The bastards have somewhere to go

By Gerry Harant
The story goes that some years ago, when Graham Richardson was still the ALP's chief numbers man and head-kicker, he was asked, on one of the numerous occasions when the ALP leaders had again ignored the wishes of the party's membership, whether he wasn't worried about an electoral backlash. "So what", he was supposed to have snorted, "the bastards got nowhere to go". The story shows the way in which the major parties have used the compulsory preferential voting system as a licence for Lib-Labs (or Laborals) to inflict their joint anti-people policies on a supposedly captive electorate.
Some outsiders to party politics, particularly those in single-issue movements, have ignored the lessons and tied themselves to the ALP apron-strings; handouts to organisations — as distinct from addressing their issues — have helped this process.
Hearsay has it that when the hunters caught up with the wolf which had swallowed Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, they heard a little voice from inside crying "Don't slay the beast, we are going to reform it from within!". Currently, the digestive juices produced within the ALP by the right-wing machine tend to make short shrift of would-be reformers. So, what language does the beast understand?
The Queensland Greens have run a demonstration of electoral politics that work. The Queensland Greens' electoral strength comes from showing that they can actually selectively withdraw votes.
However, to really break the stranglehold of the two-party tweedledum-tweedledee circus and to allow issue politics to enter the electoral arena, we need strategies which will work for the large number of voters who, while dissatisfied with the performance of the ALP, wouldn't be seen dead voting for the other mob. We need to show that, contrary to Richardson's dictum, we bastards do have somewhere to go.
Optional preferential voting provides such a way out. It means that you can cast a valid vote for a "minor party" or independent candidate without helping the election of a Laboral.
Since 1984 the electoral law has in effect provided for optional preferential voting. The box contains excerpts from the official 1993 scrutineers' handbook, which sets out details of valid votes. Voting rules in both houses in both state and federal parliaments allow for strategies which permit first-past-the-post or limited preferential as well as full preferential voting. You do not have to vote for one of the major parties for your vote for a "minor" party candidate to be valid.

Enforced ignorance

Optional preferential voting has been possible since 1984. Why do so few people know about it?
For a start, there is a curious clause in the electoral law which says that although ballot papers using non-preferential patterns are valid, such patterns must not be used as an "electoral strategy" during the election period.
The 1984 clause was not introduced as a means of allowing optional preferential voting, but because the advent of Senate ballots with 50 or more candidates created a huge spate of informal votes, bringing the system into disrepute. Deliberate attempts to allow optional preferential voting had also been put on the agenda by one or other major party since the '40s, each time because that party saw some advantage in it; by definition, this caused the opposite major party to reject it.
Today, parliamentary attempts to frame laws permitting optional preferences are dead in the water because, in the face of rising disillusion with major parties, such electoral strategies would be poison to the Laborals.
For this reason, heavy penalties are provided for those who advocate such strategies, for instance by printing "how to vote" cards which don't follow the consecutive number patterns. But since such cards must be approved by the electoral officer, this offence is not likely to occur.
When a court case was run against Harry van Moorst and Albert Langer by Victoria's chief electoral officer in the late '80s for advocating either invalid or non-preferential voting, Justice Vincent refused to convict because, as he said, once in possession of a ballot paper a voter can do with it as he or she likes; therefore, advocating alternative uses of the paper could not be illegal.
How Vincent's decision affects the law regarding dissemination of information on alternative voting is going to be tested in a High Court challenge listed for October. It is being run by Albert Langer, and arises from a South Australian case last year. It seems unlikely that the judges would uphold a clause in a law which makes it an offence to publish another clause in the same law.
In any case, voters can be advised of the existence of non-preferential strategies in many ways which don't fall foul of the law. This article is one example: since no election writs are currently out, it is quite legal to discuss "non-standard" voting strategies.

Secrecy

Apart from legal restraints, there is a wall of silence around anything which is seen to threaten the tweedledumªtweedledum system.
Mainstream media interpret every opinion poll and election in terms of the "two-party preferred vote", and their commentators thunder against the election of independents as "destabilising", regardless of the fact that the odd parliamentary maverick is powerless against the joint voting strength of the Laborals.
Another aspect of the two-party imposition is the constant media support for the nonentities of the major parties, never illustrated better than in the ongoing "leadership crises". Normal useful citizens don't know any of the players from a bar of soap; few of them have ever been known to do anything, say anything apart from the usual platitudes or even have an opinion on anything, yet these are the people paraded as the only "alternatives".
The only people ever to be allowed to occupy parliamentary power will continue to be those who are utterly subservient to the real power brokers of global capitalism. The old dictum about absolute power corrupting absolutely is now out of date: in order to get into power in the first place, it is necessary to be already absolutely corrupt.
People's electoral powerlessness is a common feature of nearly all so-called western democracies, even though the way in which it is enforced varies. In many countries the multiplicity of parties defeats most attempts at meaningful government. In others, tweedledum-tweedledee two-party politics prevail.
In all this, I haven't even mentioned the fact that the parliamentary circus everywhere either never had or has abdicated the power to make the real decisions, which are made by the World Bank, the IMF and the club of secret (quaintly named "intelligence") agencies.
Most Australians who vote for left and movement-based parties do so consciously, and alternative strategies such as non-preferential or partially preferential voting can be explained to them despite the complexities involved. Indeed, explaining the nature of our class-dominated parliament must surely be one major purpose of socialist electioneering.
I have found — particularly recently in handing out how-to-vote cards for Phil Cleary — that a means of rejecting the ALP which does not involve voting Liberal comes as a great relief to many traditional ALP voters. It thereby offers us — until laws are passed to ban this chink in the system — a chance of exerting significant influence on what still calls itself the Labor Party.
Also, at last we can use the ballot paper in a way which the media cannot shoehorn into the "two-party preferred" mould. That, as I have found during the last 10 years, makes the trip to the ballot box worth while.