JSCEM Report 2013 Australian Federal Election

JSCEM Final report of the 2013 Federal Election has been published.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2013_General_Election/Final_Report

Missing is the much needed review of the method of counting the senate election.

The need for

1. A Weighted Surplus Transfer system.
2. A reiterative system of distribution of preferences from excluded candidates where the count is reset and restarted on each candidate(s) exclusion
3. The scraping of the Droop quota and the adoption of a pure proportional representative model (x/y)
4. The retention of Above-the-line (ATL) Group voting with the allocation of ATL voting to be equally distributed to each candidate within the group. The group maintaining the right to determine the order of exclusion within the group.

The guiding principle being

“That votes from excluded candidates should be redistributed and counted as if the excluded candidate(s) had not stood

The current system is disproportionate and favours minor parties/Candidates and does not reflect the voters intentions.

A full value vote should always be allocated to the first available continuing candidate without skipping and jumping.

A reiterative counting system would also allow of the adjustment of the quota for election on each iteration, facilitating optional preferential voting..

The current outdated system of counting the vote was designed to facilitate a manual count.

With the use of computer based technology there is no excuse or justification to maintain the outdated flawed system of counting the Senate vote.