Quote:that is just plain silly. Ridiculous, even. Those that influence policy are those that WIN not those that compete.
Wrong. You are voersimplifying the situation to the point of absurdity. You pretend it is all about one person, rather than the thousands of people that support him. Even if only some of those people involved are influenced by the perverse incentive to withdraw, it will have a negative outcome for voter choice and will artifically alter the long term democratic outcome. That is, the long term result will be influenced by the flaws in the system, not just by the will of the people.
Quote:I dont know what you are after. Is it seats where there and 258 candidates so that the winner is the first one to 5%?
Is is your rpeferred system that allows minority victories, not mine.
I am after the outcome reflecting the will of the majority rather than a flaw in the system. Perhaps your comprehension failure has something to do with your view that these flaws are confined to 'three horse races'. This is not true. Many contests come down to two leading candidates, neither of which would gain an absolute majority in a fair and open contest. In these situations, the presence of a minor or insignificant candidate is likely to alter the election outcome in a way that the supporters of the candidate oppose. This would mean that either the outcome reflects the will of the minority over the will of the majority, or the candidate (and/or his supporters) withdraws in order to prevent an outcome that is the opposite of what he wants, thus reducing voter choice. The second option reduces the short term problem, but introduces even more insidious long term problems, by reducing competition.
Quote:Standing for parliament is a struggle. it take sa lot of effort and frankly, that is how it SHOULD be.
I am not complaining about the effort, I am complaining about the institutionalisation of a disincentive to invest that effort.
Quote:I repeat that I dont see your point. There wil be weaknesses in every system.
When you say this it is hard to see why you don't understand. Is it because you aknowledge the flaw but see it as hopeless because of the (wave arms vaguely in the air) 'other' problems?
Quote:OPV seems the best of them all allowing people to OPTIONALLY (call it choice!) preference candidates or not. You really should clarify this, because I feel like I am banging my head on a brick wall repeatedly explaining the problem to you that you already understand, but refuse to acknowledge out of some kind of idiotic debating strategy.
It is actually compulsory optional preferential voting. This is worse than both truly optional preferentuial voting and compulsory preferential voting. The reason is that it creates elections in which one candidate relies more heavily on compulsory votes and his opponent must rely more heavily on optional votes. It increases the incentive for candidatees to withdraw and reduce voter choice and political competition - hence the informal and then formal merger of the LNP, something which has never happened under the old system, and a black mark on our democracy.
Quote:You seem to be looking for some electoral nirvana. Thats as likely as any other nirvana. NOT.
How about we start with you actually acknowledging the problem, instead of refusing to debate like an adult in case the debate gets into specifics of the problems. The closer we come to actually discussing the problem, the more you resort to complaining about not understanding it and making vague criticisms of the alternatives.