PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA
	Tel +613 9589 1802	Tel +61429176725	18 Anita Street	BEAUMARIS VIC 3193
		info@prsa.org.au	www.prsa.org.au	2010-03-21

The Plethora of 31 bossy How-to-vote Cards lodged for South Australia’s 2010 Legislative Council elections
*	See the array of 31 bossy How-to-vote cards for South Australia’s Legislative Council elections. Zoom in for the detail.
*	SA’s electoral law is tailored so that SA’s use of quota-preferential proportional representation is dominated by the will of the party organizations, as voters are steered into marking a single box above-the-line, because their only alternative if they want to rank the candidates individually is to mark every preference below-the-line, without a single mistake.
*	There were 74 candidates, and a ballot is only valid if at least 73 boxes are uniquely numbered, each with a different integer between 1 and 73.
*	4 of the 35 “Groups” of candidates did not lodge a How-to-vote card.
*	11 of the 35 “Groups” of candidates consisted of only one candidate.
*	28 of the Groups’ How-to-vote cards effectively instructed voters NOT TO VOTE BELOW THE LINE, which amounts to a demand that voters forego their right to vote show preferences for other groups and candidates in the order they prefer, and instead slavishly submit to the party machine’s imperious and self-serving command to vote as instructed. A similar message was softened in the more polite – and possibly more effective – statements instead by the three more sophisticated operators, who were the only party groups with candidates likely to be elected: Liberals – ‘No need to complete the “below the line” section’, Labor – ‘You do not have to fill out any boxes below the red line’. Greens – ‘You do not have to fill out boxes below the red line’.
*	The Liberals were the only Group to have more than 5 candidates (they had 7) for the 11 seats to be filled.
Contrast SA’s almost party list mentality with Tasmania’s Hare-Clark, which gives voters real power.

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