When is a win not a win ? Nine news calls the SA election for the Liberals

[chameleon54]

Nine news has called the SA election as a " win"  for the Liberals. With counting still well underway Nines computer modelling shows the Liberals currently holding 24 seats ( a majority win) Labor 17, independants 2 and several seats still in doubt. Nick Xenophon appears to have completely missed out on winning any seats.

After 16 years of Labor government the Liberals are going to have a huge job ahead, trying to restore the budget, provide some functionality to SA's health service and get the states economy moving again. They will also need to try to clean up the mess Labor has created in electricity generation and reduce power prices ( currently some of the most expensive in the world ). The ridiculous cost of electricity has directly resulted in businesses leaving the state or closing down altogether. 

After 16 years of Labor, corruption appears to have crept into state governance, and the public service has become bloated and inept. ( around 30% larger than other states per capita ) It will be an enormous job trying to trim the fat from the PS and restore the publics faith in public office. South Australia's Jobless rate regularly tops the nation as the states economy has slowly been run into the ground and rebuiling business and employer confidence will take time. Reversing the trend of SA's young leaving the state in droves is another challenge.

Regional roads have been sadly neglected for years with many in such poor condition that the government has recently had to reduce the speed limits on many of the states main country highways as they are no longer safe to travel on at normal highway speed. Agriculture is SA's fastest growing industry and has the fastest growth rates in employment, but has been terribly neglected under Labor. Vital research facilities and the highly skilled staff that run them have been disbanded and rail and port systems starved of maintenance funds or closed altogether.

Schooling and education, often considered a Labor strong point is in a serious state of mismanagement with the state regularly featuring in the bottom of national schools testing and our age care facilities are in crisis with regular scandels of neglect and abuse of our most vulnerable under Labors care.

The Liberals may have won the election, but the state is in such a mess they may have preffered to have lost this time

[chameleon54]

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@davidc4430wrote:

The only 'gerry mander' is the one where we will only ever have liberal or labor in govt.

that is the problem, its been set up by the 2 'main' parties that no matter what it will allways be one or the other.

you may not agree with the results of the elections of the past 16 years but are you saying the Electoral Commision is corrupt?

if that was true why did they change boundarys to give the liberals a better chance of forming govt?

your claim makes no sense.

look at the facts,

the old folks home debacle

the repat debacle

the power debacle

the ESL debacle

the fact labor had been in power 16 years!

ect ect ect

the libs SHOULD have won by a landslide!

yes, they are in govt, but its got to be classed as a failure not to win seats they should have won, like leon bignals.

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The results speak for themselves. In the 2014 election, Labor won 47% of the primary vote on a two party preffered basis, The Liberals 53%. ( Wickapedia figures ) Yet it was still a hung parliment with Labor relying on indepenents to form government. With a 6% lead on a two party preffered basis, the Liberals should have had a convincing win.  Either the electoral commission was corrupted or grossly incompetant, there are no other choices.

There was such an uproar after the last election, with such a blindingly obvious break down in democracy and the electoral system, that the electoral commission had no choice but to make the electoral boundaries more representative.

[davidc4430]

absolute rubbish, the % of votes is nothing to do with who governs no matter what you think.

its how many seats are won that decides who governs, our system divides the state up into electorates full of people.

you cannot control completely how many in those electorates vote one way or another.

true in an electorate (or seat) a candidate must win more votes than his competition, but he doesnt need to win 51% only more than his opponent. once all the counting is done and preferences are distributed its the guy with the highest count, even if he had less 1st preferences than the next best cadidate. so i might get 200 first preferences and my next opnent might get 190, but then preferences raise my oponent to 275 and preferences leave me on 270, i lose. but i got more 1st preferences i say! bad luck says the system.

they can create electorates in theory with a 50/50 split, but they CANT make the voters vote 49/51%

one seat might get 12% one way 88% the other, but the guy who won only required 51% so the other votes dont mean anything. once he got that 1% over the rest was just nice to look at.

so the whole oh woe is us we got 53% and they got 47% but they won is a furfy.

if you want true majority rules, get rid of seats, we vote for the team we want, no preferences. the team with most votes gets to govern.

but thats NOT how it works now.

just like i know i can vote labor every time federal and state but my vote never counts as i'm in a very safe liberal seat.

[lyndal1838]

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@davidc4430wrote:

just like i know i can vote labor every time federal and state but my vote never counts as i'm in a very safe liberal seat.

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Same here....I am in a safe Labor seat but I am a Liberal voter.

In the 50 years I have voted in this area we have had a couple of Federal Liberal members scrape in but they don't last.

I must admit, as Labor members go we have had several excellent representatives and I doubt that Linda Burney will go out anytime soon.

[chameleon54]

While your last post is technically correct it conveniently forgets to mention that the charter of the electroral commission is to ensure the voters intentions are reflected in the distribution and redrawing of electoral boundries.

The Bjielke Petterson government was notorious for " ensuring " electoral boundries favoured them in elections, thus creating a gerrymander.

Labor only won the 2014 SA election because it was favoured by the electoral commission with electoral boundries that did not reflect the voting intentions of the SA public. If the result had been 49/51 , that may be understandable, but when the Liberals won 53 % to Labors 47% two party preffered vote, but still did not win government, you have to ask the question, Was the electoral commission grossly incompetant or was this another  SA Labor "Gillman land deal " ???

I dont know the answer, but either option is very concerning.

[davidc4430]

so you do understand who forms govt has little to do with how many actual voters vote for a side?

i wonder how exactly you think the electoral comission should form the boundatys of seats as the cant actually know who votes which way from house to house.

they can only asume if the line is moved from point A to point B then the libs or labors vote will increase "in theory"

i rekon its not a very exact science.

another question, why are there any SAFE seats at all?

prolly because there is no way to change the boundary line that will change the numbers of voters from one side back to a near 50/50 split.

so its just a few 'swing seats' they mess about with, in the hope they have changed the numbers.

isnt that a bit like rigging a vote?

surely boundarys should never be altered except to add in new developments perhaps.

when did changing boundarys start? i really dont recall it mentioned in my early days of voting.

[chameleon54]

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@davidc4430wrote:

absolute rubbish, the % of votes is nothing to do with who governs no matter what you think.

its how many seats are won that decides who governs, our system divides the state up into electorates full of people.

you cannot control completely how many in those electorates vote one way or another.

true in an electorate (or seat) a candidate must win more votes than his competition, but he doesnt need to win 51% only more than his opponent. once all the counting is done and preferences are distributed its the guy with the highest count, even if he had less 1st preferences than the next best cadidate. so i might get 200 first preferences and my next opnent might get 190, but then preferences raise my oponent to 275 and preferences leave me on 270, i lose. but i got more 1st preferences i say! bad luck says the system.

they can create electorates in theory with a 50/50 split, but they CANT make the voters vote 49/51%

one seat might get 12% one way 88% the other, but the guy who won only required 51% so the other votes dont mean anything. once he got that 1% over the rest was just nice to look at.

so the whole oh woe is us we got 53% and they got 47% but they won is a furfy.

if you want true majority rules, get rid of seats, we vote for the team we want, no preferences. the team with most votes gets to govern.

but thats NOT how it works now.

just like i know i can vote labor every time federal and state but my vote never counts as i'm in a very safe liberal seat.

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Australia[edit]

Gerrymandering has not typically been a problem in the Australian electoral system largely because drawing of electoral boundaries has typically been done by non-partisan bodies such as the Australian Electoral Commission. There have been historical cases of malapportionment whereby the distribution of electors to electorates was not in proportion to the population in several states. For example, Sir Thomas Playford served as Premier of South Australia from 1938 to 1965, the result of a system of malapportionment which became known as the Playmander, despite it not strictly speaking involving a gerrymander.[52] More recently the nominally independent South Australian Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission has been accused of favouring the Australian Labor Party, as the party has been able to form government in four of the last seven elections, despite receiving a lower two-party preferred vote.[53]

As a Labor appoligist, you can claim it is a phurphy that gerrymandering has been occuring in SA. As the above extract from Wickapedias page on gerrymandering shows, there are enough people who believe the "nominally independant electoral commission " has been corrupted to have the claim stand as a credible statement on Wickapedia for anyone who is interested to see. 

 The accusation that the SA electoral districts Boundries Commisssion has been corrupted is not just my random opinion. It is a credible claim supported by many seasoned commentators and political observers. Unfortunately after 16 years in office, corruption is a potential problem for any party. Add in the influence of the union movement which has a long and proud history of dodgy deal making and it becomes almost a certianty.

[davidc4430]

So here i am sitting here listening to new minister covering the hospitals.

he starts bleating about how the Labor people 'sat on a report' during the election.

i agree with him 100%, they DID

but this particular report is a regular report meaning they are produced at regular interviews, not some 'special' report.

so after he went off about this report being witheld the question was put to him

"Will you release these reports when they come into your hands"

he avoids answering.

the interviewer repeats the question and again he avoids answering.

so interviewer asks 'well will you release these reports during an election campaign?'

again he avoids answering with a lot of gobbldygoop. but does not answer the question!

and so the cycle begins again, new team same carp.

[davidc4430]

you still dont get it, having more voters dont get you in govt, i totally agree with you.

i'm pointing out why when a side gets less actual votes they can still be elected into govt, you just refuse to see it.

we have a system of small (ish) electorates each producing an elected member. called "seats"

a side (liberal or labor) requires not 51% of the vote but more 'seats' than the other mob.

so its very very possible to have 53% of the total vote but still not win more seats than the other mob.

you call it a GERRY MANDER, i'd like to know how you would redraw the seat boundaries to gaurantee the wining mob would also allways get 51% or more of the actual vote.

It cant be done

[chameleon54]

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@davidc4430

wrote:

you still dont get it, having more voters dont get you in govt, i totally agree with you.

i'm pointing out why when a side gets less actual votes they can still be elected into govt, you just refuse to see it.

we have a system of small (ish) electorates each producing an elected member. called "seats"

a side (liberal or labor) requires not 51% of the vote but more 'seats' than the other mob.

so its very very possible to have 53% of the total vote but still not win more seats than the other mob.

you call it a GERRY MANDER, i'd like to know how you would redraw the seat boundaries to gaurantee the wining mob would also allways get 51% or more of the actual vote.

It cant be done

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It has just been done......After the uproar over the 2014 election where a sinifigant majority of the voting public rejected Labor and voted for a change of government, The electoral boundaries commission had no choice but to act or face official investigation. They redrew the electoral boundries to better reflect the voting publics intentions. As you will have observed many commentators noted that it was this redrawing of electoral boundries that was largely the reason the Liberals won the last election.

I,m sorry its you who doesnt quite get it. I suggest you google gerrymanders and read the full Wickapedia article  which shows how the political process can be distorted & corrupted to favour one party or group above others.

The electoral commission is responsible for drawing and re-drawing boundries to ensure the overall electorates reflect the voting intentions of the majority. As the Wickapedia extract illustrates, there are major concerns that SA,s electoral boundries commission has not embraced its responsabilities as it should and the result has been the election of a party to office when they recieved 6% less of the two party preffered vote than their opposition.

David, surely even you can see that is not effective democracy at work.

[tezza2844]

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@chameleon54wrote:

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@davidc4430

wrote:

you still dont get it, having more voters dont get you in govt, i totally agree with you.

David, surely even you can see that is not effective democracy at work.

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Perhaps you should read the following link before saying the electoral commission is corrupt or not doing its job. The LNP has just so must more experience at Gerry or Play mandering than any other political party in Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playmander