Undemocratic quotas used to monopolise power for the major political parties
- Details
- Category: Political Corruption Articles
- Created: Wednesday, 06 July 2016 12:54
- Written by Graham Williamson via the Climate Sceptics Party
The current undemocratic senate quota system continues to be supported by the major parties, because it considerably disadvantages the minor parties.
As was pointed out by Van Badham: “Voter control” is a disingenuous argument, the option of below-the-line voting is already offered to every voter, while the list of how parties have ordered their preferences are offered online and at every ballot booth…..
Because while everyone knows that Victoria’s Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party senator Ricky Muir won only a small number of “number 1” votes, few people appreciate that Senator Michaelia Cash from the Liberals received even less, and yet under the Greens’ proposed changes her re-election will be near guaranteed, while his will not.”
Van Badham explains why the current quota system remains so popular with the major parties:
“The first task of a ballot count is to establish which of the candidates have met that 14.3% quota – it’s easily reached by the popular major parties. What people don’t know is that when a candidate goes “over quota”, the number of votes that go over quota are redistributed at a percentage of where their “number 2” preferences are going. Michaelia Cash doesn’t need many primaries, because she picks up this “transfer value” from whoever has the most “number 1s” for the Coalition, who then pass their votes to her.
This mechanism will remain with the Greens’ changes. What the Greens are removing is what happens to the microparty votes, that do not automatically reach a quota: their primary votes are individually small, but combined are around 20% of the total. When quota isn’t met by any candidate, but there are still senators to elect, the counters start go through the smallest pile of votes; they are declared excluded, and their votes are redistributed, at full value, to whoever is second on each individual ballot paper, until a quota is reached……
But the effect of the Greens changes means that by only choosing between one and six parties to preference, votes “exhaust” and preferences cease to circulate. Power, as a result, gets consolidated amongst the groups who already have influence – this is what the Greens are banking on: on sheer force of primaries and transfer value alone, they are more likely to stay in the race to win the final senate position. Obviously, the political strategists of the bigger parties also know that if they direct voters to mark only a “1” above the line, there will be even less preferences in circulation that could aid anyone else.
The only cross bencher who is not vulnerable to the change should the new system be introduced is Nick Xenophon, who wins enough votes to go over quota in his own right; unsurprisingly, he is backing the Greens’ proposal.
There are big questions here, about why groups like the Greens and Xenophon, who themselves entered the parliament on the back of lower-end preferencing, are ripping up the ladders behind them.”
An excerpt from the article How to scam the system & disadvantage political opponents by ‘giving the power back to the people’, all in the interests of ‘democracy’
