At Tue, 12 Jul 2005 02:19:15 +1200 Russell McMahon wrote;
> An arguably fairer system is the STV (single transferable vote) 
> system 
> where votes for candidates that fail to meet some lower 
> (undemocratic) 
> threshold are able to be transferred to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, ... choices of 
> the voter's choosing. Australia has this system I believe. seems 
> about 
> as fair as one could hope for. Most unusual considering :-).

Yup, us Aussies have this. The basics of it work something like this... 
We get a bloody big ballot sheet (~1.5m x ~0.5m) with two sections; 
"Above the line" and "Below the line". You have two options when voting 
you can place a 1 in one box above the line or number every box below 
the line. If you vote "above the line" you're giving preferential 
control to your selected member / party. Preferences have to be 
registered with the Australian Electroral Commission and you can access 
the preferences on the AEC website (www.aec.gov.au) before the 
election.

When it comes to counting the votes they are sorted by primary 
preference (ie. Who has the number 1 on your ballot). The member who 
has the least number of votes then has their votes redistributed. If 
you vote "below the line" it goes to the number 2 member. If you did 
not it goes to your number 1's first preference (They basically number 
all your boxes for you). This continues until you have a member with 
the majority.

The transferral of votes can have some "interesting" situations; The 
election before last an independant member got the preferences of the 
other independant members and was able to win the seat with only a 
small number of primary votes. (I wish I could remember  more details 
about this so it didn't seem so anecdotal)

--- 
Michael Davidson

--
Fortune:

Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
	No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.


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