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Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council (Read 356 times)
Bam
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Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council
Apr 1st, 2021 at 7:09pm
 
PollBludger reports how someone won a seat in the Legislative Council from a primary vote of 98 votes in the Mining and Pastoral region (0.2% of the total). The results in that region were four Labor, one Liberal, and one for the Daylight Saving Party (who polled 98 primary votes).

Ninety-eight votes, out of over a million votes total in the whole state.

This perverse outcome is only possible for two reasons:
(1) Ticket voting that allows the "harvesting" of preferences.
(2) Malapportionment in favour of rural voters.

Both of these need to be abolished in much-needed reforms.
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Bam
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Re: Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council
Reply #1 - Apr 1st, 2021 at 10:13pm
 
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You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to hold opinions that you can defend through sound, reasoned argument.
 
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Bam
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Re: Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council
Reply #2 - Apr 2nd, 2021 at 4:40pm
 
New WA Upper House MP, Daylight Saving Party leader Wilson Tucker, is living in the US
Quote:
According to the WA Electoral Commission, to be elected to the Upper House, the candidate must be at least 18, an Australian citizen, have lived in Western Australia for one year, not be subject to any legal incapacity and be an elector entitled to vote in a district.

Mr Tucker has since confirmed to the ABC that he is currently living in Seattle, Washington.

It is not clear whether Mr Tucker intends to return to WA to serve his term as MP or if he is even still eligible to sit in Parliament.

ABC election analyst Antony Green said it showed the ticket voting system in WA was broken.

"Elected as a Daylight Saving Party MLC from Mining and Pastoral Region, despite polling only 98 votes, and he doesn't actually currently live in the state. You couldn't get a better case of what's wrong with group voting tickets," he tweeted.
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greggerypeccary
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Re: Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council
Reply #3 - Apr 6th, 2021 at 1:44pm
 
Bam wrote on Apr 2nd, 2021 at 4:40pm:
New WA Upper House MP, Daylight Saving Party leader Wilson Tucker, is living in the US
Quote:
According to the WA Electoral Commission, to be elected to the Upper House, the candidate must be at least 18, an Australian citizen, have lived in Western Australia for one year, not be subject to any legal incapacity and be an elector entitled to vote in a district.

Mr Tucker has since confirmed to the ABC that he is currently living in Seattle, Washington.

It is not clear whether Mr Tucker intends to return to WA to serve his term as MP or if he is even still eligible to sit in Parliament.

ABC election analyst Antony Green said it showed the ticket voting system in WA was broken.

"Elected as a Daylight Saving Party MLC from Mining and Pastoral Region, despite polling only 98 votes, and he doesn't actually currently live in the state. You couldn't get a better case of what's wrong with group voting tickets," he tweeted.


It's not like he's moved there recently either.

He's lived in the USA for the last three years.

What a joke.

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Raven
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Re: Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council
Reply #4 - Apr 12th, 2021 at 12:46am
 
That's the problem here in WA. One vote is not one value.

The Legislative Council is elected from six regions. Three of those regions cover metropolitan Perth, which as of 2021 includes 75.8% of all enrolled voters. The other three regions cover the remainder of the state. Each region elects six members.

This means that less than one quarter of all voters get to choose half the members of the upper house. The malapportionment is even worse, since the South West region covers more electors than the Agricultural and Mining and Pastoral regions combined.


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Quoth the Raven "Nevermore"

Raven would rather ask questions that may never be answered, then accept answers which must never be questioned.
 
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rhino
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Re: Why WA needs to reform the Legislative Council
Reply #5 - Apr 12th, 2021 at 1:29am
 
The only reason this is an issue is because any redistribution would favour Labor.
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