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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."
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.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
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.
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.
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.
That's because the power never really changes. It stays in the hands of the businesses and their lobbyists. They pay any side that looks like it has a chance of winning. They don't care who the figure head is.
It also helps that there's multiple precedents of the new guys forgiving and hiding any wrongdoings the other guys did.
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?
READY.
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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
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.
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...
There's three reasons for that:
- The lower house determines who the PM is, which is the thing everyone really wants to know
- We only elect half the Senate at a time, so there's less of a shift than there is in the lower house where everything's up for grabs
- The new Senators don't take their seats for almost a year
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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
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.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face