Radical Cross Stitch

It’s funny, in Aotearoa, there is a whole lot of people who don’t get how MMP works. It seems to be too complicated to work out. But here, I can’t even work it all out and I’m ’smart’. And to make things more fun, voting is compulsory! What kind of brilliant fascist trick is that eh?

I’ve had numerous conversations with people recently who don’t really get how their political values translates into a vote. So I’m going to break it down for you all.

Next Saturday, all you ozstrayaliens get to decide who’s gonna ‘run’ the country for the next three/six years. You get two votes, one for the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. Both votes are made through a system of Instant Run Off or Single Transferable Voting. If you don’t understand any of that, read the wiki page on Australian elections. It is REALLY REALLY important to understand the technicalities of voting.

The first thing I want to explain is preferences cause I think this is the thing that people get confused about the most. You hear a lot of hype in the media about who parties are going to give their preferences to. But it’s got nothing to do with you as an individual voter cause you can vote HOWEVER YOU WANT. This is the bit I don’t think many people understand. Just cause that nice young man gives you a form which shows how your preferred candidate advises you should rank candidates after them, doesn’t mean you have to. In fact, if that were the case, it would be extremely corrupt.

What preferences really demonstrates is who the parties would prefer to work with, in a formal sense. Some parties will make some kind of formal policy agreement for this preference deal but most don’t. All parties are required to lodge their preference list with the electoral commission. It is beyond me why they have to do this, maybe someone could explain…

So now you’ve established that your vote is exactly that; yours. Let’s figure out how best to work it.

The voting system that Australia has is a proportional system. This means that it is NOT technically a two party system. You would never get this reading the newspaper because the Murdoch Empire would hate it if you thought that political power could actually be shared. And heaven forbid political decisions could be made by consensus!

The benefit of proportional representation is that political representation is supposed to reflect the general political ideas within society. There is a limit on it, and each system is a bit different. The limit in Australia is the number of seats attached to each state, territory or electorate. I’m not sure what the percentages are, maybe someone could enlighten me cause I can’t be bothered looking it up.

So theoretically, you are supposed to rank your candidates by how they MOST meet your political values. Not by which of the two major parties you dislike the least. If everyone ranked all the political candidates by how much they agree with what they stand for, you might get a much more representative looking parliament and senate.

Instead there seems to be a mentality that you vote for one of the major parties and then look at the minor parties to see which ones you want to support the major parties. This is the thinking that leads people to perpetuate a system of duality which proportional representation is supposed to cure us of.

So let me really break it down.

If you want party X to have lots of political power, rank their candidates 1. There is no point ranking the big party you dislike the least in the 1 position. Especially when they have policy positions that completely conflict with your political morals. Not only are you doing yourself a disservice by wasting your vote, you’re encouraging them!

Going sideways for a moment, you have two options when voting; above the line and below the line.

Above the line means you only vote for one party, and you rank them 1. Below the line means you rank all parties, 1,2,3,4 etc. And you must rank all of them. Most people only vote above the line cause it’s easier. However if you want to really make an effective vote you should vote below the line. I think one of the flaws of the Australian electoral system is the forced ranking of all candidates. Other systems of preferential voting allow to rank as many as you like and I fail to understand why Australia’s is not like that. It is not common for run-off situations to occur when the 5th,6th or beyond preferences are counted, so why force it?

SO to wind up this long story, my advice to ozstrayaliens is to figure out what your top 5 candidates are. And actually check them out. Do they support the issues you support? Do they oppose the issues you oppose? And rank those candidates. When you get to the polling booth grab the how to vote card from the candidate you like the most and follow their advice after the 5th position.

And to be specific for my fellow Greenies. If you want the Greens in power rank their candidate 1st and Labor or Democrats after that. It is by far a more effective use of your vote. Imagine if the Greens and the Democrats got another 3 or 4 Senators in this election, and Labor took the House of Representatives. Even if this situation was in play for another term, there could be a massive ideological shift it Australian politics. But Labor can’t do it without the others, cause there are some issues they simply don’t get.

Yeah it’s called democracy, don’t use it up all at once.

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