Thanks for this. Good practice going into elections.
Points:
The Pirate on-line preference form seems to take the same rank for multiple entries ( at least before submit ).
The 3 parties with “LNP” above - confusing!
A diagrammatic how-to-use-case with images may be warranted too?
Is a “State of Affairs” app in the offing?
Just trying to reduce / remove all complexity that may throw off the actual voting process.
That’s entirely deliberate. The system we use (internally for this) is a Schulze method rather than mere STV (as per the election proper); it can handle multiple groups being ranked equally 
The results are in. The voting figures can be viewed here: https://voting.pirateparty.org.au/results/preferences-2016
Rankings
228 ballots received out of a potential total of 1,282 (18%).
Is there a way to improve this participation rate next time? E.g. via an app? (Also it would be nice if the voting system starts at 50% for each candidate, and you can increment up and down from there.).
I guess Labor being this high in the list is a reflection of people acknowledging the problem of votes exhausting. Still a few surprises in there though.
I suspect it will be inversely proportional to the ALP’s proximity to power.
When the Labor is in government, we will put them much lower due to living through them being awful on civil liberties, human rights etc. When the Libs are in, they aren’t seen the same way because they are the ‘opposition’ to the government so they will drift back up the list.
That is my theory anyway. People shouldn’t forget what they are really like.
I don’t see how an app would substantially change the user experience.
Turnout for these things is always pretty low. It’s a worry, but it’s not inconsistent.
I mean, the pre-selection meeting that replaced Bronwyn bloody Bishop only had about 100 people at it. In blue-ribbon Liberal territory. And the Liberals have a bit under 50K people nationwide, I think; that’s about 300 per electorate on average.
So if they can’t manage 30% turnout for a contentious preselection meeting to take over a safe seat, what hope do we have?
How interesting…If I’m reading the results correctly - there’s at least one vote that preferences Australian Christians, Family First and the Fred Nile Group (due to their Internet Censorship Policies are the antithesis of PPAU) over the Greens. Also, I suspect they’re advocates for Intelligent Design in the curriculum.
Now I’m not a Greens fanboy (think they may have been in my top 10) but they’re way way better than those three.
Democracy is fascinating…
Please Please Please don’t pull apart sentence-by-sentence this statement. Got a bit tired of that onslaught with the Telecommunication Policy - that’s why I’m more of an observer now…and I’m bald too just like an Observer…but I do have eye-brows…and I don’t time-travel
I’m the President of the Party and I won’t go near the telecommunications policy debate. I don’t understand the intricacies of it, and if I don’t understand any proposals that come out of it, I will vote against it. >.>
[Edit] I think that thread is a good example of why datakid23 has suggested we have a code of conduct for the forums in this thread.
I didnt notice the email, not sure why.
Perhaps if there was a reminder with 1 day to go might help.
Or maybe we can look to something like the elo chess ranking system, and make the voting system a continuous process throughout the the year. Where you are asked randomly about one party vs another.
After multiple rounds your vote selection is generated
but note https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-drawbacks-of-ELO-ratings-in-chess
That is a very weird assessment you have of the Liberal Democrats.
Here was their letter to the Pirate Party from last election (2013): https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Preferences/Liberal_Democratic_Party
They align with the Pirate Party on many issues, such as free speech, privacy, marriage equality, drug legalisation/decriminalisation, and foreign policy. Leyonhjelm has consistently voted against things such as mandatory metadata retention, and for things such as marriage equality and drug decriminalisation.
Even the party policies on things like taxation are very similar, as the Pirate Party is probably the only other party (except the Liberal Democrats) who want to reduce tax (yes, the Liberal Democrats want to reduce it more), flatten welfare withdrawal rates, reduce corporate tax, and abolish the worst taxes.
One thing that has changed since the 2013 letter is that the Liberal Democrats do now have a policy on Copyright and Patents, and (as expected in 2013) it is very similar to the Pirate Party’s stance. In fact, on this core issue, they are probably the only other party that wants to significantly reduce copyright.
Sly Gryphon
(Disclaimer: I am a candidate for the Liberal Democrats.)
Where there’s a policy and a record, I’ll go with the record. My assessment is based on the performance of their sole existing representative in Parliament. As I said, that can be summed up as “guns good; wind farms bad”. If that’s a problem for you, then you might like to take it up with David Leyonhjelm.
Libertarian left & libertarian right have always had a rocky relationship, being the most similar parties in some areas (marriage, for eg) and the most different in others (net neutrality). I was surprised the LDP lost that much ground on preferencing since last time, but to be fair they did not preference us either, seemingly preferring parties from the authoritarian right.
It could swing back again. Leyonhjelm has done some good things, but he’s yet to come out against crony capitalism and copyright abuse with half the forcefulness he’s used against windmills. Maybe with more time.
Good luck in the campaign Sly.
TheyVoteForYou disagrees with you on Senator Leyonhjelm’s voting record of most important issues: https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/nsw/david_leyonhjelm
No mention of guns or wind farms; yes, he does support responsible firearm owners, and yes, he did back more investigation into wind farms, but neither of them is a significant enough issue to be listed.
The issues you mention might also get a lot of press coverage though.
If you check his record on digital rights, probably the area of most interest to the Pirate Party:
Voted very strongly for:
Voted very strongly against:
And for the record, I have written to the Senator on issues such as wind farms, pointing out that while more scientific research has been recommended, what we do have points to them being safe, and so it is probably not worth prioritising.
Here is one of the speeches he gave against increasing copyright:
http://davidleyonhjelm.com.au/senator-leyonhjelms-speech-on-australias-new-online-copyright-regime/
Maybe not as newsworthy as other stuff, but he has done it.
He also fought very hard against the metadata laws, which few other parties did (pretty much only him and the Greens, and I think maybe Muir).
But @davidb is correct, he is only one representative of the party, and so it is going to slant things in the direction of his personal areas of interest (largely agriculture). When we get someone elected from a more IT background, it would slant a different way.
It’s always possible to cherry-pick for a desired impression. The totality is different.
Anthropogenic Global Warming, for example. Much as they try to weasel-word around it, The Lib-Dem’s are denialist.
So this just came out:
Did they send us a party policy survey? Why don’t they have our response yet?
Since they’re aiming to print and hand out a million how to vote cards, we could piggyback off them. Their current senate HTV cards are a bit of a mess because they only preference three or four parties, and voters who follow them and forget to number 5 and 6 as well will end up spoiling their ballots. If we can convince getup that they need to put at least 6 candidates on their how to vote cards, it won’t be too late to convince them to preference us. I know the page says that they prioritised parties which actually stand a chance based on past results, but I can always hope.
Does anyone have contacts with Getup to try and get this ball rolling?
My cousin works there now, but I haven’t seen her in a decade, so I don’t think I can wrangle any deals.
They didn’t send us anything. I assume they don’t ask parties without parliamentary representatives, since all of the others have reps in parliaments (although it is missing some parties with representation).
We have had good relations with people from GetUp! but they have avoided overtures we have made in the past. I’d say it would be too late anyway since printing is most likely under way. It is for us.
