Senate voting

Geoff Lambert, Oct 24

(apologies for bad format)

Interesting stuff floating around about the Senate vote and the Senate
voting systems. Peter's comment (23 Oct) about the lack of understanding
for the preferential system is certainly thereby illustrated.

In Tasmania, I think they have finished counting the Senate and I bet they
will have pressed the button just to see what happens, though it is not
scheduled to happen until Tuesday. There is sufficient BTL vote and
sufficient leakage away from the Tickets in the BTL to see The Greens
elected by a margin of about 2800, it seems. The Progress of Count
sometimes surprises though.

In Queensland, "Something Happened", according to Antony, who expressed
some surprise that One Nation overtook The Nationals (at simulated count
#20 anyway, One Nation having poicked up Pauline's vote by then)- and
attributed it to the counting of a rogue parcel.  Maybe. However the trend
had been that way all week, and just continued during Friday. Probably it
was due to entry of BTLs into the system. By Friday evening, the Nats were
600 behind at the close of counting (8:38 PM every night). On Saturday, it
seems as if mostly Tickets were entered and the Nats regained the lead-by
2000-votes by evening. If the Nats lead One Nation/Pauline, the latter go
out, the preferences diverge to the Libs and Nats, electing Lib3 and Nat1
on a single count. If the Nats fall behind again their cut-up elects the
Libs, whose overflow boosts the Greens. The cut-up of OneNation/Pauline
then pushes The Greens over the line.

In the SMH yesterday, Andrew Stevenson (p30) takes a shot at the Senate
counting system saying, among other things that it was "unlike the standard
preferential system of the lower house". There he goes again. In fact, the
preferential system and counting method is exactly the same, the House
method applies exactly the same principles as the Senate system and, if you
had a Senate election where there was only 1 person to be elected, it would
fall back to being identical to that for the House. The only difference-
and it is a cosmetic one- is that the Senate has Registered Tickets to give
voters a short-hand way of filling in all the many squares.

In the Stevenson article Antony comments on the Registered Tickets system
and the collusion between parties thus: "I know it doesn't meet the legal
definition of corruption, but I certainly think it gets pretty damn close
to the moral definition of it."
 
For my part, I tried to induce The Oz to run the following letter a week or
so ago:

Rorting the Senate

The new Senate may see as many as 4 Senators elected on miniscule votes- as
little as one-fortieth of the usual quota needed for election.

How can this be? Sheer political bastardry by the Coalition, by Labor and
by the Democrats, that's how. Had it arisen through voters filling in their
own preferences by casting Below The Line votes, it would rightly be
regarded as a paragon of democracy and the result would have accurately
reflected the preferences of the populace across the board.

But it won't arise because of that. It will arise because of the
registration of blatantly unfair "Tickets", deliberately designed to knife
The Greens. It will arise because of deals done behind closed doors, in
which Liberals, Labor and Democrats colluded to register Tickets which gave
preferences to minnow parties such as Family First and Liberals for Forests.

The beneficiaries of this largesse rarely have anything in common with the
parties who have been so generous to them. These registered Tickets bear no
resemblance to the wishes and preferences of Liberal, Labor or Democrat
party members nor even of Liberal, Labor or Democrat voters. We know
already that the deals have caused ructions and resignations in the
Democrats and we suspect they may lie behind some of the resignations from
the front bench in the ALP also.

Furthermore, we can see that the voters themselves were disgusted with it
because record numbers have voted Below The Line, moving quickly to direct
their preferences to The Greens. Up to 60% of ALP Below The Line ballots in
Tasmania are doing this. These principled people may yet negate the
machinations of their own parties and see the election of Senators truly
representative of their wishes.

This shameful affair is the repeat of a similar rort that happened in the
1999 NSW State election. In response to that, the NSW Parliament legislated
to ban Registered Tickets and to return to voters their power to direct
where their own preferences went. It is time for the Australian Senate to
do the same.