how would you feel? this is true?

[Mark Aldridge]

A QUICK LETTER FROM ONE OF YOUR FUTURE GOVERNMENT MP’S
There is no reason to know my name or what my ideals are so I wont bore you with that information, the fact is you have to vote for me regardless, as my colleagues and I right the electoral laws to suit our own interests, so we included full preferential voting to ensure you have no choice in the matter, and just to ensure I win we devised a counting system (2 Party preferred) to ensure your vote counts for myself or one of my colleagues.

As there is what we call safe seats and I was endorsed to occupy one I have already won, regardless of my ideals, in fact I have to tow the party line so my views matter not.
All the polls you read are 2 party preferred so even if you are questioned regarding your intention it will indicate a preference for one of us anyway, so you will always consider us the ideal choice of the electorate, and we will ensure those pesky minor players and independents are not heard of so you are not confused by to many choices, we can even arrange that their poster are pulled down, or that the ballot papers have blank boxes next to their names and our mates in the media will finish them of if they are to well organized.

As you have no choice but to vote for me, and my ideals don’t count anyway just to ensure there are no complaints we have made it law that we do not have to honor our promises as we at times have to bullshit to you to get your vote, we have even gone as far as giving the electoral commission the ability to change your ballot paper, even guess your intention, as some of those stupid eastern states allow freedom of choice, idiots, so when people from those states come here and only preference those of their choice we can alter their ballot papers to suit our agenda.

We would like to send our best wishes to the apathetic as you are towing the line, we created this system so that change would seem impossible and it is, so giving up as you have is the best option, no use banging your head against the wall, hey?
The only people that count are the big boys who support and finance us and as such we reward them with tax breaks and hand outs, its your money anyway so why would we care, you should see my up and coming salary and perks, it will indeed be a hard few years until I can resign and enjoy my huge pension and other concessions.

I feel a bit like a future god as my colleagues and I can pass any legislation with out having to consider any rights of the people, to such a degree that we are having trouble coming up with any new ideas as we have covered all the bases, so now all we can do is charge the people more for what we were meant to supply in the first place, its pretty easy all we do is allow a supply to dry up intentionally then charge more for less, works fine to fill the coffers, so when we start to spend millions of your money to promote ourselves at the next election take your mighty pencil and vote for labor or liberal and leave the rest up to us, as resistance is futile, your countries long term future is in my hands weather you like it or not.

Love you all,

[monotonehell]

Nice bit of paranoia from someone who doesn't seem to know the early political history of South Australia and why we have a party system rather than a house of independents.

[dsriggs]

There is no reason to know my name or what my ideals are so I wont bore you with that information

That's right Mark Aldridge, why would Mark Aldridge want to anybody around here to know what Mark Aldridge's name is, especially since Mark Aldridge is seemingly so confident about winnning the next election that Mark Aldridge felt like posting on this forum about Mark Aldridge's victory before it even happened!
Also, interesting that when I Google "Mark Aldridge Adelaide" the One Nation party website is first on the list... And that 7th on the list, there's senate results showing that a Mark Aldridge, represented One Nation at the 2007 Federal Election. http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website ... 745-SA.htm

Pretty big conincidence there, don't you think??

[AtD]

So, how's Perth?

[Aidan]

Mark, quit your whinging! Our electoral system is far superior to the alternatives!

Australia's electoral system is not biased towards the parties at all. A lot of the voters are, but that's a different matter.
The two party preferred vote is merely the share after the preferences have been distributed.

Compare this to what the poms still do: they throw away all the votes that don't go straight to the winner, so many people actually decide to vote for the second worst candidate (or more likely, the second worst party) in order to keep the worst out. The Australian system is far better - no vote is wasted, so everyone can vote for whoever they think is best, in the certain knowledge that their votes will count.

As for independents, have you forgotten Mr X already?

And as for all that crap about safe seats, they are not as safe as some people think they are. Remember the Prime Minister lost his last election!

[Prince George]

Well, speaking as an early 18th century English prince, I think this whole democracy experiment is rubbish. It's already hard enough having to deal with all these Dukes, Counts, Earls, Margraves, Marquesses, Viscounts, Barons, Bishops, Archbishops, and Knights, let alone the rest of the hoi polloi. And I'm just the Royal Consort, the Queen is the monarch, but still there's already so many balls, operas, theatres, sitting rooms, audiences, and debuts to attend with just the who's-who, I can't imagine what my schedule will be if they have us entertaining the entire nation. Honestly, I don't know what they were thinking when they introduced those Reform Bills. Hang on, that was more than a century after my death, which was two hundred years ago. Oh hang this time travelling, I should never have let Captain-General John Lord Churchill talk me into this.

[pushbutton]

A QUICK LETTER FROM ONE OF YOUR FUTURE GOVERNMENT MP’S
There is no reason to know my name or what my ideals are so I wont bore you with that information, the fact is you have to vote for me regardless, as my colleagues and I right the electoral laws to suit our own interests, so we included full preferential voting to ensure you have no choice in the matter, and just to ensure I win we devised a counting system (2 Party preferred) to ensure your vote counts for myself or one of my colleagues.

As there is what we call safe seats and I was endorsed to occupy one I have already won, regardless of my ideals, in fact I have to tow the party line so my views matter not.
All the polls you read are 2 party preferred so even if you are questioned regarding your intention it will indicate a preference for one of us anyway, so you will always consider us the ideal choice of the electorate, and we will ensure those pesky minor players and independents are not heard of so you are not confused by to many choices, we can even arrange that their poster are pulled down, or that the ballot papers have blank boxes next to their names and our mates in the media will finish them of if they are to well organized.

As you have no choice but to vote for me, and my ideals don’t count anyway just to ensure there are no complaints we have made it law that we do not have to honor our promises as we at times have to bullshit to you to get your vote, we have even gone as far as giving the electoral commission the ability to change your ballot paper, even guess your intention, as some of those stupid eastern states allow freedom of choice, idiots, so when people from those states come here and only preference those of their choice we can alter their ballot papers to suit our agenda.

We would like to send our best wishes to the apathetic as you are towing the line, we created this system so that change would seem impossible and it is, so giving up as you have is the best option, no use banging your head against the wall, hey?
The only people that count are the big boys who support and finance us and as such we reward them with tax breaks and hand outs, its your money anyway so why would we care, you should see my up and coming salary and perks, it will indeed be a hard few years until I can resign and enjoy my huge pension and other concessions.

I feel a bit like a future god as my colleagues and I can pass any legislation with out having to consider any rights of the people, to such a degree that we are having trouble coming up with any new ideas as we have covered all the bases, so now all we can do is charge the people more for what we were meant to supply in the first place, its pretty easy all we do is allow a supply to dry up intentionally then charge more for less, works fine to fill the coffers, so when we start to spend millions of your money to promote ourselves at the next election take your mighty pencil and vote for labor or liberal and leave the rest up to us, as resistance is futile, your countries long term future is in my hands weather you like it or not.

Love you all,

You have summed up perfectly all that's wrong with the political system. Well done!
I just wish I could do something to change it but I really can't.

Aidan, you are probably right that our current system is preferable to the alternatives that some countries have, but does that mean we shouldn't wish for something better?

There are many many things wrong with our so-called democracy and Mark has pointed these out very well in my opinion. It may be whinging, but if everyone just continues to sit quietly and put up with things because the alternative is even worse, how will things ever be improved?

[Mark Aldridge]

I think there has been some missunderstanding I wrote this to show the inadequacys with our political system, i have fought for years for our right to freedom of choice and our right to become informed enough to make better choices, my site at www.howtovoteinsa.net sums up my position.


I am glad some understood where i was coming from.

Mark

[Aidan]

I think there has been some missunderstanding I wrote this to show the inadequacys with our political system, i have fought for years for our right to freedom of choice and our right to become informed enough to make better choices, my site at http://www.howtovoteinsa.net sums up my position.

I think it would help if you separated your valid arguments out from your worthless hyperbole! The pencils are no problem - the way the votes are counted there is no opportunity for fraud. And I deeply resent your claim that We must insist on the abolishment of full preferential voting. No one should allow their vote to count for a candidate that they oppose. Why should I not allow my vote to count for you if I think your policies are better than the candidate I oppose most? Just because I oppose you doesn't mean that I should be forced to waste my vote in the extremely unlikely event that you and him are the only two left!

[Prince George]

My own problem with your post, Mark, is that it is jumping at shadows. There is no voting system that avoids "voting for someone I oppose" in an effective way, and from among all the flawed options full-preferential voting is as satisfactory as any other. If I may paraphrase your complaint, it is that "at some point in the preferences I have to place the two major parties, but the vote counting system almost guarantees that this preference will be used to give one of them a majority; hence if I oppose both of those parties, I am forced to cast a vote for a candidate I oppose". So let's consider some of the alternatives.

First things first, we must recognise that the Labor & Liberal parties are called "major parties" not because their names are codified in our voting law, but because they attract a majority of the vote. Ignoring preferences and just considering the primary vote, the major parties receive an overwhelming number of the vote. It is for that reason that the preferences that we lay out on our votes ultimately get dispersed to one or the other - because they have attracted sufficient votes to avoid being eliminated in any of the early rounds of the count.

The simplest alternative is "first past the post" - each person may cast a vote for a single candidate, and the candidate with the most votes is the winner with no requirement of a minimum percentage of any kind. It seems that you clearly have the chance to oppose both of the major parties, but that is something of an illusion. Given that they will still receive the bulk of the voting, one or the other will still likely be the winner; all that this system has given you is the chance to allow other people to decide the result for you. You are still not able to "oppose" the parties. In fact, this system is typically worse for the minor parties: given only one choice, I may feel obliged to vote for Labor even if I prefer the Greens simply because I believe that the Greens have no chance of winning and I don't want to "waste my vote". In addition, the major parties have no reason to "court" the minor parties to encourage them to direct their preferences to one or the other. Nations with this system, like the US or the UK, are well known for both being two-party systems and for having non-compulsory voting.

Alternative #2, "optional preferential voting". This is like our present system except that you may stop distributing preferences at some point and leave the remainder blank. If all of the candidates that you voted for are eliminated during the count then your vote becomes 'informal' and is removed from the remainder of the count. Effectively, all that you have gotten is the chance to say "beyond that, I don't care" and leave the decision up to others. You still have no way to 'oppose' a party - by not voting for them, you run the risk of simply having your ballot ignored at some point.

Next, what of the host of different proportional voting systems - there is a huge variety of them, but they all suffer from two drawbacks: they are vulnerable to deceitful tactics, and the systems are so complex that the majority of voters struggle to properly understand them. Those two factors go hand in hand, if the voters could understand the systems more fully, they wouldn't be as vulnerable to some of the tactics that a party might employ. (The Wikipedia article on Mixed-Member proportional voting includes some examples).

Generally speaking, none of the systems offer an effective way to say "I oppose choice X", other than by not voting for them which, as I've said, tends to mean that you are simply landed with the choice that some other group of people made. That just amounts to a chance to disenfranchise yourself, which should hardly be a feature of a healthy voting system.

Ultimately, the real problem for your party is not the voting system, it is the lack of votes that it receives. Without a sufficient number of votes, no system will work in your favour.

Also, you should bear in mind the Nobel-prize winning work of Kenneth Arrow who's investigation of voting systems produced the Impossibility Theorem

Arrow’s paradox, demonstrates that no voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting a certain set of reasonable criteria, with three or more discrete options to choose from.

Loosely speaking, it says that no voting system is free from the chance that someone(s) could have the option they prefer become the winner by lying about their preferences.

[Mark Aldridge]

I accept the critique, but this sums up my views, if I am told not to use ticks or crosses, what is my intention if I do? Ok pencils is harsh, but In my state of SA, we have full pref, yet other states have optional, the majors get the majority vote, because they are in some peoples views the only choice, democarcy can only improve from the inclusion of honest freedoms of an informed electorate, if you beg to differ, so do I

DEMOCRACY SOUTH AUSSIE STYLE.

We would all consider that we live in a modern democracy, but what exactly do South Australians get for their money?

Lets narrow down the system to enable a clear picture, imagine there are 4 candidates in your electorate, at the same time forgetting the concept of party politics, imagine all the voters knew all the candidates and their individual ideals. (For the sake of this example will say there are 100 voters).

The people were split as to whom they preferred, and the initial count showed the primary votes split 23, 24, 25 and 28, the way our system works the candidate with 23 votes is excluded and his votes will be passed on to the other candidate/s.

The problem that arises here is the first excluded may have had all the second preferences, therefore the majority of support, this system in state elections is enforced by the 2 major parties, and as such benefits them. In legal terms this is using the ballot to defeat the franchise.

Obviously with huge amounts of our money to spend and a strong presence in the media, they will always have the majority of the vote, which in turn ensures that however you mark your ballot paper, it will in most cases end up where they want it.

This system is reliant on we the voter having to have a preference for every candidate, other wise if we had true freedom of choice we may not allow our vote to count for one or the other, or in fact neither.

There is a supposed independent Authority called the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which unfortunately for democracy is filled by guess who, funnily enough their findings regularly expose the fact that the voters do not like having to have a preference for those they oppose or do not know, but the 2 parties (Lab/Lib) simply ignore their findings, and we all know why.

Our Chief Justice of the High Court once said, “ if change be necessary it must be done by the will of an informed electorate”, yet who should perform that task?

Our media are privately owned and there fore not responsible to carry out that task, the electoral commissioner who is also meant to ensure we are informed, must only do so in-regards to the voting system, not the candidates.

How can we possible expect to cast a vote in a free and informed manner, if the system doe not let us do either?

I tried to fight the system on my own through the courts at the 2006 State Election, but even the rules of the court of disputed returns is written by Guess who?

There are many other devious sections of our electoral act, that deny us our inalienable right to ensure we receive the representation we would prefer and every year they make changes to ensure the bias continues, like the deregistration of minor parties and the like.

Our electoral act includes many interesting sections, in some the electoral commission can guess your intention, yes that’s right further than what you have marked and make appropriate changes to ensure compliance with their system, and who signs important documents with a pencil?

If elected I will demand that the electoral system is over seen by a truly independent authority, if other States of Australia can offer their electorate a fairer system in regards to true freedom of choice, then we should aim to do even better.

Democracy is the corner stone of our society, and the results shape our long-term future, maybe those of us who do not like our present path, can see why change seems impossible.

Making matters worse, if those that both write and enforce the electoral law have very little fear of loosing, they might be able to ignore the will of the electorate, sound familiar?

I will also fight for a system that enables us all to become better informed as to our choices and more open, honest and transparent governance in general.

I leave you with this conundrum, if you do not like me and there fore do not want to vote for me, that’s exactly why you should, because I am the only candidate fighting for your right not to have to.

Mark M Aldridge
Independent Candidate for the Legislative Council
South Australian State Election March 2010

[Aidan]

I accept the critique, but this sums up my views, if I am told not to use ticks or crosses, what is my intention if I do? Ok pencils is harsh, but In my state of SA, we have full pref, yet other states have optional, the majors get the majority vote, because they are in some peoples views the only choice, democarcy can only improve from the inclusion of honest freedoms of an informed electorate, if you beg to differ, so do I

I'm pretty sure having to fill out the full preferences actually benefits the minor parties, as voters for the losing major are more likely to direct their votes to a minor party than the other major - so if a minor party outscores one major, full preferences increase its chance of beating the other one..

DEMOCRACY SOUTH AUSSIE STYLE.
We would all consider that we live in a modern democracy, but what exactly do South Australians get for their money?
Lets narrow down the system to enable a clear picture, imagine there are 4 candidates in your electorate, at the same time forgetting the concept of party politics, imagine all the voters knew all the candidates and their individual ideals. (For the sake of this example will say there are 100 voters).
The people were split as to whom they preferred, and the initial count showed the primary votes split 23, 24, 25 and 28, the way our system works the candidate with 23 votes is excluded and his votes will be passed on to the other candidate/s.
The problem that arises here is the first excluded may have had all the second preferences,

But that's not actually problem. Though the preferential voting system has been described as selecting the least unpopular candidate, that's not actually what it does, and I doubt that's what most people would want.

How can we possible expect to cast a vote in a free and informed manner, if the system doe not let us do either?

I managed it last election. Are you claiming you didn't?

I leave you with this conundrum, if you do not like me and there fore do not want to vote for me, that’s exactly why you should, because I am the only candidate fighting for your right not to have to.

I don't consider it to be worth voting for enhancement of my right to waste my vote.

Mark M Aldridge
Independent Candidate for the Legislative Council
South Australian State Election March 2010

There will be lots of independent candidates for the legislative council, nearly all of whom will have better policies than you. What our state needs now are some decent independents in the lower house.

[peas_and_corn]

Preferential voting is still far better than first past the post.