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"Also, there is a single senator ... who holds the balance of power." This seems to be a serious design flaw in democracy. One person (or one small party), wit

"Also, there is a single senator ... who holds the balance of power." This seems to be a serious design flaw in democracy. One person (or one small party), with the ability to swing the majority vote one way or another, ends up with a disproportionate amount of power. We see this with the Quebec separatists in Canada, and in the US, with their "independent" senators.

tjmc 17y ago
It gets worse. Australia has a preferential voting system where you rank the candidates from first choice to last. It's not too bad a system if there's a small number of candidates, but the senate has dozens. So the alternative to numbering every box (and what most people do for the senate), is to just put a "1" in the party of your choice. They then decide who the preferences go to. I'm not kidding. In the case of Steven Fielding, the 2 major parties both gave him their "preferences" above each other, but neither of the major parties got enough votes to get the seat, so he got it. How many people actually voted for him as their preferred candidate? 56,376