One of the underappreciated virtues of preferential voting isn’t that it produces winner/s most people are happy with.
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One of the underappreciated virtues of preferential voting isn’t that it produces winner/s most people are happy with. Very obviously that doesn’t happen. In fact it discourages Euro-style coalition building and collaboration, and encourages competition. That’s good and bad but it’s what it is.
What preferential voting is very good at is excluding candidates and groups most people don’t want, and ostracism is also a good and cool democratic urge, and Australians love punishing shit candidates
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FWIW I think the great un-democratic aspect to Australian politics is the entitlement many people feel to abuse the people who get elected, as though they were by virtue of being elected just there to be shouted at. If you think it’s so easy to represent an electorate, try it.
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Thermite Be Giantsreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan was this toot prompted by Old Mate the libertarian getting almost no votes last night?
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What you get in a Council vote is an example of an alternative to meritocracy (which regular readers will know I loathe as an ideology and a lie we tell ourselves to justify power).
There’s no sense that the elected candidates in a proportional vote are the ‘best’. What they are is candidates who got over quota, ie. met a basic test, and managed not to get excluded. It’s an exclusion of the incompetent more than it’s a selection of the virtuous.
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Liam :fnord:replied to Thermite Be Giants last edited by
@ThermiteBeGiants on the day after an election day, in my own kind of Sabbath, I like to devote time to think about politics
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@liamvhogan the very worst lie is "people voted for me, they want my brand of fascism" when they actually just put a 1 in the first column. Looks like Lake Mac west ward is getting exactly that this year.
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@liamvhogan the only people allowed to criticise politicians are journalists, obvs
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@daedalus so one of the fascinating things about Australia’s systems is how rare it is for any journalists to make the switch to elected politics. John Curtin is the great exception. In modern times there’s Maxine McKew, there’s one or two others, and none have made great successes.
In other democratic countries it happens all the time and it’s a normal part of public life. I’m not sure what the significance is but it’s very notable.
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@liamvhogan most of them become staffers or consultants instead?
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Insurgo Formicareplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan @daedalus do Sarah McDonald and Dougal Saunders count?
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@daedalus yes, or to PR firms. And there’s a really strong pathway for staffers to Parliament, it’s one of the most common in fact. But almost never the media advisers. I struggle to think of even one.
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@liamvhogan @daedalus Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull...
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@nacho_borracho @daedalus good points
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@liamvhogan @daedalus there's a very depressing pol science thesis in there for someone who hates themselves enough
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@liamvhogan @nacho_borracho Zoe Daniel also. And there is a list of names in this piece from 2007 https://www.theage.com.au/national/journo-turning-politician-its-an-old-story-20070302-ge4c0m.html
It appears to be more common than you perhaps remember. -
@daedalus @liamvhogan @nacho_borracho Pru Goward was another one
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Liam :fnord:replied to Ross Macfarlane last edited by
@rmtheriskmanagr @daedalus @nacho_borracho I’ll tell you what not only is my memory very defective, this is an absolute rogues’ gallery
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James Henstridgereplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan I'd think that's more of a single-member vs. multi-member electorate thing than preferences.
We use preferential voting for both the House of Reps and Senate, and it's far more common to see a single-party majority in the House than the Senate.