A How-To Website For Australian Voters

Twisted64 writes "If you're interested in voting below the line in the upcoming federal election in Australia, but don't want to waste time in the booth individually ranking up to 76 candidates (for the unfortunates in New South Wales), then Cameron McCormack's website may have what you need. The website allows voters to set their preferences beforehand, dragging and dropping Stephen Conroy at the bottom of the barrel and thrusting the Sex Party into pole position (as an utterly random example). Once preferences are set, the site can generate a PDF to be printed and taken to the booth." (More, below.) "There's also something to educate the above-the-line voters — if you check the box for your single party of choice, the site will fill out the effective party preferences below the line. This shows that a vote for The Climate Sceptics hands first preferences to Family First, and so on.

The website claims not to harvest voting information, but for the paranoid it recommends printing out a blank ballot sheet and copying your preferences from the screen. There is also a button to set up a donkey vote when in the ballot view, in case you have trouble counting from 1 to 100."

Comments

It's actually 84

[srjh]

There are actually 84 Senate candidates in NSW.

I think the system is obviously pretty broken if the only choices are to number each of 84 boxes, go with a pre-decided list that the main parties have reached through secret preference deals, or have your vote rejected. At the moment you have to choose between two evils, and it has been made as inconvenient as possible for you to even make that choice rather than the party powerbrokers.

Group voting tickets are just undemocratic. Preferential voting should only go as far as the voter wants - if your vote doesn't get distributed to any of your preferences, it should be discarded.

Re:It's actually 84

[srjh]

No, if you vote above the line, you're not selecting only one candidate, you're picking their pre-submitted preference list instead of your own. That's the main problem - the voters don't make the choice directly and the parties make deals or tactical decisions with their pre-submitted tickets. Slashdot's favourite Senator Stephen Conroy tried his luck at tactical voting in 2004 and accidentally elected a fundamentalist nutjob who got about 1% of the primary vote because they were trying to hold off a challenge from the Greens (when most Labor voters would have preferenced Greens first).

A preference system is better than a first-past-the-post system, but the current system isn't perfect. Most Australian states currently go with optional preferential voting, which should be the way to go.

Re:It's actually 84

[BluBrick]

Only attendance is compulsory, you don't actually have to cast a valid ballot.

You don't even have to cast a ballot at all. I have refused to even take the ballot papers on more than one occasion. When the ballot papers are offered, I simply inform the scutineers that I have fulfilled my obligation merely by having my name crossed off the electoral roll - and walk out. They don't like it, but there's nothing they can do about it.

Re:It's actually 84

[TapeCutter]

Family First is a far-right "Christian" party, their only senator is a self-confessed creationist, he became a vocal AGW "skeptic" after being fetted by US lobbyists such as the Hearland Institute and CEI. He is also a key proponent behind the intenet filter, at least he was until Conroy put his anti-abortion sponsers on the proposed blacklist.

Re:Slashdotted

[dropbearsrus]

Cameron, love the site, it's a great tool. I managed to have a look before it was nuked.

The AEC should have thought of this a long time ago!

Now all we need is some information on those dozens of independent candidates. Beyond their name. Google could only help me with a few of them.

Re:Another Below the Line helper

[Cameron McCormack]

Yes, this site's good too. Had I known it existed a few weeks ago when I started working on mine I may not have bothered. ;)