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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."
...there's a bit of trick, too:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/22/revealed-the-libertarian-rights-micro-party-links/
In the last 30 years, when has the losing party every accepted the loss gracefully?
... but what else is he supposed to say?
Sure, the article says "Mr Leyonhjelm accepts his party probably gained votes in error, with voters thinking they were choosing the Liberals."
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.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
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'.
Once the count was on and I started to see a few more votes in that pile for the liberal democrats, I knew it was going to take a sizable proportion off the mainstream party in error. Having a look at statistics though, where I was working and surrounding regions had informal vote rates of 12% to 15% (much higher than the national average). It's also a labor party stronghold, which is the party who just got knocked out.
It's also worth pointing out that the particular ballot paper was enormous, over 1m long, 110 candidates for 6 positions, 35 parties and can be very confusing to explain to people who barely speak english, on how to make their vote formal, let alone read the 6.5 point print on who they're voting for.
Moral of the story is, you can't help stupid people, but you can let them to vote... (NB: Australia has compulsory attendance to vote and compulsory preferential voting in federal elections)
#Florida
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.
I spent about 15hrs going through all the various policies from all the senate candidates. It truly was a difficult decision who to put last... and really quite depressing to have parties like the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party, who only got a very small number of primary votes make it through to the senate on preferences.
... wait, what?
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?
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The Australian Labor party is what you'd call a liberal party.
The Australian Liberal party is a centre-right conservative party,
And this Liberal Democratic party is closer to your republicans.
Got it?
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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.
Learn to love Alaska
Election of this candidate was no accident. This is not first-past-the-post voting and the individual did not gain a quota outright. He won because other parties passed their votes to him after they were eliminated. As the LDP candidate points out, the senate voting preference system is open, well documented and the specific preferences are available to the public for weeks before the election. If electors cannot be bothered to vote with their own preferences (an admittedly tedious affair) then they take the parties preferences as published. In this case, there were tight preference deals between the litany of single-issue and minor parties. That minor parties can use that system to their own advantage is neither a surprise nor unexpected. It's equally naive to think the major parties do not play the same game... they are just not as "looney" or "fringe" and less worthy of media sensationalism.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Did you use senate.io? Really great tool.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of voters will not take the 10-15mins it takes to vote below the line, let alone the hours of studying the policies AND the registered preferences of the 45 odd parties vying for election. 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.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
will not take the 10-15mins it takes to vote below the line, let alone the hours of studying the policies AND the registered preferences of the 45 odd parties vying for election.
Que? It took me about ten minutes to classify all of the minor parties on a rough political spectrum, and about two to sort them on senate.io. Then less than five minutes to number all the boxes on Saturday.
Of course, below-the-liners don't even get counted unless there are enough to match the above-the-line minor voters.
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.
Better to eliminate the above the line vote, but allow people to preference for as many below-the-line candidates as they wish. Once they stop (which can be just a [1] for the preferred party-leader) the remainder of their distributed preferences would then flow according to the registered-preferences of their [1] choice. (So that no one is disenfranchised by limiting their vote, only if they deliberately spoil their ballot.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
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.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Reason #1 - Even though it's the opposite side of the globe from me it spreads the ideology and that makes me happy.
Reason #2 - This most likely happened due to Australia mandatory voting policy - which as a Libertarian mandatory anything annoys me - so it sort of proves our point.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
As it was my first time in Australia for an election, I watched on TV. The coverage was completely about the lower house. By the time I quit watching (Rudd's concession speech) I don't think there had been so much as a mention of the fact that senators were being elected also. It was weird and puzzling.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Did you use senate.io? Really great tool.
Nope, I used belowtheline.org.au.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of voters will not take the 10-15mins it takes to vote below the line, let alone the hours of studying the policies AND the registered preferences of the 45 odd parties vying for election. 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!
I *almost* considered voting above the line, but none of the parties put their preferences quite the way I liked them. It must be frustrating for the candidates who did well in the primary votes to be pipped at the post by preference deals.
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 actually think the time has come for the idea of true democracy - where everyone gets to vote in parliament on every thing - a large percentage of the population carries a smart phone and would be able to install an app to vote in federal issues. I think that's what the Senator Online party were aiming for. If the time hasn't come already for this style of democracy, it will soon...
... wait, what?
I actually think the time has come for the idea of true democracy - where everyone gets to vote in parliament on every thing
If the majority of people won't spend 15 minutes sorting out who they want to represent them once every few years, what on earth would be the advantage of giving them a direct vote on every issue?
They'd be voting based on TV soundbites they weren't able to avoid while skipping around the DVR, and the name of the Bill.
You don't have to mark your ballot, and even if you did, that would require them to check your ballots before you dropped it in the box, which they don't do.
You can drop in a blank ballot, draw a penis on it, or whatever you like; if it doesn't follow the rules it's called "informal" and not counted.
What you're describing is still quite common - it's called the donkey vote (numbering the ballot from the top), is a valid vote, and actually gives the top candidates a slight edge.
You don't actually have to put anything in the Ballot - if you were so inclined you could simply sign off your name and put the blank ballot papers straight into the box and nothing would be said.
As a side note: People must dislike the Australian Electoral Commission vote counters because it's not like a politician is ever going to see the penises and expletives they marked their ballots with.
If anyone was looking for evidence that straight ticket (aka party line) voters aren't so bright, here it is.
You need to look up Arrow's impossibility theorem: the problem is unavoidable.
You don't actually have to put anything in the Ballot - if you were so inclined you could simply sign off your name and put the blank ballot papers straight into the box and nothing would be said.
As a side note: People must dislike the Australian Electoral Commission vote counters because it's not like a politician is ever going to see the penises and expletives they marked their ballots with.
As a vote counter I can assure you that during the long and tedious process of counting votes, the pictures of penises and swear words give us a chuckle and lift our spirits.
...there is no sig...
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.
Fuck statistics.
I spent about 4 hours looking over their platforms and fidlling on belowtheline.org.au. Took me 4 minutes in the booth to transcribe all the preferences on the senate ballot, making sure it's not an informal vote.
At 2010 election, I even rated all Labor senators high (but not the highest), except for Conroy with his push for Internet filters, he went straight on the last place.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I don't understand why we don't adopt the same principal that we use for the lower house, where you have the option of numbering all the parties above the line, rather than just voting "1" and relying on their preferences.
That way they would have to hand out senate 'how-to-vote' cards and the layman could override the preferences.
If people had to only number the senate parties from 1 to 15, rather than the individual senators (1 - 82 in QLD this cycle), I'm sure you would find the population that direct their preferences increases from about 2% to 80%.
On a different note, has anyone published results of the question: What percentage of people actually follow the preferences they are given by their selected party's "how-to-vote" card in the lower house?
Two of them bought their seats
One is a rev head
One is a religious nutter
One is a gun nutter
One is a sports nutter
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/senate-balance-of-power---who27s-who/4945390
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I actually think the time has come for the idea of true democracy - where everyone gets to vote in parliament on every thing - a large percentage of the population carries a smart phone and would be able to install an app to vote in federal issues. I think that's what the Senator Online party were aiming for. If the time hasn't come already for this style of democracy, it will soon...
I know you said it, but that is exactly what the Senator Online party does.
http://www.senatoronline.org.au/
I wonder if we could lobby one of the two new 'accidental' senators to adopt this strategy for all bills for which they have no policy or direction from their party (motoring enthusiast party of Victoria and Sports Party of WA - I'm looking at you).
If you don't have any slightest idea who to vote for, then you probably also don't know that voting is not compulsory or that the officials have no right to check your ballot before boxing. Better to tick just some box in order to not take any chances!
The more I think of it, these people are actually rather smart. In a bad situation forced upon them they try to get it over as quickly and safely as possible and move on with their lives. Scanning the ballot beyond the first tick box would be a clear waste of time.
Yeah, because choosing national policy should be done in similar fashion has selecting who wins a karaoke contest.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Using one of the preprint howtovote online systems was definitely the way to go. Previously I'd start at 100 (or whatever) and vote down to 1, putting the totally poisonous parties like Rise Up Australia and coalition at 100 and vote down to those I despised least. But this online system made it easy to lookup the parties and preference them based on that, with no risks of messing up and having to start over.
In this election, I suspect enough *did* vote below the line to warrant their being counted.
The article is incorrect, the senate count is nowhere near final, this result is based on computers predicting the flow of votes from people who voted above the line. Given the amount of preferences, it is entirely possible that another minor party could overtake him (it is however unlikely).
null
It took me two or so hours to decide on my preferences and then I used Belowtheline.org.au to order them. Senate.io is also good though.
FYI given the small margins that some of the preferences were decided by, below the line votes could very well make a difference in this election. For example it could change the order of elimination of one or two minor parties which would change the flow of preferences.
null
Or perhaps selecting the winner of a karaoke competition should be done in a similar manner to choosing national policy? It doesn't sound as bad when you write it that way.
Because the Liberal party is the conservative party, after all. That a conservative would accidentally vote Libertarian because of this naming issue has me almost pissing myself with laughter.
Sorry, but no. There was a question about the 2000 election, but Bush still won when the media conducted their own recounts*. What "controversy" are you referring to in 2004? Or are you just disagreeing with the outcome, again?
Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed
* It's worth pointing out that the hotspot for that controversy about the "chads" took place in a county controlled by Democrats.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
draw a penis on it
That just may count as a vote for the biggest dick on the list. At least it would explain a lot about the outcome of these elections.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Nope. He was edged out by the Motor Enthusiast's Party candidate.
Go Figure. The rights of "hoons" and "petrol-heads" not to get hit by speed cameras, and to be left alone by the police turned out to be more important than whistleblowing on alleged war crimes.
READY.
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There's nothing depressing about it. The preferential system is designed to not only elect the most popular, but also to elect the least unpopular. If the preference allocation makes the motoring party the least offensive to the largest possible group of people, then so be it, a good choice for especially the senate watchdog role.
The political knowledge of those who can't vote is somewhat tangential to this discussion.
That is exactly the system.
When a voter selects a vote above the line, they are choosing for their numbering of all the candidates to be as the party has outlined to the electoral office. It is a short-cut - a useful one, because there is often over 100 candidates for the senate.
You can choose not to use the shortcut, and number alllllll the boxes below the line. You might just get finished before the count is done.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
In our experience when there's minor parties on the table there are a lot of backroom deals done with minor parties to get them to vote on the governing party policies. That's exactly how we ended up a carbon tax despite voting for a party that guaranteed no carbon tax would be offered. It's how the seat of Lyne (a tiny part of the New South Wales mid-north coast) ended up with a new hospital, legislation making it easier for regional kids (like those in the seat of Lyne) to receive youth allowance, and in total about $1.2bn has been spent on Lyne in the last 3 years, which is more money than had been spent in total on that seat by the federal government since the seat has existed.
The minor parties have funnelled cash to their electorate in exchange for agreeing with policies the major parties put forward.
Looks like we're going to be at the whims of a bunch of gun wielding libertarians and the motor racing association. Yay guns and racing cars for all!
To be honest, Wikileaks shot themselves in the foot with the NSW preferences scandal and ensuing fall-out.
For those who don't know, one of the state branches of the Wikileaks defied the party leadership, and lodged their ballot paper in NSW giving preferences to the conservative parties instead of to the progressive parties the leadership had decided on. A significant number of highly ranked members left the party because of it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Robbak:
What I'm saying, is instead of being able to just put a "1" above the line, is people should be able to number the parties above the line 1 to 15 (or whatever) and thus direct their preferences, but not have to vote all 82+ senators below the line.
So you're directing your preferences [across] the senate paper, but not [down].
Almost everybody who votes below the line (except in Canberra where voters know the actual senators) vote in sequential order down each column anyway.
In effect, I'm saying we should be able to 'vote across the line'
Vulnerable to deliberately misleading bill titles.
Below The Line is a great resource to remember next time around too.
not entirely. the flow on of preferences is fiendishly complicated, even if you only vote above the line.
the below-the-line votes haven't even been counted yet. in my state there were 97 boxes that you had to put a number in. one number wrong and the vote doesn't count.
add to that the fact that most people still don't know how preferential voting works.
tl;dr: i drew a 4 foot long dick on my senate ballot, after meticulously numbering 97 candidates in ascending order of my hatred of the candidate.
non-australians: our Liberal party is basically the opposite of liberal.
The correlation between first place and more votes in the senate is essentially zero (actually its just less than 1% - with 16% needed to win a seat). LDP has been around for decades and been on the senate ballot in the first place previously - so that doesnt explain it. There is no evdence at all people were confused. People did not mix up their names at all. Australia has a long history of low government spending and low debt. Both sides of politics have ran campaigns promoting surplus and low debt. Libertarian leanings have grown recently due to the debt bringe and tax increases of the left Labor/Green alliance that have seen the fastest debt growth and biggest debt and deficit in Australias history. The left are trying to down play the fact that Australians have voted in what will almost certainly be a majority right wing senate. I Notice that no one Claims the Democratic Labor Party was mistaken for the Labor Party - as this wouldnt fit their view that Right only won this election by luck/stupidity/mistake. The truth is the major left wing party suffered their lowest two party vote in over 100 years - and previously fringe right wing parties have benefitted.
From what I have heard, everyone in Australia must vote. Which I imagine is the biggest culprit here; A significant portion of people are voting who cannot even tell two parties with liberal in their name apart. Also, we should not discount the group who just picks a random party on the ballot box, which likely have a large percentage which picks the first one.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It took me about ten minutes to classify all of the minor parties on a rough political spectrum
Check out the policies of the Australian Independents Party. How would you classify them on a rough political spectrum?
Now go to belowtheline.org.au and see which parties they preference (AEC has now disabled their "below the line preferences" data?!) Does this affect how you would classify them on a rough political spectrum?
Now try to search news stories to understand how those preferences came to be. Now how would you classify them?
Repeat 45 times.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Don't title bills. Just have it as Issue 1001 with a summary. Like public questions are done.
We have a preferential system for a reason, and that's because first-past-the-post is unrepresentative
Preaching to the choir mate. My position put elsewhere in response to a call for optional preferential (as well as non-compulsary voting):
Now I have philosophical objections to optional preferential voting: With exhaustive preferential voting each elected representative carries with them a majority of formal votes in that seat. Laws passed by a parliament so comprised crystallise the will of the majority of voters (in a majority of seats). And this is a claim the laws of most other democratic countries (ie where voting is not compulsory), cannot make.
However, as a matter of sheer practicality, --in the face of massive ballots (110 candidates for on the NSW Senate ballot), and especially in the Senate election, where preference flows are not always intuitive and where most voters elect to vote above the line, --I think it is pretty clear that optional preferential voting (esp above the line) has become a necessity.
Certainly the practice of political parties devising and registering lists of preferences, which then determine the flow of most votes actually cast, makes a mockery of the idea of preferential voting. I can see no argument for continuing it. Optional preferential voting above the line, my misgivings notwithstanding, would much more accurately reflect the will of voters.
The problem with a senator winging it in on 0.25% of primaries is this. Only a tiny proportion of people allocate their preferences. I was speaking to an electoral worker who told me that of roughly 1,400 ballots they had 50 voted below the line (anecdotal I know, but go to the AEC for the real figures). That means that we will have a senator elected not on the will of the people (or any significant portion thereof), but as a result of ballot orderings made by political parties and preference exchange deals made between parties.
Candidates with far higher primary votes, or running mates thereof will miss out because of the registered preference lists of political parties. Consider the situation in SA where Xenophon received ca. 1.8 quotas in primary votes alone. But the major parties preferenced him or his running mate lowly. The Greens in fact preferenced Xenophon's running mate Stirling Griff below the No Carbon Tax Climate Skeptics party. Now Xenophon and Griff are centrists who are strong advocates for a market based approach to carbon abatement. The real possibility existed that someone voting for The Greens could have their vote electing a Climate "Skeptic" to parliament, hardly what they would want one imagines, because of the sillyness in the Greens preference list. As it happens the spill over from the Greens, ALP, LNP, and indeed the 80% quota from Xenophon looks like it will go to elect a Family First member who received, I think (haven't re-checked) somewhere about 0.4 of a quota on primary vote.
See the problem?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Re-checked:
Xenophon got >25% of the primary vote. Family First got 4.03%. Both look set to get equal representation.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Preferential voting is a step in the right direction, but there are problems. Arrow's impossibility theorem shows that with any ranked system there is certain desirable qualities that will always be mutually exculsive. So, mathematically IRV will always have that weakness (although first past the post is categorically worse). Some even argue that IRV pathologies makes it not as effective at nuturing more than two parties compared to other systems.
However, with range voting, you don't *order* the candidates, you score them and multiple candidates can have the same score. It works this way: score as many candidates as you want to 1 - 10 and the highest average wins.
This system has lots of benefits over IRV. Also, check out the analysis of IRV during Australia's 2007 elections.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Libertarian, free market guy in any government? I just hope he is in fact a real libertarian.
What the hell do you know about a "real libertarian"? Your version of libertarianism is just fascism with fancy veneer. It wouldn't do you, or >>99% of the rest of the country, any good to elect someone with your beliefs to power. Your version of libertarianism only brings pain and fascism for the people.
The irony is that our "Liberal" party is rather conservative, and align themselves more with the US republicans (other than supporting the monarchy).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.