Please explain: Preferential and proportional voting

One of the criticisms made against proportional voting is that it makes it easier for extremists to gain a seat in parliament since a successful candidate only needs to secure a relatively small percentage of the vote. Indeed, it had been looking like Pauline Hanson, the extremist Australians most love to hate, was going to get a seat in the NSW Upper House after the recent election.

However, it was not to be, because proportional voting in Australian Upper House elections is combined with preferential voting, and so even though Hanson won more primary votes than the two other candidates with whom she was competing for the final two seats, on preferences, they both overtook her.

Preferential voting prevents extremist candidates from winning in races where multiple candidates split the vote, since it allows voters the chance to indicate who is their last preference, as well as their first. UK voters, vote "yes" to electoral reform on 11th May.

NSW Election: Issues to watch, issues to ignore

New South Wales Labor is toast. Everyone knows it, but that doesn't make the election a dead rubber. As mentioned in the previous post, the upper house (Legislative Council) is uncertain and many seats are marginal. Moreover, election funding is associated with number of primary votes, so your first preference still gives a few dollars to the party you select.

Although it is late in the day to be offering it, Steve over at the Box Pop has been writing a five-part series on the election. The first post highlights just how narrow and misleading some of the groups claiming to give a "Christian" assessment of the parties are. The second explains the relevant differences between state and federal elections. The final three posts each offer one issue worth paying attention to and one that is a red herring. First, public education is worth preserving, but ethics classes are now a done deal. Second, ecological responsibility can't be sidelined by claiming that Christians disagree (since that applies pretty much everywhere),* whereas foreign policy has little to do with state government. The final post is yet to be published, but I'm hoping it will be about sustainable infrastructure planning that is not in bed with developers (to my mind, this has been one of the biggest failures of NSW Labor over the last sixteen years).** Hints in the first post suggest otherwise, but I can dream on for another couple of hours until it goes up.
H/T Andrew Cameron.
*For example, it's worth remembering that Newcastle is already the world's biggest coal export port and is currently dramatically increasingly its capacity. Once completed, the expanded facility will be able to handle a volume of coal so large that the resulting emissions will be greater than all of Australia's other emissions combined. We cannot pretend that we in NSW are not a serious part of the problem.
**Did you know that only one party refuses to accept donations from either unions or corporations? Can you guess which one?
UPDATE: Steve's final post is now up. It is not on infrastructure, but on something else also very important.

NSW Election: Don't waste your vote

A short and fun little video reminding us of the differences between state and federal elections. Key message: if you vote above the line in the upper house, don't stop with a "1", or your vote may well expire (even if you vote for a major party and they don't need your vote due to the complex mathematics of the Single Transferrable Vote method), allowing extreme candidates such a Pauline Hanson or the Shooters Party to be elected (and possibly gain the balance of power), even if they only gain 1-2% of the vote. The lower house result may be the most obvious in the history of Australian elections (bookies are offering odds of 1:1.01 for a Coalition victory: for every dollar you bet, if the Coalition wins, they'll give you a whole cent!), but the upper house is wide open. Vote wisely and don't waste your vote.

Remember, vote for others.

The root of freedom: experience and repentance in politics

...the freedom at the root of all freedoms [is] the freedom to repent."

- Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations (CUP, 1996), 14.

A new article in Southern Cross by Jeremy Halcrow reflects upon the US Presidential Election and the apparent preference of voters for political newcomers (Obama, Palin, also Premier Rees in NSW politics), who arrive untainted by any experience in power. Experience is here seen as a negative, rather than as the possibility of having learned from previous mistakes.

Does this preference for the newcomer amount to an expression of mistrust in politicians' ability to learn? Or simply in their willingness to repent? The media and political opposition usually paint any repentance in negative terms as a 'flip-flop' (or in Oz, as a 'backflip'). Our leaders, like the rest of us, must be allowed to change their mind when they become convinced through good reasons (not simply through populist pressure) that the common good lies elsewhere. Consistency in unpopular policies can be a virtue when there is no good reason to change (just a popular mood). Conversely, fear of being branded "indecisive" ought not prevent policy change in light of superior evidence or arguments.

I have reflected previously on the "politics of change", in which the present must be painted in terms of crisis in order to justify (any) change. It is this devaluing of the concept of crisis (crying "wolf!") for political gain that leaves us more exposed to the arrival of a real lupous predator.