Election preference confusion.
As someone that takes a keen interest in AUSTRALIAN politics, it’s abundantly clear that most people have no idea about how elections work.
My biggest gripe at the moment is the commentary around preference votes.
In most elections you need to number every box for all of the candidates from the person you want to win down to the person you least want to win. There are exceptions to this such as the senate where you can just vote 1.
But for the most part you are required to vote for everyone which is why you have those annoying twats at the gate trying to give you how to vote cards.
Now this is where it gets confusing. The media assumes that the public actually take these cards and follow them. But we all know that this rarely happens. You just vote how ever you see fit.
So on the card you may have a Labor card and it says to give your 2nd vote to the greens, then the communists right to down to the Libs in last place. So this where the media starts saying that the Labor preferences go to the Greens. But this isn’t true. If you vote Labor, and put your 2nd vote to One Nation then that’s exactly where it will go. The other party has absolutely no say in where you vote will be allocated.
The entire system is designed to confuse and baffle the uneducated public. So you really need to do your own study and understand what is happening to know how our democratic system actually works.
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I always find it amusing when somebody claims to have voted against a party or candidate.
It's not actually possible. Any vote for one of them is a vote for all of them, with differing levels of enthusiasm.
If we went out to dinner and the waiter explained there are very limited quantities of each dish available, so gave us order cards to fill out, listing our preferences from 1-6, by doing so we're agreeing to buy any of the dishes, regardless of which one we actually get.
You could do 1, 2,2,2,2,2 etc. so the rest get none. But some dude went to jail in the 90s for telling people that and I think it invalidates your vote. But if you don't care, it's a good "fuck you" to the system.
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I usually find any media commentary on politics is condescending. We know how to vote and think for ourselves, mostly.
I blame the education system. Woefully inadequate to prepare people to become high information voters.
What are your thoughts on the electoral system? I've heard people criticise the preference system and say that we need a 'first past the post' system instead. I'm not an expert on the situation at all but it's something I feel I should research and look into.
I 100% agree on this, preferences are the biggest crock of shit. I think the only good use for it would be is there was a tie, but how often would a complete tie happen.
Its wrong and almost undemocratic to have 1 person get more votes than another person and still loose the election purely because of a preference.
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