Victorian Upper House 2022: It's Still Not Real Democracy But It Is Funny

Legislative Council 2022: ALP 15 L-NP 14 GRN 4 LCV 2 AJP 1 SFF 1 PHON 1 LDP 1 LDLP 1

The buttons have been pressed on the Victorian Legislative Council election for 2022.  This election yet again employed the long-discredited Group Ticket Voting system even though the same system wrecked the 2018 election . Nearly all members of the 2018-22 parliament, and most of the parties contesting the 2022 election, did nothing about the fact that at least eight of the 40 MLCs in the parliament were not there on electoral merit.  

And so, this garbage system in which parties beat other parties with several times their vote and win regional seats they would not have won in any other system on the earth continued.  That said, the 2022 results aren't nearly so bad as last time.  Yet again, there have been many individually incorrect results (including one which focuses attention on yet another undemocratic junk feature of Australia's worst electoral system) but all the same,  the overall balance of this parliament is remarkably representative.  There have also been hilarious doses of karma.  Parties that supported preference harvesting or did nothing about it have in many cases been hoist on their own petard while several parties that opposed Group Ticket Voting have had success.  Glenn Druery's "alliance" has not been nearly as successful this election after a campaign in which Druery got stung not just once but twice. While its members did get three seats between them, they may well have won one of those anyway.  Nearly all the randoms who got in at the last election lost, and both major parties lost a seat they should have won as a price of their inaction on the problem.

Victorian Party Policies On Fixing Group Ticket Voting

The Scoreboard - Victorian Election 2022

The following parties have a publicly documented commitment to, or position of support for, scrapping Group Ticket Voting:

* Victorian Socialists (longstanding)

* Australian Greens (longstanding)

* Animal Justice Party (added 16/11 - conditional on single statewide electorate)

* Pauline Hanson's One Nation (added 17/11)

* Legalise Cannabis (added 22/11)

See comments below for what these parties have said about the issue.  

Other parties will be listed here when I become aware that they qualify.  Parties that have publicly documented commitments to policies that would clearly significantly reduce the Group Ticket Voting problem may also be noted in this section.  

Don't take too much notice of how short this list is in the early stages of the campaigbn - but if a party has not been listed in this Scoreboard section by voting time and electoral reform is important to you, please don't vote 1 for it. 

Some voters may wish to specifically avoid parties that are part of Glenn Druery's preferencing network.  All such parties are marked with a (D) after their name for the benefit of voters who may want to put them last.

WA 2021 Legislative Council Postcount

Note added 1 April: I have had no time to update this page because of the Tasmanian snap election.  Button press comments and final results comments are being added on a new thread.

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It seems a bit dubious to be calling what is going on in WA at the moment a "postcount" when on the Monday morning after the main count we are only at 43% counted in the lower house (about half the votes that will be included) and a similar level upstairs.  However, that's the convention so I'll stick with it, especially since I won't have time for anything I could flatter by calling it a live counting thread.

Anyway for now I have not started a lower house postcount thread for time reasons.  The lower house result currently looks like probably 53-2-4 or 52-3-4, with Liberal-held Churchlands most in doubt.  There is also some doubt about Liberal-held Carine and Nedlands (both of which Labor is leading), the Nationals' Warren-Blackwood (Nationals leading) and the ABC still has the Nationals' North-West Central (Labor leading) in doubt, possibly because the seat is so varied (Poll Bludger projects an easy Labor win).  I suggest keep an eye on PB for further developments in the Lower House; if a seat is still interesting once the percentage counted gets much closer to completion I may have more to say.

This thread will follow counting in the six Legislative Council threads, and I will gradually unroll them as my very limited time permits.  Just for starters I thought it was worthwhile putting up some general notes on the counts.  

Group Ticket Voting Wrecks 2018 Victorian Upper House Election

The buttons have been pressed on the Victorian upper house election.  In the end, none of the results were all that close, and all regions have been declared.  If anyone can find a legal basis for challenging the results, they will now have to do so in court.  On that, it would be nice if professional preference harvesting could be deemed to be a bribery offence under Section 151 (3) (d) but I  suspect that it doesn't work like that, and that that section is aimed at bribery connected with how-to-vote cards.  I can only assume what has happened is all legal, but history should record it as another upper house election that was trashed by Group Ticket voting. 

I should add that this post is not intended as an attack on the calibre of those elected to represent parties with small vote shares.  They may turn out to be excellent MPs.  Rather the point is that they were not elected by a proper electoral system and those elected on very small vote shares do not have a proper mandate.