Optional preferential voting .....

Haemodorum corymbosum (I had to go out in the rain today to identify this to genus: the difference was in the basal leaves.)

Looking at the differences in informal voting rates yesterday, one presumes that the poorer rate for NSW is a function of our 'optional' preferential system for both houses in NSW, introduced by Wran, and modified with no fanfare at the last State election, where unsuspecting voters, casting the legislative council ballot failed to realise that a 1 above the line did not preference the whole ticket, only the column below. Thus, many voters exhausted their ballot after choosing a single party, but cast an entirely valid vote. Many, including my daughter, expected their choice of the Greens above the line, to continue with choices to the end of the ballot paper. Not so. But not informal.

Of course, this was the usual stealth legislation. And as usual the newspapers, most of whose reporters are apparently innumerate failed to notice it, nor to notice its purpose.

And it looked like, that at the same time as our politicians introduced this change, they reverted to 3 terms for an elected councillor, turning over 1/3 of the council at each election. (I infer this, from the fact that both above and below the line we were exhorted to put 16 preferences, not the 22 or 23 if half the council was being elected) In any case, the aim of the exercise was to increase the rate of ballots exhausted before being able to be allocated to a preference. Thus, attempting to put an end to the random election of persons at the tail end of a ticket with less than 1% of the primary vote, which has often occurred as a result of the preferencing choices of the major parties.

The informal vote & compulsory voting

Actinotus helianthi at the bottom of the street.

The Liberal party has been touting an end to compulsory voting for some years now. And no doubt will resurrect the idea when next in power. Compulsory voting (as far as I know) is enshrined only in law and not in the constitution.

The Liberals rightly see it as having party political advantage to them and there is no doubt about that. But why we should wish to embrace an American style democracy in which only 25% of potential voters vote? What sort of democracy is that? When you demolish compulsory voting you lose the votes of those who see themselves as powerless in this world. So it is an automatic handing of power to the richer and more powerful.

Today, I used Antony Green's figures published in the SMH to do an analysis of the informal vote as a proportion of votes cast. In the House of Representatives count, 3.89% of the votes counted were informal, with NSW having a higher informal rate (by 1.6%) and the ACT a lower rate (by 1.8%) than the other states. And overall there was a higher rate of informal voting in Labor electorates (by about 1%, whether based on the new member or the old member). These differences showed at significance levels of <.0001 (NSW vs the rest), .02 (ACT vs the rest) and <.0001 (Coalition vs Labor ).

In the Senate, the informal voting rate was 3.36% over the votes counted.

Australians may vote compulsorily, but when we get to the booth, as I think these numbers indicate, we like to cast a valid vote.

It is unclear from the figures published so far, just how many Australians fail to get their name ticked off on the Electoral Roll, but to have been voted into power as a result of the vote 80-90% of all eligible voters, is a far healthier thing than for democracy to be a privilege of the elites as the Liberals would like.

In any case, we are only obliged to have our names ticked off. If we really wish to vote informally as opposed to doing it accidentally, we need only vote 1 twice on the ballot paper. (And I have just broken the law in telling you how to vote informally. However, I believe that if you wish to vote informally, you should be careful to vote so that someone cannot complete the ballot for you and render the vote formal.)

And with compulsory voting, there is the convenience of adequate resourcing for casting a vote: we do not have to drive for 3 hours to find a polling booth and then stand for another 3 waiting to cast our vote, only to find that the time for voting has run out, as voters did in Florida at the last presidential election.