Australian voting system really needs an overhaul

[Diane]

Regardless of the complications of preferences and 'two party preferred' etc, I'm again amazed at how amateur the Australian voting system seems.

 

To start with, when you show up to vote, they don't routinely ask you to show any sort of Identification - all we got asked was for our name and our address so they could find us in their big book and manually tick us off. So theoretically I could have said I was anyone - as long as I knew their address!

 

Secondly, big books - I mean, really? And all they do is ask you if you've already voted. Then they take your word for it. So - again theoretically - I could have voted at several different polling stations (I think there were about 8 in our electorate alone and you can vote outside your electorate as well) and they'd have only found out after the event, with no way of cancelling out any of the extra votes I would have made. Even in Africa you get an indelible ink mark on your finger to show you've already voted - how hard can that be? (Side note, apparently the most common cause for double-voting is amongst old folks whose votes are harvested from their care homes, and whose family then turns up to take them to vote on the day - and they are either too polite to mention they've voted already, or they just forget they've done so!)

 

And my third point is that on our lower house papers we had to number our choices from 1 to 7 with 1 being favourite, 7 least favourite. I work with numbers all day and which are the two hardest numbers to tell apart sometimes? You got it - 1 and 7! I wonder how many people's last choice has actually been mistaken for their first? How hard can it be to put up a few big posters around the polling station telling everyone to cross their 7s?

 

Add to that the number of voting papers that have 'gone missing' this time (particularly in WA apparently), the number of polling stations that checked people off as having voted even though they'd run out of voting papers, the sheer size of the Senate voting papers and susbequent high risk of having an invalid vote if you miss a number, and the fact that the return address on many postal voting forms sent out to nursing homes etc were actually Liberal Party office addresses, and the whole thing starts to look decidedly dodgy!

[Parley]

How did Christopher Pyne go ?

 

You sound like you have a nasty dose of sour grapes at the result.

[Rossmoyne]

Regardless of the complications of preferences and 'two party preferred' etc, I'm again amazed at how amateur the Australian voting system seems.

 

To start with, when you show up to vote, they don't routinely ask you to show any sort of Identification - all we got asked was for our name and our address so they could find us in their big book and manually tick us off. So theoretically I could have said I was anyone - as long as I knew their address!

 

Secondly, big books - I mean, really? And all they do is ask you if you've already voted. Then they take your word for it. So - again theoretically - I could have voted at several different polling stations (I think there were about 8 in our electorate alone and you can vote outside your electorate as well) and they'd have only found out after the event, with no way of cancelling out any of the extra votes I would have made. Even in Africa you get an indelible ink mark on your finger to show you've already voted - how hard can that be? (Side note, apparently the most common cause for double-voting is amongst old folks whose votes are harvested from their care homes, and whose family then turns up to take them to vote on the day - and they are either too polite to mention they've voted already, or they just forget they've done so!)

 

And my third point is that on our lower house papers we had to number our choices from 1 to 7 with 1 being favourite, 7 least favourite. I work with numbers all day and which are the two hardest numbers to tell apart sometimes? You got it - 1 and 7! I wonder how many people's last choice has actually been mistaken for their first? How hard can it be to put up a few big posters around the polling station telling everyone to cross their 7s?

 

Add to that the number of voting papers that have 'gone missing' this time (particularly in WA apparently), the number of polling stations that checked people off as having voted even though they'd run out of voting papers, the sheer size of the Senate voting papers and susbequent high risk of having an invalid vote if you miss a number, and the fact that the return address on many postal voting forms sent out to nursing homes etc were actually Liberal Party office addresses, and the whole thing starts to look decidedly dodgy!

 

Agree with you totally.... one vote for one person... and you have to identify yourself at the voting place. I used a postal vote and there were various things I had to prove that I was who I was... so why does that not happen when you rock up to a polling station.... and why do we not use online voting... we all bank on line.. how hard is it to sort a secure voting system on line??

[starlight7]

Queues were long enough-imagine if we had to show ID as well. Electoral fraud is actually almost non existent in Australia, so I have been told by a couple of their supervisors(I asked same question) so things don't really warrant extra security. I also asked why pencils andn ot pens- same answer. There are a lot of checks and balances and that is why it is all so nauseatingly slow.

[flybyknight]

coming down to postal votes now, how many of them can be frigged?

systems a joke.

chuck in a couple of hundred postal votes, go from point to point voting lots of times. all good if you feel like it.

comedy

[Roberta2]

In the last Queensland state election, voters were asked to show ID, except if they could produce a card which had been mailed out to them. This may become common practice in future. The Australian voting system is more complex than in the UK for a number of reasons, including preferential voting (introduced in 1919) and the fact that the Senate is both proportional and preferential. I do know someone who believed in voting "early and often". He soon found the cops on his door. The idea of voting being "harvested" from care homes is ludicrous. The informal vote this time seems to have been only about 4%. Some out of ignorance, some to make a point. The idea of Australians tolerating having ink put on their fingers after they have voted is more than ridiculous. We don't even have an Australia Card as ID. When my elderly parents stopped driving, they no longer had a photographic ID card- so I had to take them to the motor registry to get "proof of age" cards. We don't cross our "sevens" in Australia, either, generally. In more than forty years of voting here, I have never heard that confusion with "one" is a problem.

[Diane]

In the last Queensland state election, voters were asked to show ID, except if they could produce a card which had been mailed out to them. This may become common practice in future. The Australian voting system is more complex than in the UK for a number of reasons, including preferential voting (introduced in 1919) and the fact that the Senate is both proportional and preferential. I do know someone who believed in voting "early and often". He soon found the cops on his door. The idea of voting being "harvested" from care homes is ludicrous. The informal vote this time seems to have been only about 4%. Some out of ignorance, some to make a point. The idea of Australians tolerating having ink put on their fingers after they have voted is more than ridiculous. We don't even have an Australia Card as ID. When my elderly parents stopped driving, they no longer had a photographic ID card- so I had to take them to the motor registry to get "proof of age" cards. We don't cross our "sevens" in Australia, either, generally. In more than forty years of voting here, I have never heard that confusion with "one" is a problem.

 

You may think it's ludicrous to harvest votes from a nursing home, but I have heard it from several different sources now so am inclined to believe it happens. Also a friend who used to live in South Africa was telling me about a mark on their fingers after voting that was only visible under a certain light, so that's perfectly doable too. And your final point about "we don't cross our 7s here in Australia" - well you're obviously living in a remote part of the country that is not at all multicultural - it's quite common in a lot of countries and cultural groups - I spent many years studying foreign languages so can vouch for this.... I also work all day with numbers - I'm a book-keeper and financial administrator - and I can assure you that it is very easy to confuse a 1 with a 7 in some handwriting, so looks like after 40 years here, you've just learnt something!

Edited July 7, 2016 by Diane

[Roberta2]

Have you been watching television? Seen the number of scrutineers from all parties closely watching the count? Had there been any talk of confusion of "ones" and "sevens", we would certainly have heard about it. I was also present when representatives of the Australian Election Commission visited a nursing home where my mother lives. Absolute rot.

[Parley]

Roberta, Diane is a Labor supporter.

she comes out with this sort of thing if her party loses.

 

Don't take it too seriously.

[Roberta2]

Pyne has just been re-elected for the 9th time, with a comfortable majority in Sturt.

[Roberta2]

I might also add that this supposedly "amateur" voting system is far more complicated than Britain's first past the post system. In the Senate, it is both preferential and proportional. I assume you do know what that means? i.e. that you would actually understand a system before complaining about it?

[Diane]

You're missing the point completely - the faults lie in the execution, not the principle, so there's no need to be so patronising when you clearly didn't understand the issue in the first place.

 

If anyone were inclined to place multiple bets deliberately, I am sure they wouldn't be so stupid as to give their own name each time.

[Mike@Bonbeach]

And almost a week later they still haven't finalised the results.

[Diane]

And almost a week later they still haven't finalised the results.

 

I think Billy Crystal summed it up best in a radio interview. "You don't know who won yet? Australian Idol has the results of their vote almost straight away...."!!

[Parley]

What are you on about.

Of course we know who has won.

[Ken]

And my third point is that on our lower house papers we had to number our choices from 1 to 7 with 1 being favourite, 7 least favourite. I work with numbers all day and which are the two hardest numbers to tell apart sometimes? You got it - 1 and 7! I wonder how many people's last choice has actually been mistaken for their first? How hard can it be to put up a few big posters around the polling station telling everyone to cross their 7s?

 

 

I work with numbers too. If you put up any posters in a polling station it should be to tell everyone not to cross their 7s - it that makes them look like 4s (and to write a 1 as a single line if they can't tell it from a 7).

[Gbye grey sky]

It was my first experience of an Australian election. Though not eligible to vote I worked in a polling station on the day. Starting at 7am and finishing after midnight (with two half hour breaks) it was the longest day I have worked and probably one of the hardest.

 

My admiration after this for the tolerance of most Australians knows no bounds. Despite our 4 desks being flat out all day there was a queue when we opened and we did not clear it until 5:45pm as almost nobody turned up after 5:30. The queue stretched to the road (luckily the weather was fine) and the average wait was 20 minutes.

 

For the Senate they then were given the largest piece of paper I have ever seen (probably a couple of metres long) with about 40 choices above the line which they had to order 1-6 or about 130 choices below the line (1-12) whereupon they squeezed into a tiny cardboard booth and manfully tried to wrestle with this gargantuan list. They then had to fold it about 6 times to squeeze it into the small slot in the cardboard ballot box. And on top of this they had a green ballot paper to vote for their MP (luckily just 1-5 in our case).

 

I find it hard to believe that many citizens of other countries would put up with this. Well done Australians......but there has to be a better way.

[Skani]

I think Billy Crystal summed it up best in a radio interview. "You don't know who won yet? Australian Idol has the results of their vote almost straight away...."!!

 

He can't help it...he's American. They don't do complexity: preferential voting - and cricket - are beyond them. :wink:

[Parley]

It takes the Americans over a year just to work out who their candidates are going to be.

[Skani]

 

I find it hard to believe that many citizens of other countries would put up with this. Well done Australians......but there has to be a better way.

 

Whad'ya mean? This IS the better way. :tongue: Previously we've had to number every box if we wanted to vote below the line in the Senate. This election we had to do only 12 for a valid vote. Though thousands of us in Tasmania still persevered to no. 58 for the joy of putting Eric Abetz last. :wubclub:

 

That's why we have sausage sizzles and cake stalls at polling booths - it's a long distance event, this voting. Need high energy sustenance afterwards. :wink:

[Gbye grey sky]

Whad'ya mean? This IS the better way. :tongue: Previously we've had to number every box if we wanted to vote below the line in the Senate. This election we had to do only 12 for a valid vote. Though thousands of us in Tasmania still persevered to no. 58 for the joy of putting Eric Abetz last. :wubclub:

 

That's why we have sausage sizzles and cake stalls at polling booths - it's a long distance event, this voting. Need high energy sustenance afterwards. :wink:

 

No sausages or cakes at my polling station. Just a battalion of people handing out leaflets to people waiting patiently in line in the sunshine.

[NickyNook]

At least our elections are on a Saturday - when most people are free to wait in line, wrangle giant Senate papers and eat sausage sizzles.

 

Could be worse - could be like the UK where all elections are held on a Thursday - a day purposely chosen to cause as much inconvenience to as many people as possible..

Edited July 8, 2016 by NickyNook

[starlight7]

Half the people don't even bother to vote in the UK. Some democracy.

[Gbye grey sky]

Half the people don't even bother to vote in the UK. Some democracy.

 

I did but I used to wonder why I bothered. I lived in 3 different constituencies in my adult life and in each place it was a VERY safe Tory seat. A dog turd with a blue rosette stuck on it would have won (and probably did). There are labour seats like that also.

 

I have never in my life been canvassed for my vote and in most elections all I got through the door was a Tory leaflet. Most of the time the opposition clearly couldn't be bothered and presumably had thrown in the towel so you had to make the effort to find out who the other candidate(s) were.

 

Democracy was only relevant in marginal seats and the Parties threw all their resources at these.

 

But at least voting was quick. Hand over polling card, receive a slip with 2 or 3 names on it. No queueing. Put an X on the slip and put it in a box. Never spent more than a couple of minutes in a polling station. A dumb and essentially pointless ritual.

[Roberta2]

About 40% of people voted pre-poll this time. Several weeks when you could vote any day of the working week. Strictly speaking, you are supposed to be "eligible" for prepolling. But if they ask and you say "yes", they are not allowed to ask further questions. My gay neighbour, who was going to be away on polling day, voted pre-poll, and put Fred Nile last of 122 in the Senate. I waited patiently outside - no snags or cup cakes though. Maybe we need voting reform to remedy that deficiency.