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Australian here. Firstly, ranked choice voting is so much better than first-past-the-post and you should do it. But since you asked, Australia has seen one pr

Australian here. Firstly, ranked choice voting is so much better than first-past-the-post and you should do it. But since you asked, Australia has seen one problem in recent years. But this is a problem specific to the conditions we have here. Firstly, some background: 1. In the Australian Senate, the single pool of voters from the state are deciding on 12 senators (EDIT: oops, should be 6). This is decided by running the ranked-choice algorithm until 12 remain (EDIT: 6). 2. In the Senate, there are now dozens of parties, so the ballot is hilariously wide. 3. Australia has compulsory preferencing. You MUST rank all parties on the ballot. 4. Because you can't expect the population to rank dozens of candidates at the polling booth, each party can decide for their voters what order to rank the other parties. So how do the parties decide how to rank the other parties? Backroom deals. Who knows what the terms of the deals are. In any case, it's not the voters who decide. The result is that minor parties like the Sports Party and the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, who each get almost no direct votes, jostled their way up just high enough on the preference lists of enough major parties that they ended up snagging one of the seats. More details here: https://www.fairvote.org/reforming-the-australian-senate https://www.fairvote.org/reforming-the-australian-senate But as I said, this is made possible by the specific conditions of the electoral system here. It wouldn't be a problem if the election were for a single candidate, or if there were no party-defined preferences (necessitating non-mandatory ranking).

jacques_chester 6y ago
A nitpick: in a normal election, half of the Senate faces election, so 6 per state. It's only double-dissolution elections where all 12 face election at the same time. In those scenarios minor parties and independents are much more likely to get elected, because the quota is halved. Voting above the line works basically fine. What happened is that the major parties were too lazy to discuss things with many minor parties, who then went off and arranged their own preference deals.
erentz 6y ago
The multi member district approach is preferable to single member districts because it gives a more proportional result. The Australian example demonstrates this in the extreme with very large multi member Senate districts electing different parties and single member House districts which end up electing the usual two parties only, maintaining the duopoly. Arguably multi member districts of between 3-5 members would be a better sweet spot. Removing the need to rank all members is also an easy solution. If someone doesn’t want their vote to transfer beyond their first or second (etc) preference why should they be forced to? Where STV is used in NZ for local elections you just rank those you want to rank. The Australian requirement to rank all probably stems from their compulsory voting requirement.

jacques_chester 6y ago

A nitpick: in a normal election, half of the Senate faces election, so 6 per state. It's only double-dissolution elections where all 12 face election at the same time. In those scenarios minor parties and independents are much more likely to get elected, because the quota is halved. Voting above the line works basically fine. What happened is that the major parties were too lazy to discuss things with many minor parties, who then went off and arranged their own preference deals.

erentz 6y ago

The multi member district approach is preferable to single member districts because it gives a more proportional result. The Australian example demonstrates this in the extreme with very large multi member Senate districts electing different parties and single member House districts which end up electing the usual two parties only, maintaining the duopoly. Arguably multi member districts of between 3-5 members would be a better sweet spot. Removing the need to rank all members is also an easy solution. If someone doesn’t want their vote to transfer beyond their first or second (etc) preference why should they be forced to? Where STV is used in NZ for local elections you just rank those you want to rank. The Australian requirement to rank all probably stems from their compulsory voting requirement.