Australia Elects Libertarian-Leaning Senator (By Accident)

LordLucless writes "Australia's Liberal Democratic Party, which describes itself as a classically liberal, free-market libertarian party, has had their candidate for New South Wales elected to the upper house, with roughly double the number of votes they were expecting. In part, this has been attributed to them being placed first on the ballot paper (which is determined by a random process) and similarities in name to one of the major parties, the Liberal Party of Australia."

Comments

Voting "Accident"? I think not.

[DavidClarkeHR]

In the last 30 years, when has the losing party every accepted the loss gracefully?

Sure, the article says "Mr Leyonhjelm accepts his party probably gained votes in error, with voters thinking they were choosing the Liberals." ... but what else is he supposed to say?

When the people make a massive mistake in democracy, it's still their decision to make. Look at the american elections for the last 20 years. Both sides will say the people made mistakes.

Re:Voting "Accident"? I think not.

[Mitchell314]

In the US, the losing presidential candidates tend to concede defeat gracefully. And grace is relative; regularly changing power from one party to another with virtually no violence is unusual in the history of human civilizations.

Re:Voting "Accident"? I think not.

[Anonymous Coward]

regularly changing power from one party to another with virtually no violence is unusual in the history of human civilizations.

That's because the same party (i.e. group of people) stays in power, what changes is the figurehead they give orders to.

Re:Voting "Accident"? I think not.

[Gadget_Guy]

I found the truly scary part is that the Australian Labor Party still got a reasonable amount of the vote. I wonder just how incompetent a party must become in order to be abandoned.

I suspect it is because the Labor government was not as incompetent as some people say. Sure debt is higher than is it was when Labor took power, but they came in just as the GFC was kicking in so they had to start with a big spending initiative to keep the economy going (which worked very well). They also have a policy of building infrastructure (like the NBN) rather than selling it all off (eg privatisation of Telstra).

Where they were incompetent was in allowing an internal power struggle to play out in public. So much attention was paid to the Rudd-Gillard tug of war that even if they ran a perfect government nobody would remember it.

Re:Voting "Accident"? I think not.

[thegarbz]

When the people make a massive mistake in democracy, it's still their decision to make. Look at the american elections for the last 20 years. Both sides will say the people made mistakes.

The American system is different in that voting is voluntary and not quite as complicated. Also there's not a whole host of parties with similar sounding names. If you wanted to vote properly in Australia on the weekend you had to number 110 boxes on a ballot paper about 1 metre wide. I WISH I WAS JOKING!

It took me literally 20min to fill out my ballot paper. I can understand why the vast majority of New South Welshmen would have opened the piece of paper, shouted out "CRIKEY!" then put the number one into the first box with "Liberal" in the title and walked away. Unfortunately the first box with Liberal written in it wasn't the Liberal party.

Good news

[Endovior]

In my experience, you get better government when there are more opinions at the table. The occasional election of people from minor parties (Greens, Pirates, Libertarians, etc...) makes it more likely for there to be objections to the really awful policies that the mainstream politicos try to force through. Even if you don't necessarily agree with what the guys have to say, they're probably a better choice than the typical minions of the expected 'lesser evil'. As such, it's good news when these sorts of guys get in... even if it was possibly 'an accident'.

Re:Austrailians as stupid as Americans?

[WarJolt]

New slashdot poll.
How many hours did you spent researching candidates?
1. 0. I don't vote.
2. 0. I just vote along party lines.
3...5 The rest of the options are probably statistically insignificant anyway so I won't even put them.

Re:Appalling

[yotto]

Any system that lets someone be elected by accident is absolutely appalling. Australia would do well to reevaluate their system so that this doesn't happen in the future.

Politics and national leadership is far too important to be decided by absurd errors.

You know that any system where you ask common people to decide things will allow for stuff to happen by accident, right?

Re:As someone who worked at the elections

[MozeeToby]

Moral of the story is randomly choosing the order of the names on the ballot a single time then using that order on all the ballots doesn't actually accomplish anything.

It's like making a random number generator with a single fair dice roll.

Re:Appalling

[AK Marc]

Any system that lets someone be elected by accident is absolutely appalling.

Yet it was done in the US in 2000 and 2004. "accidental" votes (hanging chads, pregnant chads, etc.) got counted or discarded, affecting the election.

Re:Austrailians as stupid as Americans?

[LordLucless]

I think perhaps the most egregious outcome is the probable election of a WA Senator who received less the 0.25% of the primary vote!

As much as I like exhaustive preferential voting on principle, the time has come to give voters the right to vote optionally preferentially above the line (if not also below it), so that votes are not cast against the voters actual preferences.

I am totally for optional preferences above the line, but I think it's dubious to think of the primary vote as somehow indicative of a party's validity. We have a preferential system for a reason, and that's because first-past-the-post is unrepresentative - it forces the vote into a two-party system.

We need to get people allocating their preferences themselves, not suggesting that preferences are somehow less valid that the primary vote.

Re:As someone who worked at the elections

[aardvarkjoe]

Well, I can't speak for the original poster, but in my book anyone who can't even figure out the name of which candidate they intend to vote for doesn't deserve to have their vote counted.

This is the main reason why I support removing party affiliation from all ballots. If someone can't be bothered to learn the name of the person that they're voting for, then they shouldn't be voting. Increasing voter turnout is only a worthwhile goal if the voters actually have some idea of what they're doing.

alrighty then

[slashmydots]

If anyone was looking for evidence that straight ticket (aka party line) voters aren't so bright, here it is.

Re:Not only by accident...

[LordLucless]

They used the system as it was designed to be used. The major's are just pissed because they intended that it only be them that got to play that game. If you want electoral reform, you need to be elected under the corrupt system before you can vote to change it. Refusing to participate accomplishes nothing.