Patriot Update - A Free Press for the Conservative Revolution

Last column, I showed some positive and negative things we can learn from our staunchest ally, Australia. This time, I’ll continue on the same line, but this time with voting.

Don't copy Australia’s compulsory voting

Australia is one of the few countries in the west with “compulsory voting” (really, compulsory registration at the polling place, and very light fines for refusing). Some might argue that this would solve America’s “problem” of a perennially low turnout on election day—Australia’s voter turnout is about 95%

However, this is an idea that should appeal only to the Left. Obviously a major problem is compulsion—apart from big government telling citizens what do to, the Left is a policy-free zone. But liberty-minded people should not force other people to do anything. Part of the freedom to vote should include the freedom to abstain.

Having said that, I urge conservatives to vote, as my fellow columnist Dave Jolly has, because if you don’t, then there’s no point whining about politicians. Further, if you fail to vote Republican and allow a liberal Democrat to win, then whining deserves even less sympathy, as I have explained previously.

But you should have that right to vote, or not to vote, as you please, and take the consequences.

The Left has a more selfish reason to support compulsory voting. One of their major voting blocs is permanent welfare addicts. It stands to reason that if a person is too lazy to try to find work, he’s also likely to be too lazy to go and vote, if it were voluntary. It’s thus no accident that leftist parties tend to benefit from compulsory voting.

Thus high voter turnout is over-rated. While grossly uninformed people have the right to vote, do we really need to encourage or even force them to? What benefit does America gain from people who really think that hopeychange is a policy, or from those who vote for the candidate of the same skin pigmentation?

Do copy Australia’s preferential voting

Americans are mostly stuck with the “plurality” system or “first past the post”. Yet there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that allows Americans to vote for only one candidate. And this means that their will can be ignored, because it is not allowed to be considered. The most glaring problem is “spoilers”—under the current system, they actually hurt the candidates closest to them.

For example, in 2000, some leftist voters voted for Ralph Nader, who would otherwise have probably voted for Al Gore, allowing GWB to win. But before rejoicing too much, consider a time when the spoiling worked the other way, with far more damaging results, back in 1913. Ex-President Teddy Roosevelt, a liberal Republican, ran against the incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft. But this massive spoiling allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win with only 41% of the popular vote. This gave us the Income Tax, as well as the Federal Reserve, racial segregation in the federal government, and the breakup of Europe into little states that Hitler could overpower one by one.

Australia’s voting system would avoid that. Australians accurately call it “Preferential Voting”, also in reality it the type of preferential system called “Instant Runoff” here. That is, people list all the candidates they want in order of preference, with 1 the best, 2 the second and so on. If no candidate wins an absolute majority (50% + 1 of valid votes cast) of primary votes, look at the second preferences, and distribute them, until a candidate is preferred by a majority. (See this graphical explanation. While some critics claim that it’s “too hard”, anyone who can count from one to about ten should manage; admittedly that might be asking a lot of some government school “graduates”.).

This would mean that a vote for a third party wouldn’t be wasted, since voters could still rank all the other candidates. Those who ignore my advice against wasting their vote on third parties should at least channel their energies into changing the voting system. Many such voters are not egotistical spoilers like their candidates, and should welcome a system that would avoid wasting their votes.

However, while this sort of reform would benefit the entire electoral system, it’s far more important for Republican primaries. For far too many elections, Americans have suffered through a “moderate” Republican Presidential candidate, even when they bother to vote in the primaries. So how did a liberal like McCain beat all the conservatives combined?

Answer: under the “first past the post” system, he didn’t need to; he just needed to beat them individually. An unavoidable problem with the system is that a more popular position attracts a large number of candidates, which split the vote. So a less popular candidate can slip through the middle, although most don’t want him.

Under Australia’s system, a liberal would not be able to do that, because since the majority of conservatives would rank most of the conservative candidates ahead of him. For example, the liberal would need be preferred to all candidates combined—and if he his is, then the Republicans get the candidate they deserve.. Or, from a conservative perspective, take the following:

Under America’s current system, one outcome could be, A gets 10%, B 20%, C 31%, D 34%, E 5%, so D the liberal wins with a plurality although most voters didn't want him. (I didn’t give the conservative candidates any more than that because, to be honest, many conservatives oppose free trade, and even the Tea Partiers tend not to oppose Socialist Security or the leftist indoctrination centres known as government schools.)

But in Australia, with its preferential voting allowing ranking of all voters in order, most A voters would be likely to make B the second choice, and C the third. Most B voters would make A their first choice, and C their second. The liberals who like E would give D their next preference. So since A drops out early, his votes add to B, giving him 30%. E voters add to D so he goes up to 39%. B is now the lowest remaining, so the third preferences of A and B go to C, giving him 61%, so a majority of people preferring him to all the others. This more conservative candidate more accurately reflects the will of the voters.

Whether it reflects the will of the RNC is another matter, but these RINOs have long passed their use-by date.

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