Quote:


Why not? Does he not matter?

Quote:


Why are you explaining it this way? Are you saying 10 people voted for candidate C? And 75 for D and E?

Quote:


30 of them are just disgruntled because they lost. Their least favourite candidate won. It sucks, but that's democracy for you. Not everyone wins. The other 45 still got to have a say, and because they had a say, the outcome changed for the better, from their perspective. This is a good thing, not a bad thing as you seem to argue.

45 people are better off because they voted in the election between A and B. Like I said, ranking all candidates cannot possibly work against your interest. Not a single voter in your scenario ended up worse off because they ranked all candidates.

Quote:


That is totally absurd. The outcome is worse. The same logic would say that these people would be just as happy with a dictatorship, so long as they didn't actually help the dictator gain office. It is irrational to rpefer a worse outcome specifically because you didn;t have a say in the matter. It is some kind of logical fallacy.

A candidate won who is less favoured by the general public than his main competitor. You argue that the people are happier because of this, even though the outcome is worse, because they didn't have a say in the matter. Their response is irrational. No-one in their right mind would prefer a worse outcome just because they missed their opportunity to make it better. And either way, one of the two main candidates wins, so your argument that MPV helps the two main candidates is wrong. If all you care about is the two main candidates vs the minor candidates, then it makes no difference. No-one is worse off. If, as is the case in reality, you also care about who actually wins office, then the people are better off.

The people who are disgruntled in the first example are only disgruntled because they don't understand how the system works. They think it was a single election in which they helped B win over C. that is wrong. It never happened. It was four elections. Their favourite candidate lost the first 3 elections. Then there was a fourth election between A and B. In that election, the more popular candidate won.

In an election with 5 candidates, not everyone is going to see their favourite candidate win. This is not a flaw. Not everyone can win.

Quote:


No. Why would I say that? The system requires people to rank honestly.

Quote:


No. That is not how it works. It doesn't matter whether they value voicing their support for C or D most or having a say in the real battle between A and B most. What matters is that they voted in all 4 elections, and had their say in all 4 elections. This is the beauty of preferential voting. If people understood it better, the whole OPV thing would disappear overnight. The fact that C, D and E lost an election is not a sound argument for not voting in an election where only A and B are candidates.

In this case, people want two things. They want to voice their support for a minor candidate (C, D or E). They also want to have a say in whether A or B wins. There is no tradeoff between these two things. They can do both. They can vote in an election where only A and B are candidates. Doing so in no way diminishes their support for the other candidates.

Note however that OPV can actually benefit the two main candidates. OPV can cause one of the two major candidates to win, even though the majority of the public would have preferred a third candidate. OPV benefits the major parties.

Arguing for OPV is no different to arguing that you shouldn't have to vote at all because you don't like C or D either. The principle is the same. People just get confused and think it is a different principle because they rank candidates rather than voting for a single candidate. However, even with preferential voting, you still only vote for one candidate in each election, and that candidate is always your favourite out of those on the ballot. The only difference is you don't have to turn up to the polls a dozen times.

I think it would be easier for you to understand if you viewed it as a number of completely separate elections. That is what it is. It's just that you only have to turn up to the polls once.

It is very confusing FD - but Muso is almost right in this regard.  No matter who votes for who - one of the two major parties will always win - although I think in the future we will see more coalitions - not just the Liberals/Nationals.

OPV is really what we should all be doing - the big problem is - most people haven't got a clue where the preferences are going from the party they voted for.  They could put Liberal last and the Marijuana party first - yet through elimination from the bottom up - their vote could still go to the Liberals.

I might have this wrong - but for example - the Marijuana Party might give their preferences to the Shooters Party, who might pass it onto the Christian Right who then give it to the Liberals.

It's a stupid system, and so entangled that no-one can really understand it thoroughly except the politicians and those involved in the electoral process or counting the votes.  I just wonder how many counters are involved to check & double check each vote properly.

Plus our system is open to rort.  Everything is done manually.  You can go to 5 or 6 different voting booths in your area and vote for the same party and who has the manual ability to ensure that people only vote once.  Occasionally there's a random check, but not often.

Quote:


No matter who votes for who? The major parties win because so many people vote for them.

Quote:


Actually the candidate you rank last is the one candidate your vote cannot possibly end up with.

Quote:


That only happens with above the line voting in the senate. If you are in NSW or QLD and you 'vote 1' for a state election, it means no preferences are distributed. On the other hand, if you do that in the federal lower house, your vote is tossed out and doesn;t count for anyone. Yes that is confusing, and you can blame OPV for it.

Quote:


I'll try explaining it to you. Suppose there are ten candidates. There will be nine elections. In each election, the candidate who comes last is eliminated, until only one victor remains. Your vote in each election goes to whichever of the remaining candidates you have ranked higher. Rather than thinking of it as preference distribution, it's easier to think of it as separate elections.

Quote:


That's the price of a secret ballot.

Quote:


Then argue for optional voting. Not for compulsory optional preferential voting, which is an absurdity. That way fewer people will be confused into thinking there is a flaw in instant runoff voting. The reason that OPV gets passed, but not optional voting, is that people understand the issues surrounding optional voting. But they get all confused about OPV, because they think that distributing preferences can work against them.

Quote:


Even if they don't, it does not harm them to have to rank them. Of course in practice, there is always some difference between the major candidates. You don't have to like one to be able to tell the difference between them. This is no different to saying you don't want to vote at all because they are all politicians. Voting is a civic duty, even if you don't like politics.

I have less of an issue with optional voting. At least people can make a rational argument for it. Just as you may resolve never to vote for one party, or a group of parties, some people may resolve never to vote at all, or not to vote for any of the running candidates. It's when they try to mislead others into thinking it is somehow a different issue to not voting where it becomes irrational, and where I object, because it promotes a misunderstanding of instant runoff voting.

Because of this misunderstanding, the major parties in QLD and NSW have managed to trick people into supporting optional voting after the least important round of elections. They tricked people into thinking it was a scheme that would beneift the minor parties, when in fact it benefits the major parties. It also reintroduces the spoiler effect and a degree of randomness to the outcome of an election.

freediver wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2008 at 2:35pm:


Tell me what you mean by the spoiler effect. It sounds like democracy at work.

freediver wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2008 at 10:22am:


At this very moment I would.

Lots of minor party candidates win and so do independents.

The world isn't just liberal or labor and we shouldn't be forced to give votes to anyone we don't wish to vote for.

Some people just vote for their candidtate choice at 1 and donkey vote the rest...  this is an obvious distortion of the vote.  Luck of the electoral draw nominates who gets their preferences not educated decision making.

Neferti wrote on Nov 23^rd, 2008 at 7:00pm:


Slumming it nef?