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Proportional Representation
Society of Australia |
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Tel +61429176725 |
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| Discontinuing above-the-line voting and full preferential voting is the right response to the manifest faults of Group Voting Tickets - imposing exclusionary thresholds is not. |
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Interim Report of
the Federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral
Matters fortunately recommends discontinuing mandatory full
preferential voting, and Group Voting Tickets, and
it does not support thresholds;
but unfortunately it proposes NSW-style optional
preferencing of above-the-line boxes. |
| * | Group Voting Tickets
distort the single
transferable vote form of proportional
representation, and should be discontinued, but not
replaced with NSW-style above-the-line
box marking. Mandatory full preferential voting
discourages voters from explicitly marking individual
candidates' boxes, diverting them to Group Voing
Tickets. |
| * | Exclusionary thresholds
are unfair, and inconsistent with direct election and PR-STV. |
| * | Robson Rotation should apply
to the order of candidates' names in columns, and of
party positions. |
| * | Victoria's
Liberal Party State Council - risking an accusation of
self-interest - voted
in
2015 to support an exclusionary threshold of 5%
of first preference votes to be applied by a change to
the electoral law, to prevent the election of any
candidate in a group on a Group Voting Ticket whose
candidates collectively gained less than 5% of first
preference votes, even though that candidate had
gained a quota of votes. |
| * | At Victoria's 2014
Upper House polls, 74% of the 19 MLCs (19 is
one short of half the House) elected with below
5% of first preference votes depended on a major party
ticket for election. The lowest-polling MLC, James
Purcell, of the other 26% of those - all from
small parties - gained 5,501 first preference votes,
which was 4.8 times the first preference vote
of Damian
Drum, the highest-polling MLC of that 74%, each
of whom was elected with below 1,150 first preference
votes. |
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