So I'm a political geek. But most of my friends aren't. As a result, I like to think I am pretty dandy at talking politics without making people fall asleep, and only mentioning the word dandy twice (no-doz usually supplied). SO, I am getting on my preferences bandwagon one more time before the new year as the crowd cheer "encore" (wait, no, that was me, in my mind). The most recent Victorian Election which I most sincerely hope all you Victorians voted in, saw us Greens win 4 new seats, 2 in the upper house (the long bit of paper) and two in the lower house (the small bit of paper). This is great news, because we are coming closer to being represented in parliament proportionately to the amount of votes we receive. More on the inadequacies of preferential two-party preferred voting later. I'm here to tell you that yes, your vote is actually powerful and makes a huge difference. And that you must be wise about HOW you vote, especially in the Legislative Assembly (upper house...you know, the big bit of paper). This year thousands of Victorians may have unwittingly voted to elect: The "Vote 1 Local Jobs Party". While I appreciate voting instructions embedded in the name of a party, this mob got just 1.28% of the primary vote in Western Victoria (you need 16.67% of the vote to get in...more on that soon). The Democratic Labour Party. These guys have essentially become the embarrassing distant uncle of the Labor Party after the family fight of 1955. The leader of the DLP became the idol of Tony Abbott (yes, Abbott is a Liberal, yes, it is all rather weird). These guys did get 2.56% of the vote in Western Metro Melbourne though, a bit better that the voting instructions party. In Northern Metro Melbourne we saw the butt (and every other private part) of every voting joke elected to the Upper House. Congratulations Sex Party, your porn industry funded party got a seat in parliament. Granted, these guys are pro marriage equality, euthanasia and further separation of church and state, but i'm guessing not many of you northern suburbites particularly wanted a party advocating the East-West link go ahead. BTW, they got 2.88% of the vote. And now, the piéce de résistance, in Northern Victoria and Eastern Victoria we have a party that declares themselves as "Advocating for the politically incorrect, a voice of reason, science and conservation" as well as "the voice of hunters, shooters, fishers, rural and regional Australia and independent thinking Australians everywhere" (dafuq?). Yes, the lovely people at the Shooters and Fishers Party have come to parliament demanding access to guns for children on the tail of a vote of 3.5% and 2.44% respectively. For perspective, and to highlight my point, the Greens polled higher in every single jurisdiction mentioned above. In Western Victoria, for example, "Vote 1 Local Jobs" got the 11th most votes. yep. Even the Shooters and Fishers got more votes than these guys! But how the hell did these parties get in? And the Greens didn't? This is what they call preferential voting. On the little bit of paper you ALWAYS have full control over where your vote goes: if your first vote doesn't get enough votes, it goes to your second vote and so on until one of two candidates gets enough votes to win. In the Upper House, the Legislative Assembly, the big bit of paper, there are 5 spots to be filled from your 1 bit of paper. Take that no-doz now. Now, if you vote "1" above the line, you are essentially saying to that party "I trust where you have decided your default preferences should go for above the line voting". This saves time if you can be bothered looking up in the 2 weeks leading up to the election what these "preference flows" are, and you agree with them. But apart from me and a few other political geeks, I don't know anyone who does that, let alone anyone who knows what to look for or that they exist. So, essentially, if you voted above the line, in Northern Vic for The Sex Party or Palmer United Party, you inadvertently elected a party that advocates kids shooting ducks. Because both these parties essentially said "if we don't get in, we want the gun-toters in". Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the Steven Bradbury spirit, but that's sport, this is politics. In the interests of transparency, the Greens did help elect The Sex Party in Northern Metro with the left over votes after the Greens got over the 16.67% needed to win a seat (hang in there, let the no-doz kick in). The choice in the end came down to between Family First (who believe Climate Change is a hoax, that women get pregnant to get welfare and that abortions should be illegal), I think those votes ended up with the best of those two. SO! How does this happen? Imagine all the votes in your piece of the state stacked up neatly in piles according to height, or by the number of votes. The most at the start and the least at the end. Now, have any of those parties already got 16.67% of the vote? Take 16.67% of their votes away from those piles and put them in a seat, they are now elected! Now, re order the votes according to how many votes are left after you have given a seat to those who got at least 16.67%. Who has the least amount of votes? Move those votes to whoever gets the second preference from whoever got the least votes. Now who has the least? Move them to their second preference! Keep going in that fashion until a party has 16.67% of the vote. You will need to feel each seat with one party getting 16.67% of the vote. Do you see how all these parties got in with hardly any votes? They took advantage of the fact that most Victorians (and Australians) vote above the line, so, most parties direct their preferences, through preference deals, to 1 or 2 parties. Incidentally, it could have been that the "Country Alliance" got a seat in Northern Victoria as well, or instead of the Shooters. The Country Alliance essentially being the Shooters and Fishers under a different name. You can't rely on all parties to pick preferences in order of how close other parties are to their own policies, they will pick parties that might preference them high in another area of the state, or who promise to 'play nice' in parliament. Now, to the premise of my argument. VOTE BELOW THE LINE! If you think that the Pirate Party (real party) is better than the Rock n Roll Party (real party), you can vote accordingly and your vote will count even if the Pirate Party have a preference deal with the "Vote 1 Alpaca Farmers Party" (not a real party, but I would love to see it), your vote will go to the Rock n Roll Party if the Pirate Party don't get enough votes to get a seat. And then if the Rock n Roll party don't get enough votes to get a seat and you give your next preference to the "Stop The Greens" Party (real party, srsly), that's who it goes to. You can now hold your head high knowing that you have made a conscious decision about who you are voting for, you may have spent a few more minutes in the voting booth, you may have Googled the "No Smart Meters" Party (again, real party) and the "Australian Cyclists Party" (not making these up people!) and found out a little about them. What's more, I have literally witnessed vote counts (yes, I sometimes watch people count votes in my spare time, what of it?) where a candidate has won by 2 votes, even after double checking the votes! Sadly, the person who was 2 votes behind was the Greens candidate. Everyone is always saying that politicians can't be trusted, so don't trust them with the rest of your votes after 1. Take the power back and start a little grey lead pencil revolution! (I was hoping to include the Australian Sports Party, "The 23 Million" and the HEMP party, but I ran out of room, so I have awkwardly added them to the end of this post.)
romaincrisis
origamiaround
gummygunk
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
2087
