a bit of revenge.
Now if other minor parties could be persuaded to join in the labor and liberal parties would be up shit creek. Each minor parties vote would reinforce each others against the labor and liberal parties. The threat of it would improve their negotiating position.
I think we would find the electoral system changed very quickly. Probably to multi-member electorates which would be less vulnerable to the strategy.
The key to electoral change is make the current arrangement hurt the liberal and labor parties. Once electoral change is on their agenda it becomes possible.
The key to that is to lobby and to find reasons to persuade minor parties not to be part of the vote catchment area for labor and liberal by doing preference deals. There wouldn't seem to be a great deal of value in that for minor parties anyway. It just seems to be a convention that it is done.
OK so this might not be easy. But I'd say it is a lot more likely then for a small group to persuade enough individual Australian Electors to make a difference without fistfulls of money.
I would like peoples thoughts on how this strategy might be achieved. A point is that the strategy applies to any single member electoral system so there is no need to limit the scope to Australia.
Cheers everybody,
Ric
Brian Jenkins wrote:
Welcome, Ric.Yes, your interests fit the original direction of the Neither list.
However, any public list can only reflect the views and disciplines of
those who contribute to it - and, as you imply, there's very little of
interest in Neither at present.OK, so there's a general disillusion about politics and electoral
matters. Esoteric spoutings of discontent are filling the vacuum. But,
don't despair - Rome wasn't built in a day!Regards
Brian Jenkins-----Original Message-----
From: rtechow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Brian Jenkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Neither <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Monday, 22 November 1999 22:37
Subject: Re: Direct democracy proposal|Hi everyone,
|
|I've just joined this email list. I've seen some of the emails from
the start of
|langer's Neither campaign and seen some the past two weeks.
|
|Would somebody be kind enough to re-state Neither's objectives and
stratgegies for
|acheiving those objectives?
|
|Truth is I haven't seen much direction in recent emails.
|
|My objectives are that I want to screw the guts out of the labor and
liberal parties by
|breaking the electoral system we've got whereby
|
|1. Electors have to vote
|2. Electors have to vote liberal or labor as they must, at a minimum,
give a second last
|preference to either a liberal or labor candidate.
|
|Does that fit?
|
|Cheers
|
|Ric Techow----------------------------------------------------------------
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