[djsumdog]

It's exceptionally sad since Australia has order of preference, instant runoff and mandatory voting. Even with all those safeguards to prevent major parties and ensure equal representation, Australia still ends up with major parties and too many people who don't bother with the bottom of the ballot.

[joppy]

I think this is partly the fault of how electorates work. Imagine an election where every electorate votes 30% party A, and the remaining 70% of the vote split somehow between parties B and C. Then you get only members of parties B and C in office, and so you could argue that 30% of the population is not even represented.

This is not so far off what happens with the Greens - in the last federal election they had about a 15% first-preference vote across Australia, but ended up with only 1/150 seats in parliament.

[FireBeyond]

> This is not so far off what happens with the Greens - in the last federal election they had about a 15% first-preference vote across Australia, but ended up with only 1/150 seats in parliament.

As someone who has lived in the US and Australia... the difference would be that in the US, the Greens would get nothing, zero. And due to gerrymandering, it's equally likely that even without party C in play, you can and do easily get situations where 30% votes for party A but win a majority.

Even in our recent mid terms here, whilst the House went back to Democratic control, in the Senate the Republican vote went down 20% but they didn't just keep the same number of seats, they _increased_ their majority.