>http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/10/1097406425742.html
>How party preferences picked Family First
>By Tim Colebatch
>October 11, 2004
>
>How can Steve Fielding of Family First win one of Victoria's Senate
>seats with just 45,260 votes?
>
>In short, because virtually every other party - including Labor and
>the Democrats - preferred Family First to the Greens and practically
>every other party.
<snip>
>STEP 5 And now the big one. ALP eliminated. And it turns out that
>Labor too would prefer Family First to win the seat than the Greens.
>
>Family First 436,500
>
>Greens 234,697
>
>Only one in 10 of these voters actually voted for Family First. But
>the other parties voted for it, and that - and above all, Labor's
>choice - decided the seat.
It seems to me, though, that the problem above is caused not by party lists but by the Labor Party's stupid choice. If the Labor Party preferred the Green Party to Family First, the election of Steve Fielding wouldn't have come about.
"Under the preferential selection rules, voters also have the option of voting for a single party and letting that party allocate their preferences. The Green Party has pledged its preferences to the Labor Party" (Richard C. Paddock, "In Australia, Ranking Process Is Key in a Tight Race," October 7, 2004, <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-aussies7oct07,1,5324864.story?coll=la-headlines-world>).
Considering that the Green Party pledged its preferences to the Labor Party, I wonder why the Labor Party didn't return the favor. Is that some kind of sectarianism? -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>