
WikiLeaks candidate quits upcoming Australian elections - apapli
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/wikileaks-senate-candidate-leslie-cannold-quits/4903084
======
anigbrowl
Australia implements a form of proportional representation where the votes of
losing candidates in an election can be directed to other candidates who
remain viable, so as to ensure they are not wasted even though they are no
longer optimized. Candidates encourage their supporters to vote themselves #1,
and give their second-preference votes to someone else, though voters are free
to disregard this. In such a system, by voting for every candidate in order
you can also make sure that your least favorite candidate is disadvantaged,
essentially an explicit vote for 'anyone but X'.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-
runoff_voting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting)

'white-anted' refers to erosion from within, as by termites.

As for the particular events of the story, I am somewhat surprised (eg by the
idea of giving preference to right-wing candidates), but also not. Assange's
comment that Wikileaks is a party of accountability and not government sounds
to me like a desire for power (as a kingmaker) without responsibility. The
coalition structures that often emerge in proportional representation systems
lend themselves to this sort of politicking.

~~~
anthonyb
Politicking? I would see that as a good thing, and part of a healthy
negotiation about issues, eg. transparency in government, the environment or
civil rights.

Compare that to the first-past-the-post systems of the UK and US, where there
are essentially no minor parties with any hope of having a say.

~~~
mtrimpe
> first-past-the-post systems of the UK and US

Also known as the 'choose between two dictators every couple of years' style
of democracy.

~~~
mseebach
All mature democracies, regardless of the voting system, exhibit similar
characteristics. The proportional representation systems prevalent in most of
continental Europe don't return significantly different results from the FPTP
systems in the US and UK.

~~~
mtrimpe
Having witnessed a party going from nothing [1] to becoming part of the
coalition and the biggest party in the polls [2] in under a decade I'd beg to
differ.

That's not even taking into account the influence tiny parties can have merely
by virtue of having a seat at the table and engaging in the discussions.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom)
[2]
[http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/politiek/2013/08/peiling_coaliti...](http://www.powned.tv/nieuws/politiek/2013/08/peiling_coalitie_op_34_zetels.html)

~~~
mseebach
The "Tea Party" movement did much the same thing inside the context of the
Republican party in the US in roughly the same timeframe.

Obviously, the mechanics are different (and, IMO, more colourful) in a multi-
party system, but at the end of the day, Wilders can only decide to support
Rutte as PM or, after applying the full might of his party, not supporting
Rutte, who, never the less, remains PM.

They are probably an important factor in shaping public debate, and thus,
shaping general policy, but you don't need to be a member of parliament to do
that and plenty of non-MPs in FPTP and PR systems alike do just that.

~~~
mtrimpe
But from what I know democracy had no hand in the rise of the Tea Party, apart
from the Tea Party consisting of the dêmos.

In general, simplifying the situation, PR-systems simply give the population
more degrees of freedom in steering the government.

Even though it's still just a handful of options over a single binary choice
I'd argue that this difference is not inconsequential.

My usual argument against FPTP is that it's much harder for the population to
challenge the two dominant parties in case they choose to collude (or more
precisely: impossible to challenge the degree to which they collude) which
seems to be the failure mode the US democracy is currently experiencing.

~~~
mseebach
If it was possible to flat out buy 10% of the US congress with no involvement
from the actual democratic process, it would be done more often. The Tea Party
might be less grassroots than it lets on, but let's not get carried away.
Millions of voters cast votes for tea party candidates in multiple elections,
and democracy starts and ends with that fact. The best argument against
democracy is five minutes with the average voter, yet it's what we have.

But instead of arguing over the Tea Party: How has Wilders caused the dominant
parties in the Netherlands to collude less than the ruling parties in the US
and the UK?

Basically, my thesis is that parties are mostly irrelevant. If there are
important wishes in the population at large (ie. showing up significantly in
polls), those will mostly be accommodated, not because of ideology, but
because of self-preservation. For the 99% of stuff that we don't hear and care
about in our day-to-day lives, the bureaucracy is in charge in all important
aspects, and the iron law of bureaucracy[1] applies supreme.

It is a dangerous distraction that changing the voting system actually changes
anything that matters.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy)

~~~
mtrimpe
Thanks for the information; so if I understand correctly US democracy mostly
comes from which officials inside each party you vote on?

As for Wilders, you could say that the dominant parties were all colluding on
treating low-wage earning immigrants the same as low-wage earning Dutchmen. As
painful as it is, Wilders did result in changing that.

As for the dangerous distraction, that could well be true.

------
threeseed
The Wikileaks party ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Not only did they screw up majorly by preferencing hard-right parties ahead of
the progressive Greens. But they betrayed Scott Ludlam in WA who was one of
the only people to stand up for Assange.

[http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/19/wikileaks-partys-
adminis...](http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/19/wikileaks-partys-
administrative-errors-incense-greens/)

~~~
contingencies
If you had actually listened to the discussion, you would have heard Assange
explain clearly why this is _not_ the case. One person who had no chance of
winning a position but who was entering politics for the first time and was an
indigenous Australian was given a symbolic position above the Greens in WA
preferences for the purpose of showing support for indigenous involvement in
policy making. Obviously this has backfired due to people not understanding
the reasoning, but it was never a threat to the Greens.

~~~
threeseed
I don't believe that just because David Wirrpanda is Aboriginal and a pretty
fantastic guy by all accounts means that I should ignore the fact he is
running as a National Party candidate.

~~~
contingencies
I'm not super keen on that either, but if Assange's statements are truthful
(and compared to the average person involved with politics he's ... err ...
not exactly known for dishonesty) then the fact remains it never influenced
the Greens and the media coverage of this issue is completely out of
proportion. In addition, the individual state party candidate should be the
one queried on the decision, not Assange or the national Wikileaks Party
effort. Ideal situation? No. Still the strongest player for enforcing useful
and transparent decision making in Australian political systems? Yes. Of
course, they will learn from this media storm for next time.

------
bentoner
See a better explanation here:
[http://danielmathews.info/blog/2013/08/statement-of-
resignat...](http://danielmathews.info/blog/2013/08/statement-of-resignation-
from-wikileaks-party-national-council/)

------
aspensmonster
Australian election politics sounds like a genuine labyrinth. And I thought
the primary process in the US was difficult to wrap my head around. Compound
this with what, according to bentoner's link [0], sounds like substantial
internal conflict within the party, and I don't have high hopes for the
success of the Wikileaks party in Australia this go 'round. Though honestly,
it sounds like they're just discovering that a democratic, Kumbaya approach is
anathema to actually getting anything done. It all works great when everyone
agrees. When divisive decisions have to be made and stuck by? Not so much. Dr.
Mathews appears to agree:

>He really ought not to have set up a party with internal democracy.

[0] [http://danielmathews.info/blog/2013/08/statement-of-
resignat...](http://danielmathews.info/blog/2013/08/statement-of-resignation-
from-wikileaks-party-national-council/)

EDIT:

Excerpt from Wikileaks party response

[https://www.wikileaksparty.org.au/the-wikileaks-party-
announ...](https://www.wikileaksparty.org.au/the-wikileaks-party-announces-
independent-review/)

>If we are unsuccessful in having the AEC adjust the submitted preference
nominations to meet the National Council’s directives, we will release a “how
to vote below the line” card so all supporters and voters can follow our true
preference nominations, or select their own, so any remaining errors on our
GVTs will not be passed on to our voters.

If I'm understanding this right, the Australians have the privilege of instant
run-off preferential voting, and still prefer to just vote party line? Could
an Aussie please explain this phenomenon to me? Coming from the states, I'd be
frothing at the mouth to have anything other than our absurd closed (depending
on state) primary single-vote elections.

~~~
caf
Bear with me, this could take a while...

OK, so there's two elections going on simulateously - one for the House of
Representatives and one for the Senate. Just as in the US, each electoral
district (there are 150) elects a single member to the HoR, whereas each state
elects multiple members to the Senate. In the case of the Senate though, each
state is treated as one giant electoral district with proportional
representation.

Both the HoR and Senate elections use single-transferable-vote ("instant
runoff"), but this obviously plays out very differently in single-member
electoral districts versus multi-member proportional districts.

HoR ballots tend to have a reasonably small number of candidates - between 3
and about 15, but usually somewhere nearer to 6. On these ballots, a full
preferential ballot is the only option - you must number all candidates in
order for your vote to count.

Senate ballots, however, are ballooning somewhat out-of-control. At the
upcoming election, the Senate ballot paper in NSW will have 110 candidates.
Requiring voters to number all of these squares for their vote to count was
causing the informal ballot count to increase substantially, so in the 1980s
"above the line" voting was introduced. Under above-the-line voting, you can
simply indicate a vote for your preferred party ticket, and your full
preferences will be allocated according to the ticket that the party submitted
to the electoral commission prior to voting. These preference tickets are
publically available, and the current controversy surrounds the party tickets
lodged by Wikileaks in some states. "Below the line" voting is still available
as an option (and obviously one I personally will be taking up).

There is growing recognition of the perverse results that "above the line"
voting can cause, and of course 1-metre-wide ballot papers with over 100
candidates listed are absurd. There is some talk of allowing "optional
preferential voting" above the line, so that you can just number the party
tickets in your preferred order, rather than having to either number every
single candidate individually, or accept your preferred party's direction of
preferences in its entireity.

~~~
aspensmonster
Thank you. Why is it that you must number 100+ boxes? I can certainly see why
many would be put off having to do so. It would make more sense to me if you
simply numbered the candidates you actually had a preference for, and anyone
else on the meter-long ballot didn't get a vote at all. I imagine that would
cut down substantially on fringe candidates cluttering up the ballot. It seems
that the official parties actually do get this privilege --I've only heard of
the major parties mentioning their relative preferences to each other, with no
mention of 100+ rankings (edit: or is there indeed a full ranking the party
submits, but only the top relative positions are typically reported in the
news?). However, if you wish to vote purely according to your own preferences,
you're saddled with a ballot that folks will undoubtedly scour for their
handful of preferences to truly mark, and then blindly count up to 100+ from
top to bottom so that their ballot "counts."

EDIT: Many thanks to coffeecheque, Volpe, BlackAura, and any others that help
to explain all of the news I've been reading recently :)

~~~
coffeecheque
It's all published before hand. The deadline was the weekend, which is why
we're seeing all the stories about preferences now.

In the Senate, parties lodge Group Voting Tickets (GVTs) with the Australian
Electoral Commission. If you vote "above-the-line" (say for the Liberal Party)
the GVTs dictate where the preferences should flow.

The AEC did have PDFs of the GVTs, but I can't find them now. The ABC has
published them here (in an easier to follow format):
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2013/guide/gtv/](http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2013/guide/gtv/)

The reason why the candidate quit was in part because of the NSW Wikileaks
preference deal: [http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2013/guide/gtv/n...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2013/guide/gtv/nsw/#gtv_nsw_i)

You can see at spot 36 and 37 the preference going to Australia First. Its
chairman is a former neo-nazi, convicted in the 1980s of organising a gun
attack on someone from the African National Congress. The first Greens
candidate is down in the 50s.

As for why we have to number all the boxes, I'm not entirely sure. It probably
didn't matter so much back where there were only a handful of candidates. It
doesn't work so well when there's more than 100.

~~~
aspensmonster
I see. So each party typically acts as a cluster. They may have their own
internal rankings within that cluster of candidates, but on the whole parties
will typically only be concerned with cluster rankings. That is to say, most
parties won't bother with going through 100+ candidates' platforms entirely
individually, and you'd expect to see all (or most) of a given party in a
block on the ranking, rather than sprinkled throughout.

Senate Preferences for Party A:

1 - PARTY A - John

2 - PARTY A - Jane

3 - PARTY A - Mike

4 - PARTY A - Jennifer

5 - PARTY B - Napoleon

6 - PARTY B - Elizabeth

7 - PARTY B - Bob

7 - PARTY C - Austin

8 - PARTY C - Emily

9 - PARTY B - Patrick <\- (For whatever reason, Party A just really doesn't
like Patrick at all)

10 - PARTY D - NeoNazi <\- (Crazies at the bottom)

And so on and so forth for 100+ candidates. The abc.net.au preference listings
seem to show this sort of line up. (And there seem to be a ton of parties:
Stop CSG Party, Australian Sex Party, Help End Marijuana Prohibition, Smokers
Rights Party, Stable Population Party)

I can certainly see how administrative error could creep in here --and
sabotage as well. I still find myself preferring an election system like this
however even with the bloat :)

~~~
coffeecheque
Yep.

Though you have obviously worked out ways to game the system. It's happening
more and more.

For example, in Victoria, a group of five libertarian aligned micro-group
parties (headed up by the Liberal Democrats) didn't lodge their GVT, meaning
you now can't vote for them above the line.

As most (95%) of people vote above, that's wiped them out in Victoria.

But here's the realpolitik: they had organized a straight preference swap deal
nationally with the Australian Sex Party, which had a chance of making quota
(aka winning a spot) with the help of the preferences in Victoria. It's less
likely now in that state.

But the Sex Party has lodged its preferences in Victoria and other states with
flows to the Lib-Dems. It means the Lib-Dems can avoid helping the Sex Party
win a Victorian spot (and possibly balance of power in the Senate) but maybe
win its own spot in other states (and also, balance of power).

It is complicated and strategy matters big time.

~~~
aspensmonster
Oooohhhh that is devious. So the Australian Sex Party is trying to break into
the Senate and have a say nationally. Their best bet on securing a seat is in
Victoria. With the aid of preferences in Victoria from that small group of
libertarian-minded parties, that was feasible. In return, the Libertarian bloc
got preferences nationally; maybe they'll win, maybe they won't. But they've
got a shot. All gravy, right?

Well, actually, the Sex party also had preferences nationally with the Liberal
Democrats (whether the Lib-Dems were above or below the Libertarian bloc in
those preferences is irrelevant, as we'll soon see). And it just so happens
that the Libertarian bloc --that the Sex party is counting on to get their
seat in Victoria-- had substantial backing from the Lib-Dems. By hook or by
crook (hint: crook), the Lib-Dems utilize their influence over that
libertarian bloc and stop the GVT from getting lodged. Now they get to keep
the Sex party's preferences flowing to them, while not having to worry about
the Sex party actually gaining a seat at all! Even the threat of the remaining
libertarian preferences to them in other states is minimal; they've likely got
better backing from other parties anyway.

[http://i.imgur.com/s2zg1qc.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/s2zg1qc.jpg)

~~~
caf
Even better, most of that "Libertarian Bloc" are actually just front parties
for the LDP.

------
thomasfoster96
Bloody hell we've got an interesting election on our hands. The Liberals and
Abbott will triumph in the House of Reps and probably the Senate depending on
preferences it seems. After that though, it's very interesting.

~~~
mehwoot
_and probably the Senate depending on preferences it seem_

Actually it's going to be an uphill battle for them in the senate. It is
pretty hard to take outright control of the senate, especially with the good
showing by Labor/Greens last election (since only half of the senate is up for
reelection).

~~~
tomflack
"good showing"?

I don't follow the actual makeup too much but labor have 31, the coalition 34
and the crossbench 11 with momentum swinging away from labor (and greens?) it
seems like it's an uphill battle for labor to hold on to the current numbers.

~~~
mehwoot
That crossbench is made up of 9 greens, Xenophone and a DLP senator. Certainly
Labor won't control the senate, but it's still a long way off the Liberals
controlling it. If Labor + the Greens have 38 seats (which would be a loss of
2, which is well within projections currently as it is very hard to pick up
senate seats and only 36/76 are up for reelection currently anyway) then they
wouldn't be able to pass any legislation without either the Greens or Labor
agreeing. If they pick up 3, they would need Xenophon or the DLP to agree.

