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[GlyphGryph]

Just find a Liberal supporter first and agree to both vote for a different party - your votes cancel out, except someone who is maybe less terrible has improved odds!

[Max White]

Vote for someone else instead, then. You guys DO actually have other parties...

That's just going to give the Liberals even better odds.

Your both kind of wrong in a way.
You see we have preferential voting. If our first choice doesn't win, our vote goes to our second choice. If our second choice doesn't win, it goes to our third choice, and so on and so forth.
As such, voting third party doesn't split the vote. We can stack on a heap of protest votes before coming to the major parties. Having said that, in the end unless you happen to be in one of the few electorates where Greens have a chance, the most important part of your ballot will be who gets higher priority between the two major parties. Our vote will always carry on until we have a majority, so you do have to pick between a shit and a turd.

[Scoops Novel]

Vote for someone else instead, then. You guys DO actually have other parties...

That's just going to give the Liberals even better odds.

Your both kind of wrong in a way.
You see we have preferential voting. If our first choice doesn't win, our vote goes to our second choice. If our second choice doesn't win, it goes to our third choice, and so on and so forth.
As such, voting third party doesn't split the vote. We can stack on a heap of protest votes before coming to the major parties. Having said that, in the end unless you happen to be in one of the few electorates where Greens have a chance, the most important part of your ballot will be who gets higher priority between the two major parties. Our vote will always carry on until we have a majority, so you do have to pick between a shit and a turd.

Is it a failing of your voting system or otherwise?

[Osmosis Jones]

If anything, it's a benefit; the shit and turd choice would be there anyway, we just get to protest without a guilty conscience really.

[GlyphGryph]

Your both kind of wrong in a way.
You see we have preferential voting. If our first choice doesn't win, our vote goes to our second choice. If our second choice doesn't win, it goes to our third choice, and so on and so forth.

Wel, yeah, I know, that's why I tried to just... put that out there as a reminder. It's not even like the Aussies have the vote-stealing-other-guy-winning thing as an excuse.

I honestly am not sure WHY it's just the greens in a few area that have a chance.

[Max White]

Is it a failing of your voting system or otherwise?

It is actually one of the greatest ideas to ever hit democratic process. Preferential voting means that we need to pick who we hate the least, but it also means that we can freely vote for who ever we like without fear of hurting our interests. The ability to vote freely encourages multiple parties, rather than a two party system.

I honestly am not sure WHY it's just the greens in a few area that have a chance.

Well there are also independants. Rob Oakeshott is a pretty popular guy, especially for Port Macquarie.
Also when we say Liberals, we often mean the Coalition, an unholy alliance between four separate parties that exists to ruin birthday cakes, so really that makes 6 parties that do stuff + independents.

[Scoops Novel]

I admit I'm with Glyphgryph here. Given you're better then usual voting system, I'm vaguely surprised that your choices are seemingly so terrible. Not to say that serious competitors wouldn't likely preemptively or very quickly stop acting in the public interest, but nevertheless.

[alexandertnt]

I like the preferential voting system. It means that my rebelious small-party vote wont end up helping to put the major party I dislike the most into power. It also allows smaller parties a chance to get votes without hurting their "side" of politics.

[Max White]

Preferential voting gives you more parties, but it doesn't make voters any more intelligent. The informed will have the option to cast their votes strategically knowing that the major parties look at the first round results very carefully to figure out what issues are important to people. The less than informed masses, however, will still just vote for who ever promises lower taxes and more benefits. As such, while we have a lot of parties out there, some of them pretty good (Looking at you Sex Party! *Wink*) you can still expect who ever panders to the lowest common denominator to get larger. Even the Greens have their shitty policy that exists only for uninformed hippies who would ban oxygen dihydrate.

The other really interesting aspect of Australian voting is that it is mandatory. Voter apathy is much less of an issue. While you can still make a void vote that doesn't count, you have to show up in order to make it, thus most will just vote anyway. While in a non-mandatory system politicians try to rile voters up into voting for them by becoming more and more extreme on various issues, appealing to a zealous few, in a mandatory system politicians shift towards the center in order to try and grab more voters from the other guy, appealing to a middle ground. As such, our right wing party is significantly less crazy than in the US... Still don't have gay marriage though, because the left wing is scared to piss off Catholics.


Finally, in case anybody was wondering about the significance of electorates, the simple version is we don't get to vote for our leader. I don't get to vote for Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott. Instead, there is a mini-election in each electorate, in my case between Mike Kelly for Labor, Peter Hendly for Liberals and a few others. So everybody elects a member of parliament for their own little slice of the nation, and then that forms your parliament. The leader of the party with the most winners gets to be PM.
In reality it is more complex, there are actually two separate houses, senate and reps, and also there is a governor general who exists to fuck shit up for people, but you get the idea.

[10ebbor10]

Still, why preferential voting might be nice, it's still isn't the best choice. In the end, only 1 major party can win in most electorates.

Population percentage voting is much nicer, even though it sometimes results in rather weird situations. Especially in Belgium, where each party has a French duplicate.

[Scoops Novel]

Is the argument focusing on the difficulties of founding parties a particularly relevant one to Australia?

[Max White]

Not really. You just do the paper work and promise people the world, then hope you somehow become relevant. Bob brown built a party from the ground up, now they all think they can.

[kingfisher1112]

Not really. You just do the paper work and promise people the world, then hope you somehow become relevant. Bob brown built a party from the ground up, now they all think they can.

I actually looked over this. It's a bit of cash, over 500 people signing a petition or a year in a parliament/government political role and zoinkos, you have a party.

[Scoops Novel]

In that case, whats your personal theory for the current state of affairs? I'm projecting a good bit, coming from Britain, as not possessing these elements i imagine that when we got them at least there would be a furor (no jokes). You may have settled into it, but I'm surprised nonetheless. On that note, when have you had periods of mad activity with this system?

[GlyphGryph]

I've honestly never been a huge fan of the parliamentary system - the need to form "coalitions" (in many ways negating the benefit and point of having multiple parties), usually with one "dominant" party that gets the leadership position and seems to make all the decisions and seems like they can do whatever they want despite being a minority of parliament... maybe I'm just misunderstanding it, but I do have to say I like the American legislative structure better. (Even though everything else about the American system kind of sucks)

We've got a system that could just as easily and effectively support a hundred different parties with no problems.