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before we get to a flagship ABC politics show reiterating Liberal Party talking points this morning, it is probably worth clarifying that “preference deals”, where parties can actually assign real votes, are an above-the-line Senate thing>>
while it is true that parties swap preferences on their HTVs in lower house ballots, and these can be influential in an unknown number of voting decisions, the How To Vote cards printed and handed out at booths are suggestions only. The Senate is very different.
in the Senate, with its ridiculous hundreds of candidates “table cloth” ballot paper, an above-the-line vote 1 for whoever authorises that party to direct your vote according to their preference deals. In the lower house, the voter must number all boxes or the ballot is invalid.
when a politician exits parliament mid-term, there is a by-election in the lower house or a party nominee in the Senate. Eden Monaro was a by election for a lower house seat, not a Senate appointment. Preference suggestions on HTVs are just suggestions.
so when the Liberal Party spends all night lying about “preference deals”, they are deliberately misleading voters about the electoral system in this country. They want voters to know less about how power works. It suits their political purposes.
and claims like “Nationals preferences are leaking to Labor” actually mean: those who put the Nationals first are choosing, of their own volition, as enrolled adult voters, to ignore National Party advice and allocate their preference to the Labor Party instead.
it is MORE indicative of a conscious determination to preference Labor when that preference goes against the suggestions in the HTV. Nationals voters did not trip and fall on the ballot paper and accidentally put a 2 in the box next to the Labor candidate. It is not “leakage”.
yet both Antony Green and David Speers, two very highly paid men whose job is to present political facts on the public broadcaster, repeatedly erased the agency, the adult decisions, of National Party voters who preferenced Labor. Why?
typical tory framing is to present conservative white males as the adults in the room and infantilise their political opponents. This is straight up patriarchy. It is constitutive of Westminster systems, which are designed by and for propertied white men.
Nationals voters who followed the Nationals HTV might fully agree with it, or follow it out of party loyalty or intellectual laziness or whatever. Nationals voters who preferenced Labor ~went out of their way~ to reject the HTV, think for themselves, exercise their voting choice.
so. If Labor wins on preferences, even tho the prime minister threw the kitchen sink at a by-election, Labor wins because we have a preferential voting system and every single preference was allocated, not by “deal” - that’s the Senate - but by voters preferencing Labor.
voters allocating their preferences to Labor is how Labor wins on preferences. Anyone saying otherwise is misinforming voters about our voting system. Probably because they are hopelessly compromised by seeing the system only from the perspective of propertied white patriarchy.
clarification on Senate voting since 2016 from Sally. I was focused on the implicit assumptions in the “preference deal” lies Sussan Ley kept telling and used the old system to make comparisons. The point of the thread re lower house ballots still stand. https://twitter.com/swimsallyswim/status/1279536026877259778?s=21
