Who are you really voting for in the Senate?

Posted 15 minutes ago

Photo: It is almost an impossible nightmare for all but the most prepared to show their preferences. (Brooke Bannister: ABC)

Senate preferences can easily leave you unwittingly voting for parties or policies you oppose, but any changes to this system rely on those who were elected by it, writes Anthony Pink.

We are now past the deadline for the lodgement of preference tickets for the Senate.

The week that leads up to that point is usually one of the most chaotic times behind the scenes for political parties and candidates as furious calls and demands are made, deals are made and broken, and political strategy is pitted against ideology in a battle to be above the competition.

It’s also where the realities of representative democracy come under the most scrutiny, for the least benefit to the voting public, and the outcomes this time were as disappointing as ever.

Take the Queensland preferences flows as an example. If you believe strongly in protecting Australian industry and breaking up monopolies, you may think a Senate vote for Katter’s Australia Party would be a good choice. But you would be wrong, as the free-trade-leaning ALP got second preferences.

Thinking of voting for one of the interest groups? Even that can be problematic; for example, the Animal Justice party, a group you would suspect would favour the Greens, are dealing preferences to One Nation, who don’t rate environmental issues highly.

Of the 36 groups on the ticket, only seven have any sort of regular coverage in the media. The remainder of those parties have shied heavily away from left, environmental and even libertarian interests, preferencing the LNP, KAP and ONP, and often using deliberately deceptive or irrelevant naming to direct votes against the original voter’s intentions.

One deal that got a lot of attention was the WikiLeaks deal in Western Australia in which long-term supporter of Julian Assange and campaigner on digital freedoms, Senator Scott Ludlum, was placed below the Nationals on their Senate ticket, dealing a further blow to Ludlam’s chances for re-election.

I suspect that WikiLeaks does not think any National party member will stand up for digital rights more than Ludlum, but that is not what the deal is about. WikiLeaks would probably have to poll better than the Greens in WA to have a chance of winning a seat; National preferences would then allow them to make it to later counts after the Nationals elect their members.

This is the divide between ideology and strategy that makes us all cringe when we hear the outcomes of preference deals.

But what if it wasn’t like that …

A statement of preferences is actually about you as a voter. It allows you to show who your top choices are; if your first option is not going to make it, your vote can be reallocated to someone knowing that while they aren’t your first choice, you would like that candidate more than the alternatives.

In the Senate, however, a vote above the line allows parties to have the choice on where your vote will go. The parties know that most people will vote above the line rather than number all 82 (in Queensland) boxes below the line, and take the risk that their vote will be made invalid if they make a serious numbering error.

Even armed with the information that is available through the AEC, a few good blog posts, articles and party materials (potentially biased as they are), it becomes almost an impossible nightmare for all but the most prepared to show their preferences on the largest possible Senate ballot with the smallest possible fonts.

There are many approaches to fixing this issue, like allowing for full or partial optional preferences below the line, or allowing for a full preference above the line, which would give the power to preference back to the voter.

We could change the way votes are counted; we could introduce a Condorcet system like the schulze method where each candidate is compared against every other candidate after a distribution of preferences, or introduce a borda count, where based on the preference given, the candidate gets a certain amount of ‘points’ (similar to the way championship points are given in motorsports).

These are certainly only ideas, and I am not advocating (or discounting) any in particular, but if we believe in a healthy debate about our democracy we should consider our options. Unfortunately the decision to change the system rests with the people who are elected by it, and in the case of parties that have on and off ruled for over a century, there is considerable risk to their fortunes and little to gain. It makes true reform a much more difficult task.

How the public achieves the sort of change that puts them at the negotiating table on issues of importance is a topic for another day, but there is something to take away from this.

Our preferences should not be the bargaining chips of any party, and I would be suspicious of anyone willing to use them in a way you didn’t intend. Knowledge and preparation is your best defence for this election, but we also have to get serious about what democracy means and ensure that preferences meet that goal.

You always have a right to choose: don’t throw it away.

Anthony Pink is an Information Technology expert, democracy policy contributor, and regular returning officer for internal elections within the Queensland Greens. Follow him on Twitter @anthonypinkgr. View his full profile here.

Topics: federal-elections

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HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) — Every time the ground trembles in the San Francisco Bay Area, people ask themselves: Could this be the big one?

For years now, the region has been bracing for a major earthquake that many worry could level vulnerable schools, hospitals and apartment buildings and unleash near-apocalyptic chaos. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there is a 63 percent chance of a major earthquake in the region within the next three decades.

On Saturday, scientists hope to get one-up on the looming temblor, courtesy of the demolition of a university building.

Workers plan to implode the 13-story Warren Hall, a fixture of the East Bay hillside and of Cal State East Bay, which was built about 2000 feet from what researchers call one of the most dangerous fault lines in the country: the Hayward fault.

The building is expected to crumple into 12,500 tons of concrete and steel, which will slam against the ground sending out shockwaves similar to a magnitude-2.0 earthquake. Scientists have placed more than 600 seismographs in concentric circles within a mile of the building to pick up the vibrations.

USGS scientists hope the unique experiment will help map out where the ground might shake the most when the big one hits.

“We’re just getting an idea of the distribution of the shaking,” said Rufus Catchings, the lead USGS scientist on the project.

Many vividly remember the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 that killed 63 people, injured almost 3,800, caused up to $10 billion damage, including a collapsed freeway that killed dozens of drivers. That quake was centered near Santa Cruz, about 50 miles south of here.

But in the East Bay, the Hayward fault — which runs through East Bay cities and under the University of California, Berkeley’s football stadium — is the most likely to act up and cause a major earthquake in the next few decades, experts say.

The last major temblor on the Hayward fault was in 1868, Catchings said. He said the fault triggers a major earthquake every 140 years on average.

And it’s not just the fault line residents have to worry about. Additional fault lines —called traces — split off from the main fault, and the location of many is unknown. The vibrations set off by Warren Hall’s implosion will help scientists figure out where they are.

“In the event of a large earthquake, oftentimes it’s not just one break in the ground, it’s spread out over some distance,” Catchings said. “You’d kind of like to know where all these things are if you really want to understand the hazard.”

Mark Salinas, Hayward’s mayor pro tem, said knowing where the ground shakes will help the city decide where to put new housing and other buildings. “This data, when it’s available, will inform us on future development,” he said.

The idea to use the building’s demolition came from Luther Strayer, a geology professor at the university who called the USGS to see if they would be interested.

“Anybody in my position who is trained like I am would have recognized the opportunity,” Strayer said. “That’s really the cool part; it was sort of a simple obvious thing to do.