Australian Ballot Paper
If you were to say you are confused by the Australian Ballot Paper or confused by the Australian voting system, you are not alone.
People have said I’m not a stupid person and in fact in fact in some quarters I’m considered rather intelligent, so why is then that I find the Australian Electoral System so confusing?
Could it be that it is intended so..! Could it be deliberately done so that the electorate unwittingly partakes and ‘ratifies’ an otherwise sham..?
Take a look at the ‘compulsory’ nature of our voting system, which makes it an offence to not only NOT VOTE, but to deliberately VOTE INCORRECTLY. That means one of the oldest forms of ‘protest voting’, the option to ‘spoil your ballot paper’ has been made a criminal offence!
The ballot paper is one of the most important elements of the election process. It is the means used to convert the wishes of the electors into an elected government. If my wish is for person A and only person A to represent me in the House of Representatives, then the ballot paper should convey this message to the Electoral Commission and incumbent government. The ballot paper should not as it currently does, make me choose alternative candidates B, C, D, etc when quite frankly I think none of them are good enough.
And then to switch the voting system used to elect the Senate..! Again we use a system of ‘preferential voting’ but the way it is tallied is quite different to the House of Representatives. The ill-informed use of your vote here is so easily manipulated and we the electorate can unwittingly put a candidate or party not of our choosing but of the systems choosing, into a seat of power!
So we are left with a very difficult task on our hands, trying to convey our wishes, the wishes of the people, within the restricted environment of the Australian Ballot Paper as it now stands, to the Electoral Commission. In essence, we must try and ‘un-rig’ or ‘beat the system’ if we are to succeed. This will require time and effort on behalf of the electorate, something I fear they do not have a great abundance of, and so we should expect the rigging to continue and the juggernaut of a system to continue to steam roller over the wishes of the people!
An excellent read of the Australian Electoral System can be found in Wikipedia
Tags: elections