#alternative vote

Australia’s preferential voting system explained... IN FULL COLOUR

Australia is saturated in media from the USA and the UK. Through entertainment, current affairs, and social media, we hear things like:

“There’s no point voting for [Independent Candidate] because they’ll never get in — it’s a wasted vote!”

“Sure, [Good Minor Party] has good policies, but all they do is take votes away from [Bad Major Party]. We must vote for [Bad Major Party] to keep [Worse Major Party] out!”

Many Australians absorb these messages and assume they apply to our elections too — and our two major parties benefit from the misconception.

But whereas both the USA and the UK use ‘first-past-the-post’ voting systems for their national elections, Australia’s system is more elegant than that. In elections for the House of Representatives, we use preferential voting — also known as instant-runoff voting, ranked choice voting, or ‘the alternative vote’ in the UK.

So here’s Dennis the Election Koala to give Ken the Voting Dingo an important lesson in civics!

All are encouraged to share this comic online and in print. Please visit the official webpage for resources, plus bonus cute drawings!

Now, alternative vote isn’t the BEST voting system, but it is miles better than First Past the Post. It ruins the spoiler effect and gives smaller parties a chance to gain more seats because people don’t feel the need to vote tactically. So why did this referendum have a low voter turnout (42.2%)? Why did so few people hear about it? Why was it held on the same day as so many other elections?

Anyway, here is a video of David Cameron speaking against it.

Of course everything he says is bollocks. AV is simple. You go in and vote, you can just put an “x” next to one candidate if you want, but you can also rank them - up until you stop liking the parties. If you opt to rank them, then your vote can be transferred in the order you ranked them should your first choice get eliminated. The parties that get eliminated are the parties that come in last place after each elimination. It takes longer to explain, sure, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand it.

Alternative Vote is far more fair than First Past the Post. It results in candidate that a larger per cent of the voters can be happy with, even if it’s not their first choice. Supporters of small parties should have their vote counted again because they deserve to have their voice heard. Labour and Conservative supporters already had their voice heard.

And the claim that it results in a Parliament of second choices, as if First Past the Post doesn’t do the the exact same thing (and worse), is by far the worst part of the video. Our current system causes people to vote tactically against a party they dislike over a party they actually like. We have a Parliament of second choices. To some of us, it’s worse. We have a Parliament of last choices that got in through the spoiler effect that the Tories often gain power through.

Obviously, the most democratic system to use here is no system at all, and just carry out the government's mandate to negotiate brexit, like a good government. But if the people have to be asked until they submissively do Strasbourg/Corbyn/who knows who else's subversive trickery, well I guess AV is a superior form of democracy, at least on principle.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE)