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puddlesofunSo a few people I knew expressed confusion over stuff like preferential voting and the like, so I thought it couldn't do any harm to post my own limited knowledge here. Hopefully it's all accurate. Please correct me if you see anything that doesn't make sense:
The House of Representatives (little paper)
This is where you vote for your local member, who in theory will represent you (which is to say, your electorate, eg Grayndler) in parliament. Well, it's a nice theory, anyway. There'll be some boxes, and you number the candidates in order of your preference.
The AEC says: First, all the number of votes are counted for each candidate. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the formal first preference votes then they are immediately elected.
If no candidate has an absolute majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded. These votes are then transferred to the other candidates according to the second preferences shown by voters on these ballot papers.
If still no candidate has an absolute majority, again the remaining candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and these votes are transferred. This process will continue until one candidate has more than half the total votes cast and is declared elected.
This is an unusual system and in fact a really neat one, because it means that you can vote for one of the smaller parties and your vote will still count. And if say, The Greens get a high primary vote but don't win, that might still send a message to the party who does win about how the people who live in that seat feel about environmental issues, which may affect policy. In theory.
The Senate (big paper)
The senate are (again, in theory) the people who represent your state. For some reason, you only vote for half of the senate seats in any given election (so a senate seat lasts for two terms before a candidate comes up for re-election).
On the senate ballot you have the choice of voting above or below the line. If fill in all the boxes below the line, you will decide exactly what happens to your vote. If you vote above, some guy in the political party you voted for will decide what happens to you vote (although you can find out exactly what they will do with them by examining their tickets here: http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/elections/2007/gvt/NSW_2007_gvt.pdf ).
This is actually important even if the party you vote for gets in on primaries, because election to the senate is decided when a candidate reaches a certain quota (determined as a certain percentage of the total votes). After that quota is reached, the surplus votes that candidate receives are passed on to their next preference. It's this that can make preferences very powerful in the senate. It's also the reason it can sometimes take weeks to properly count the votes.
It's actually more complicated than that, too. The above-quota votes are only passed on with a reduced value (so vote for the one you like most, first, duh), and there's exclusions as described in the House of Reps. How it's actually worked out is described here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/counting/senate_count.htm (warning:contains maths).
Anyway, my point is that voting below the line is good. But if you do vote above the line (there are an awful lot of boxes, after all), at least check up beforehand that your party of choice hasn't done a preference deal with oh, say, the "Citizens Electoral Council," who say global warming is just a hoax perpetrated by nazis, and that Bertrand Russel is a "genocidalist". Unless you agree with those things, in which case I guess that would be fine.
Next: Who are all those people on the Senate ballot?
The House of Representatives (little paper)
This is where you vote for your local member, who in theory will represent you (which is to say, your electorate, eg Grayndler) in parliament. Well, it's a nice theory, anyway. There'll be some boxes, and you number the candidates in order of your preference.
The AEC says: First, all the number of votes are counted for each candidate. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the formal first preference votes then they are immediately elected.
If no candidate has an absolute majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded. These votes are then transferred to the other candidates according to the second preferences shown by voters on these ballot papers.
If still no candidate has an absolute majority, again the remaining candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and these votes are transferred. This process will continue until one candidate has more than half the total votes cast and is declared elected.
This is an unusual system and in fact a really neat one, because it means that you can vote for one of the smaller parties and your vote will still count. And if say, The Greens get a high primary vote but don't win, that might still send a message to the party who does win about how the people who live in that seat feel about environmental issues, which may affect policy. In theory.
The Senate (big paper)
The senate are (again, in theory) the people who represent your state. For some reason, you only vote for half of the senate seats in any given election (so a senate seat lasts for two terms before a candidate comes up for re-election).
On the senate ballot you have the choice of voting above or below the line. If fill in all the boxes below the line, you will decide exactly what happens to your vote. If you vote above, some guy in the political party you voted for will decide what happens to you vote (although you can find out exactly what they will do with them by examining their tickets here: http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/elections/2007/gvt/NSW_2007_gvt.pdf ).
This is actually important even if the party you vote for gets in on primaries, because election to the senate is decided when a candidate reaches a certain quota (determined as a certain percentage of the total votes). After that quota is reached, the surplus votes that candidate receives are passed on to their next preference. It's this that can make preferences very powerful in the senate. It's also the reason it can sometimes take weeks to properly count the votes.
It's actually more complicated than that, too. The above-quota votes are only passed on with a reduced value (so vote for the one you like most, first, duh), and there's exclusions as described in the House of Reps. How it's actually worked out is described here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/counting/senate_count.htm (warning:contains maths).
Anyway, my point is that voting below the line is good. But if you do vote above the line (there are an awful lot of boxes, after all), at least check up beforehand that your party of choice hasn't done a preference deal with oh, say, the "Citizens Electoral Council," who say global warming is just a hoax perpetrated by nazis, and that Bertrand Russel is a "genocidalist". Unless you agree with those things, in which case I guess that would be fine.
Next: Who are all those people on the Senate ballot?
