Google’s unveiling of their Australian Election 07 site has been talked up a lot in various journals and blogs, but it seems to me to have a distinct lack in one area: Senate analysis. When three of the six parties in Federal Parliament have only Senatorial representation, isn’t this rather a glaring deficit? Google offers a special widget for your Google-homepage where you can search an MP’s website and speech record to see where they stand on the issues, nothing for any Senators.
Other groups pushing their special interests barrow for the upcoming election don’t seem to be taking the Senate numbers into account either. Yet how do they expect their special interests to get legislative attention without the Senate on their side, or at least a balanced Senate that offers adequate review?
For example:
The Big Switch – a site put together by a coalition of conservation groups with GetUp!, advocating placing your vote according to candidate’s records on climate change. Their “what are our politicians doing?” page is beautifully laid out and easy to use, but again no Senators. They explain this with a page that states that as 95% of Australians vote “above the line” on Senate ballots, they only need to analyse the Party positions because the votes will follow each Party’s allocated preferences, and that voters should examine for themselves where Parties have allocated their preferences in the lead-up to the election as they consider where to place their vote.
Am I being too much of a politics wonk when I say that I want more?
I’ve voted below the line on State and Federal Upper House ballots since the first time the Rev. Fred Nile threw his hat into the NSW ring, and found great satisfaction in doing so, particularly when I had to weigh the delicious option of placing either a Nile-ite or a Hansonite in the last place of all. Even when we had the tablecloth I wrestled womanfully with it and numbered every box. I want more detailed information on existing Senators and alternative Senatorial candidates, because I like to fully allocate my own vote, thanks very much.
What are other special interests advocacy sites doing for the below the line voter? Spruik or spray them in comments, please.
Voting below the line and how the Senate voting works are big issues that should really concern voters.
Unfortunately, I think a huge proportion of people (at least 75%) don’t understand how the 2 party preferred system works in the lower house. For example, many will say they support the Greens by putting them as No 2 after their first choice of Liberal or Labor. They are really surprised when I tell them that this offers no support to the Greens and in not noticed by anyone. They don’t know that reversing this does have real effect, and that that the major party still gets their vote.
I would estimate that at least 95% of people don’t understand how the Senate system works – and it is much more complicated.
Many Labor party supporters have assured me recently that the “Labor preferencing and electing Family First over the Greens won’t happen again”. Yet it could. Labor hasn’t ruled out this course of action and could well do it. Once again legions of progressive Labor voters could end up electing a right wing Christian Senator who could well be anti gay, anti abortion and even pro nuclear.
I think the AEC has done a woeful job educating the public on this, and it really suits the major parties to be able to control preference flows in the Senate to suit their political goals – which don’t always coincide with what voters want.
I’ve always voted below the line, although it is very difficult sometimes to keep track of who is who (especially with some of the deliberately misnamed groupings and parties). Mostly I vote to push the social conservatives down the list as far as I can. It would be nice if we could get a wiki going which had some kind of background information on candidates standing. I know they tried it in the US with limited success (not all candidates filled out a form they were sent to judge where they stood on issues like abortion) so I don’t know how you’d realistically do it other than trying to keep track of media releases and the like.
Perhaps it might be easier to aggregate the information on sites like GetUp! and cross reference it with more socially conservative sites who would be pushing the regressive attitudes of their preferred candidates?
In the States I believe the Senate and Congress government sites actually have it as part of their permanent searchable record how the candidates voted on each matter that comes up in session.
Useful in all sorts of ways for those with a numbercrunching persuasion.
Sorry, “candidates” above should read “legislators”.
I’ve voted below the line since 1990 because I have no faith in the sort of people who cut preferences, let alone the sort of people who participate in upper house preselections.
I start by finding out how many candidates there are so that I know what to put against the last-numbered people (for this example, let’s say there are 100). I vote for individuals I think have made, or could make, a contribution, some of whom are well down party lists. That gives me the numbers from about 1 to 8. Then I go hunting for CEC/ cross-bearing Pharisees/ gun freaks/ boofhead Trots/ Hanson/ anti-immigration losers/ Illinois Nazis and other bottom-feeders, where I work backwards from 100 to about 82. I struggle with the rest and can usually number from about 9 to about 15, including some joke candidates in that second round. At this point all the other dullards and mediocrities get equal whatever I’m up to (16 in this example), whereupon my vote is still valid but it exhausts.
Last time I voted [1] Democrat out of sheer pity. Fat lot of good it did.
Tigtog, thanks for this great post. I’ve actually been lobbying both google and Big Switch on this issue.
While I think the ATL / BTL voting question is a really important one, I reckon the point Big Switch make is rather disingenuous. Sure most people vote by party ATL in the Senate, but most people also vote by party in the House. Virtually nobody knows personal info and preferences of the individual candidates they vote for in their electorate. Sure, long-term members or high profile candidates can get a personal vote, but mostly people vote by party.
The whole point of a site like Big Switch is to put the spotlight on candidates and parties and give voters as much info as they need to make truly informed choices. It’s a cop out to leave the Senate out of it, and a cop out that could contribute to the Senate staying under the control of the Coalition.
Lefty E still away I see
So I’ll take this opportunity to plug for what I think would be the most sensible reform of the Senate voting system: Abolish list voting and allow optional preferential numbering of boxes above the line or BTL voting.
The only thing that this would require is a way of allowing uingrouped cvandidates to be numbered either ATL or BTL.
I think BTL voting only is unreasonably taxing on voters (and is never going to happen anyway). As I have said before the problem is not the physical effort in numbering the boxes, it is the mental effort of working out 100 preferences of people that you’ve never heard of, don’t know what they stand for and are never going to get elected.
Most people here are aware enough to know what all the major and fringe parties stand for and have a clear preference for them. I go to the trouble of researching the even fringer and ungrouped candidates – and even then there are always some that it’s near impossible to turn up information about. (Presumably they nominate because of a lost bet or to tick something off a list…)
Optional preferential ATL voting would relatively simple and acheivable to implement, would allow much more voter control of preferences and would mean that even minimally marked ballot papers would mostly be formal for large parts of the count.
Martin B: While I agree that optional preferences ATL would be an improvement over the current system, the vast majority of people would follow the how-to-vote cards, so you’d often end up with similar results to what happens today, albeit in a more transparent fashion.
(I guess it might have prevented Family First from getting a Senator though – as I recall, they harvested preferences from the non-Green minor parties, in particular the Democrats. The BTL votes for the Democrats went heavily against Family First.)
I would prefer to see the Senate elected by a D’Hondt-type method – just tick the box of your favourite party. No complicated preference flows, just a straight proportional representation based in primary votes. And I’d have a single national electorate, so that a Tasmanian isn’t equal to 50000 New South Welshmen or whatever. But that’s just me dreaming….
Am I being too much of a politics wonk when I say that I want more?
No. I think that now that the Liberals have control of the senate, it’s really important to vote Green in the Senate so that there is some kind of review/check/balance left.
I’ve voted below the line on State and Federal Upper House ballots since the first time the Rev. Fred Nile threw his hat into the NSW ring, and found great satisfaction in doing so, particularly when I had to weigh the delicious option of placing either a Nile-ite or a Hansonite in the last place of all. Even when we had the tablecloth I wrestled womanfully with it and numbered every box.
Yes. I’m not a psephologist but I do get very het up about individual politicians and the smaller rightwing parties, so I like to do them slowly. Who to put last is like choosing the favourite choccies in a box.
You guys are over-complicating things trying to preference 60+ people. As long as the majority of people vote above the line, you can afford to vote strategically. In other words, your vote counts in three ways:
1) Whichever ticket you put first gets funding from the AEC if they pass the threshold.
2) Your vote will lose value as it passes through the first two Labor and Liberal candidates if you put them high (as they will (almost) always pass a quota). It also indirectly helps the major parties direct preferences to people you don’t like.
3) All other candidates get excluded until the final 1 or 2 senate spots are a lower-house style preferential battle between: the 3rd (maybe 4th) Labor and Liberal candidates and the first person on the every other ticket.
In other words, pay attention to who you put 1st, number the key contenders for preference, and then do whatever you want.
(Naturally you need to adjust for who will/won’t pass quota for territory voters and in state elections).
Oh, and I agree with Martin B. Optional Preferential Above the Line voting would be a vast improvement, if still lost on the guy who asked me “what the white one is for” at the last election.
I always vote below the line. Until Hanson came along, I always used to put Xtan Democrats/FF/ other right wing Xtan parties last, the Libs, Nats.
First preference used to go to Greens, now Socialist Alliance,so now Greens get 2nd preference then ALP then Democrats. I the go back to the bottom of the ballot paper, and put anything that looks right wing at the bottom, going up,after the Nats then anything that looks like it might be left after the Demicrats, going down. I have no idea if this makes my senate both worthless or not, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that the right-wingers are all at the bottom of the ballot paper.
I agree with Martin – I’m a big fan of optional preferential voting – something I’d love to see on a Senate Ballot. I’d then be able to distribute preferences how I want to and cut off their flow to parties/individuals that I’d never want to see use my vote for their benefit.
The notion of BTL voting for the Senate has become impossible in recent years – I’d love to see stats on how many votes are not counted because someone doubled up or skipped a number.
I think Martin also mentioned a combination of optional ATL and full BTL – something else I’d like. If someone wanted to preference to the Nats, but elevate Joyce over Boswell, then they could. Hand the power-plays over to voters and out of the stingey backrooms of the party’s.
Joyce and Boswell aren’t up for election together. Joyce was elected in 04, Boswell in 01. I guess they could be if there was a double dissolution election though.
Mark, Boswell is up, isn’t he?
In fact, you’ve posted on his chances…
I always vote below the line for the Senate precisely in order to control where my preferences go – even the very lowest Senate preferences can be decisive in determining who gets elected, as we discussed with Andrew Bartlett on another thread. Also the NSW ALP machine showed the scope for abuse of above-the-line voting combined with party control of preference ordering when they directed their Senate preferences to the Liberals ahead of the Democrats and the Nuclear Disarmament Party (whose lead candidate was one P. Garrett, a noted popular musician) in the 1984 election – the very first one in which ATL was in use.
The discussion of popular awareness of electoral systems is highly topical. I have just finished conducting three politics tutorials in which the topic for discussion was electoral systems. If politics major students are having difficulty (as many of them were) getting their heads around Australia’s electoral systems, one wonders where most of the punters are at.
I’ll be BTL in Victoria this year for the exquisite pleasure of putting Jacinta Collins last again (I did it in 2004 as well). This is purely symbolic though.
I rmember Antony Green writing about BTL voting in 2004 and saying there was no real effect as it almost never would play any difference in which candidates get elected.
Looks like Hanson has got herself placed above the line with a decision made by the AEC today.
I find it puzzling that the commenters above who claim to vote BTL refer to “a hundred boxes” or “all the boxes”. If you read the note in (usually) the top right hand corner it clearly states that a only stated minumum number of boxes BTL need be complete. eg in the recent NSW Legislative Council (exactly the same principle as the Senate), of the almost 180 candidates, it was only necessary to complete 26 boxes, so Labor got my 25 & Liberal my 26th.
As for people who don’t understand what’s not to understand? It ain’t that difficult.
In the Senate, I’m pretty sure you have to complete all for a valid vote. State electoral law is different from federal. (For instance, you have optional preferential in the lower house in NSW and Qld).
Yep amphibious, Kim’s right. In the Senate the AEC says “You must put a number in every box below the black line. “
Tigtog:
So who votes below the line?
ME!
It takes time; you have to be very very careful [count and recount all squares!]. …. but it’s well worth it!
Glad I stopped to read this. Like the rest of you am a preference wonk.
Tigtog describes the undescribable; the euphoric sensation one experiences when one consigns the people one most utterly, absolutely detests of all in creation to that abandoned, rank psychological dungeon that is the last place on a Senate ticket.
It would make a difference if enough people did it, especially if they defied the official party preference order in sufficient numbers, as many Victorian ALP voters would have done in 2004 had they known about the preference deal with Family First.
I’m showing my age here but I also recall that Jewish community organisations campaigned in the 1975 election for Labor voters in Victoria to depart from the official ALP Senate ticket which had the vociferous anti-Zionist Bill Hartley in a winnable position. It’s ironic to think that some individuals from the Victorian Labor Right who were old enough to have been active in this campaign at the time would possibly have been privy to, and almost certainly in favour of, the ATL preference deal which elected Stephen Fielding in 2004.
It made a difference in Tasmania in 2004 (they vote strongly below the line, possibly because of their state voting system). See here for why, shifting the prediction from Family First to the Greens. Queensland too, but that was because Pauline Hanson was entirely below the line.
And yes, you need to number every box for the Senate, but you don’t have to get it perfectly correct. It is only informal if:
Presumable that means you can have up to three repetitions, provided your vote doesn’t need to be distributed ambiguously. How that might play out in a complex count you’d have to ask the AEC.
At a theoretical level, there is no real reason to even have this requirement, since the Senate is counted by computer, and therefore it could handle having your vote exhaust, split, or whatever as you see fit. Makes it hard to analyse on the night though.
Paul said:
Yes, it can make a difference. Labor and Democrat voters going below the line in Tasmania (about 30% I think) were the reason Christine Milne was elected for the Greens in Tasmania in 2004. If they had voted above the line then Labor and Democrat preferences would have elected Family First in Tasmania, duplicating what happened in Victoria. This was in spite of Milne polling 0.9 of a quota on primaries.
So in the Senate, preferences are all important, and going above the line for any party will always entail signficant risk of outcomes many voters were oblivious too and may not like.
The current system is empowers party hacks and micro preference deal pundits, and has little to do with democracy or voter intention. *** Off soapbox ***
My preferred method is to count the number of boxes BTL, put the largest number into the Lib at the top of their list, the next in the top Nat, etc, then start with 1 on the Greens’ list, think about who I want the Greens’ preferences to flow to (Labor this time around, though not in the past), then fill in the middle, making sure the lunatic fringe are preferenced over right-wingers who stand some chance of getting in. Sometimes I need to get another bedsheet if I screw it up, but it’s worth it.
Pauline Hanson was not entirely below the line. She was a grouped candidate, and thus had a box above the line. She just wasn’t registered as a party (unlike this time), so she had no party or group name above the line. Having said that, more than one third of her votes were below the line (37 888 out of 102 774 – which was less than the margin for the final seat).
In regard to the original post, I agree it is crazy to ignore the Senate (I have an obvious self-interest in saying this, but that doesn’t make it any less true). When even well-focused lobby groups basically treat the Senate as an after thought, it is a serious problem. I also think it is counter-productive for their own cause (whatever it may be). I think it is unfortunate that Australia has a deeply entrenched two-party system, but it is still a fact, and ignoring the Senate just reinforces that reality, as it is in the Senate where people are more likely to be prepared to vote for a smaller party, or for individual candidates who have a stronger position on their issue of choice.
I also think the excuse of just assessing the party position is unfortunate. Firstly, it just encourages and reinforces the suppression of free thinking which goes hand in hand with rigid party discipline. Secondly, any candidate who has a stronger personal position on the relevant issue has no incentive to promote that fact – and similarly, a candidate who might be a climate change denialist (to use the Big Switch’s issue of interest) is more likely to slip through unnoticed or without sanction.
I could well have a different position on at least some of the questions in the Big Switch survey to what other Democrat candidates would have, but there is no way for voters to see that (which may suit me, as it might be less ‘correct’ from their point of view).
Having said all that, I think their survey is somewhat narrow, constrained and selective in parts – no mention at all of the impact of meat consumption for instance, even though livestock emissions are greater than that from all forms of transport – so it has its own limitations in representing who has the ‘best’ position on climate change. But every survey has its limitations – overcomplication makes comparison very difficult and simple ratings are easier for voters to understand at a glance (which does have the unfortunate consequence of providing a strong incentive to give the answers you know are ‘right’ – another area which makes life easier for smaller parties, as they are less likely to have to follow up their answers with action that matches it).
Anyway, failing to focus explicitly and separately on the Senate contest and candidates in lobbying/educating voters about the election is stupid – we have workchoices because Howard won the Senate, not because he won the election. If Family First gain balance of power in the Senate, their policy is to cut the price of fuel and give people piles of money to have at least 3 children – not good for climate change if they happen to be in a position of leverage on the issue, which is quite possible.
Kim & Angharad – thanks for the correction. I must be ga-ga as I’m certain that there was a minimum required, about 20%, to be valid.
Can we also warn against the EXHAUSTED preference – eg 1,2,3,3,3,3 which, although technically legal, is illegal to advocate. It only helps the majors.
Andrew Bartlett reminds me of a thought from his own site relating to the possibility of not only himself being in strife, but possibly the Greens Kerry Nettle elsewhere, who is also a useful politician. Then you look at some of the worthier people who have retired and wonder at the waste of experience and skills acquired over long periods of time, its a bit disturbing, particularly when you consider some of the hacks drafted in by the major parties who may get doubtful seats in their places in a polarised election.
Hence, Andrew’s comments relating to the masking of the importance of the senate inparticular and the lack of information concerning it is doubly important, when people are seeking to get a likely candidate up from a large field. Not point voting for x and then finding out later that x was out of the running while y who would have been a much better choice than z, who eventually got up by a few votes, because the rest of the vote was divided and wasted, missed your vote. Very likely when you have Greens Dems and Labor splitting the progressive or rational vote so that a righty gets it through default.
Is Kerry Nettle in some trouble? That’s surprising.
By the way, I’m sad to say that I have it on good authority that at this stage Labor will be preferencing FF over the Dems and Greens in the Qld Senate race. I’ll post about that on Monday.
amphibious wrote,
Yes you are ga-ga, but that hasn’t stopped you further displaying your ignorance and lack of ability to check your facts b4 posting. S329A that dealt with advocacy was repealed by Parliament in 1997, making the ‘illegal to advocate’ part of your statement false if not dangerously misleading. The difference is that during the 1997 election when 1,2,3,3 was last advocated it was counted as a formal vote but now it is informal. If i were you i’d check the facts before going off about what you think is a valid vote – that figure of 20% you are putting out there is actually 90% and that is a vast difference to what is required to meet ‘formality obligations’.
Finally, amphibious you may have it worked out that this benefits the majors – but guess who continues to support these measures-that is right the so-called Darlings here of the Dems and Greens.
BTW Andrew E what you describe as your clever person’s voting technique may or may not have resulted in a formal vote depending on the number of candidates and the number of boxes you actually filled in. If as you stated there were hundreds of candidates and you filled in as described with repeated numbers…
In that example there is every likelihood the vote would be informal due to the use of repeated numbers. I am not supporting this situation, far from it just pointing out the complexity of voting BTL.
Mark: Kerry Nettle only got elected off One Nation preferences in 2001 (she got only 4.3% of the primary vote). The Greens got 7.3% in NSW in 2004, a long way off a full quota.
Well, sure, David, but you can get elected from half a quota if the preferences fall your way. I imagine with the absence of the Democrats in NSW, there’ll be some votes going her way above and beyond the 7-8% mark.
But will that actually improve their position Mark? The Greens will normally [1] be better off getting the whole Democrat ticket (when they actually did that is) than some fraction of those same Democrat voters who vote for them in the absence of their first preference. It will make it harder, not easier to win if half those votes go to Labor or the Liberals.
[1] The exceptions being, obviously, when the Democrats preference somebody ahead of the Greens who then uses their quote to go past the Greens (as happened in Victoria). Or when the Democrats get in front of the Greens themselves, thereby winning the seat. But those are the risks you need to take. There are only ideological reasons to trade preferences if both parties don’t consider a trade their best chance of winning.
Russ, yes, that may be true, but Senate forecasting is really a lot like reading the tea leaves in the absence of the tickets so you can get some idea of actual preference flow.
Lyn Shumack is the Senate candidate in NSW for the Democrats btw.
I meant to say of a sitting Senator, Angharad.
Informally yours, its never a good look to have your facts wrong when you are being abusive to someone for having their facts wrong.
I’m not sure what the Democrats’ position is, but the Greens have opposed at least some of the things you are objecting to. In particular Bob Brown voted against the changes to the electoral act that informalised the 1, 2, 3, 3, 3 vote.