Why your vote will be given to a major party.
How to complete the ballot paper To work out who will win the election, the number '1' votes for each candidate in each electorate is counted. Any candidate who receives more than 50% of first preferences (ie. an absolute majority) is immediately elected. But if, as is often the case, no candidate receives more than 50%, then the candidate who received the lowest number of first preferences is eliminated and votes for that person are distributed to the remaining candidates according to the second preference of those who voted for him or her. If this redistribution of votes still does not result in a candidate with over 50% of votes, then once again the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and the votes for that candidate are transferred (at this point in the distribution, the votes of those who voted '1' for the very first candidate to be eliminated will be distributed according to their 3rd preference). This process is continued until there is a candidate with over 50% of the votes. (see the Australian Electoral Commission website for more information on the vote counting process.) Since the minority groups are inevitably eliminated one by one during the counting process, all votes for them will at one point or another be transferred to one of the major parties. Only if you vote "1" for a majority party does your vote remain with the candidate of your choice.There is just no way that voters under this system can cast a formal vote while refusing to give a "preference" for a candidate that they do not wish to represent them. Of course, this would not bother you if you are a supporter of a major party because in this case your vote will not be passed on to any of the other candidates you were required to express a preference for. However those of us who do not want either the ALP or the Liberals to represent us should not have to vote for them!
Of the 150 seats in the current House of Representatives all but three
are occupied by either Labour or the Coalition (ie the Liberals/Nationals/Country Party). The three "independents" are all from
country electorates, have strong connections with the coalition parties
- and are essentially proxies for them. At the last election approximately 15% of voters didn't give their first preferences to the person elected, but their votes were passed on to them anyway.
A paradox arises in a three way contest
Example of a context between 3 parties of comparable strength: 24,000 first prefs. for ALP with 2nd pref. to Greens and 3rd to Liberals 21,000 to Greens with 2nd pref. to ALP and 3rd to Liberals 19,000 to Liberals with 2nd pref. to Greens and 3rd to Liberals
In this case the Liberals, having the least number of votes, would be eliminated first - so the Greens get the 19,000 votes that would have gone to the Liberals, bringing the Greens total to 40,000. Therefore the Greens win, even though they got less first preferences. However... if 3000 ALP voters had realised how the system works and decided to give the Liberals their first preference (ie. they voted Liberal) then (even if they had put their own party third!) they would have assured an ALP victory !
So under this system it can make electoral sense to vote "1" for the candidate you want to defeat.
This sort of voting system leads itself to wheeling and dealing around preference deals and "tactical voting" ploys. This is the outcome of an indirect and opaque voting process which is unable to produce a parliament that is directly chosen by the people. ____________
For the philosophically inclined - a link to "The Voting Paradox"
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