>Make sure you filter your Labor vote through the the Greens of
>course, the Greens even have a good chance of winning a seat in the
>Senate in WA.
>***********
>
>I'm going to do that, as long as Green preferences go to Labor.
>
>********************************
No, No, No! Preferences will go where you tell them to, if you do it right. That's what I meant by numbering your own preferences and not "voting above the line", that is just writing a "1" in the party box. If instead you vote "below the line" and number every single candidate sequentially, YOU get to choose where the preferences go, the precise order of your preferences.
You'll see.
>One more tip - eschew the party vote, number all your
>own preferences manually. You can't trust any political party to
>decide how your preferences are allocated, that's how that numbskull
>Fielding got a seat in Victoria.
>***********
>
>Who gave that Party of God guy (aka "Family First) their preferences? Was it
>Labor, the Greens, the Democrats who? I still haven't figured that one out.
>But yeah, thanks for the tip on numbering. Must remember that.
Fielding was the Family First miracle candidate. Think it was Liberals, Labor and the Democrats that preferenced him ahead of the Greens. As for the Greens (though it wouldn't have made any difference as it turned out) I think they played a straight bat and preferenced according to principle. My recollection is that the deciding factor was Democrat preferences. What wasn't expected by anyone was that the Democrats vote would crash so badly, if that hadn't happened then Fielding would have been excluded from the cut-up of preferences before the Democrats preferences came into play.
Its hard to explain quickly, especially to a former yank with no experience and even to locals who haven't taken the trouble to grasp the basics. You have to understand how Proportional Representation works.
Now what happens in the Australian Senate is that all the first preference votes are tallied first. If any candidates have a quota (the number of votes needed to be elected) then they are elected. Then, any excess votes they have are distributed to the people marked number 2 on that candidate's ballots, in proportion to the number of excess votes that are available to be distributed. Again, if any candidate/s are elected as a result of this process, the distribution of excess votes is repeated. This goes on until either the full complement of people are elected, or until distribution of excess votes has played out.
Assuming there are still one or two vacancies to be decided then, one at a time, the candidate with the least number of number 1's next to his/her name is excluded. His/her votes are distributed to the next numbered preference on each ballot. Keep doing that, excluding the candidate with the least number of votes and distributing that candidate's preferences until someone has a quota. And keep doing it until the full complement of Senators is elected.
So what happened was that Labor expected Fielding to be excluded before the Democrats, so it didn't matter whether Fielding was given a higher preference than the Greens. Because Labour had a deal with Fielding, that would have meant Fielding's votes would have then gone to Labor, hopefully giving them the edge to pip the Greens at the post for the final position in the Senate.
But instead, the Democrats vote collapsed. All those votes (which included residual Liberal preferences) went to Fielding, who had already inherited a heap of residual Liberal preferences. This meant that Labor's candidates were behind Fielding in the final cut-up, meaning all Labour's residual preferences went to Fielding as well, and Fielding pipped the Greens for the final Senate seat. Despite getting only about 1 or 2 percent of the first preference vote and virtually nil preferences from people who had allocated their own preferences manually. (Nobody had even heard of him.)
The trouble is that in Victoria very few voters bother to vote below the line, they just mark the party box like a flock of sheep.
Its a bit simpler in the House of Reps, which is a simple preferential system electing one candidate per electorate. In that case the candidates on the ballot are also numbered by voters in order of preference. If any candidate has 50% plus one of first preference votes, he/she wins. If not, the candidate with the least number of first preference votes is excluded and those ballots allocated to the remaining candidates according to which candidate on each of those ballots is marked as number 2 preference. They just keep doing that until one of the candidates has 50% plus one of the total valid votes.
The key is that the said 50% plus one quota in simple preference counting is basically derived from the same formula for determining a quota as in Proportional representation. That is: The Quota of votes needed to be elected = number of valid votes divided by (number of vacancies to be filled, plus 1) plus 1.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas