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Originally Posted by jimbuna
(Post 1389645)
We may yet need it.
PR in its broadest form will never work because you will be almost guaranteed a hung Parliament every time.
Is it right that the smallest of the three major parties should more or less have the deciding vote on which of the other two come into power?
Definitely not.
The fact remains, some other countries have managed a way around this obstacle and I believe Australia is one of them....something about third and fourth alternative choices?
I'd appreciate you explaining your system down under.
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We run two houses of Parliment (House of Representatives and the Senate), and the electoral systems are different for each house.
This give a fairly full explanation including the systems for the State governments. http://www.dfat.gov.au/facts/electoral_system.html
Put simply we have a preferential system which means you number your votes depending on your preferences for each of the candidates. therefore if there are 5 candidates standing in your local seat, you number your votes in order of preference from 1 being your first choice to 5 being your last coice. For the House of Reps we use a "full preferential" voting system:
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Under ‘full’ preferential voting each candidate must be given a preference by the voter. First, all the number ‘1’ votes are counted for each candidate. If a candidate gets more than 50 per cent (an absolute majority, 50 per cent plus one) of the formal first preference votes, the candidate is immediately elected. If no candidate has an absolute majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded. These votes are then transferred to the other candidates according to the second preferences shown by voters on the ballot papers. If still no candidate has an absolute majority, again the remaining candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and these votes are transferred. This process will continue until one candidate has more than half the total votes cast and is declared elected.
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This means in the main hung parliments are very difficult to come by unless the number of seats is too close to call but even this gets sorted out usually by the preferential system.
In the Senate you can either vote for every bugger on the ticket, which is across Australian not local seats, or vote for the party of your choice. Read the stuff on the link as it is the house of reps which determines the government and prime ministership.
We also have compulsory voting because we are slack buggers who largely couldn't give a rats clacker for who is in government as long as the price of beer doesn't go up to much. :D We always vote on a Saturday and I don't recall a situation where people have been still waiting to vote at close of play. |
