ClumsyMonkey.net

To skip all the garbage you don't want to know and just make it a short brief post. The current Aust. government has been returned with an increased majority in the House of Reps and possibly a Senate majority as well.

if you're really curious to know the particulars I can give them to you. But too tired atm.

I'm guessing the Aussie system is somewhat similar to the US system?

so the labor party lost. sad I suppose.

I liked how in their elections they DIDN'T focus on Iraq and more on domestic issues

Here's how it works.

YOu get 1 green piece of paper representing the House of representatives.

and 1 MASSIVE white piece of paper (4ft X 1ft) representing the Senate.

On the green piece of paper, you mark every box 1-? depending on how many people there are on the ballot paper in order of preference. When the Primary count is done. (that is when all votes have been counted for a candidate with 1 next to their name, the preferences and 2 party preferred come into play). They take the 2 largest piles. Then thye get everyone elses votes and find out where they put their preferences. If candidate 1 is higher on the preference list thatn candidate 2, candidate 1 gets the vote. And so it applies in reverse. And thus at the end of it all, the final vote for each is tallied.

In the Senate is a whole nother matter. There were 30 different parties in this election. You can either mark 1 above the line in who you want to get the seats and thus have the parties do the preferences for you OR you can mark 1-?? below the line (again depending on how many candidates there are (this year there were 78)) and distribute your own preferences.

That seems like a tough ballot system. Good thing they don't have that in Florida

How do you feel about the mandatory voting? (correct me if I'm wrong that this is in fact law)

wooo single transferable vote. (is that what your representatives vote is or did I misread it?)

I dont mind mandatory voting. it's not like its a whole chunk of time out of your day and hell, if you're really anti voting, you can always donkey vote or informally vote.

Soozy. Yes essentially thats what it is. If your first choice is not in the top 2 vote counts, then the person who is higher on your preferences in those top 2 gets your vote.

the only annoying thing is the size of the senate ballot. otherwise its a piece of cake.

it sounds extremely complicated to us though


so do you vote on someone to represent your area (riding) or just everyone in the senate represents everyone?

For the HoR*, yes we vote on someone to represent our area. He can be an obscure back bencher or the Prime Minister. Every MP^ has their own seat that they have to win. It's whoever wins the most amount of seats outright who wins.

The Senate however is another matter. There are only 76 Senate seats as opposed to 170 odd HoR seats. A Senate term is 6 yrs compared to a 3 yr HoR term. Every 3 years when we go to an election, only HALF the senate goes up for re-election. ( I don't know why we do this. I think its to prevent a Gov't winning Senate majority on a landslide victory or something like that) The Senate is supposedly a proportional representation with a certain number of Senators from each state. NSW has 12, Tasmania has 2 etc. However, this doesn't make much sense now a days as NSW has a population of ~5-6million and Tasmania has a population of ~200,000 So you can see how its a littl screwy.

I like the way the HoR ballot papers work, but I don't like the way the Senate works.

*HoR = House of Representatives, think Congress
^MP = Member of Parliament.

As another addendum to this. As the final results were tallied, Barnaby Joyce, the Nationals candidate for the 6th Senate seat in Qld was also elected thus giving Howard a 1 seat Senate majority thus ensuring there will be no Senate blocking of bills. This comes into effect in June next year. (I don't know why it takes them so long)