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Legislative Council voting method discriminates against independents
In the legislative Council election this Saturday we have the option of voting for groups (above the line) by numbering one or more groups in order of preference, or voting for candidates (below the line) by numbering at least 15 candidates in order of preference.
When voting "above the line" you cannot cast a vote for an independent candidate. To vote for an independent at all you must vote below the line. There are over 300 candidates below the line, and while you only have to number 15 candidates, doing so runs a risk that your votes exhaust and so do not count towards anybody.
The large number of candidates below the line is in part because groups are required to field 15 candidates, and so groups that know they would never get more than 1 candidate up have 14 additional candidates there solely to obtain the entitlement to an above-the-line square. This requirement is obviously severely dysfunctional &emdash; while it is obviously intended to reduce the number of groups, its real effect is to increase the number of candidates.
Realistically, very few people will take the time to vote below the line for every single candidate, which means voters can either vote for a more limited number and allow their votes to exhaust, or vote above the line and spell out their group preferences, leaving the independents without any votes. This is highly unsatisfactory, and will certainly cause some people who might otherwise like to vote for independents to instead vote for groups.
There is no legitimate reason for the rules to operate in this way &emdash; voters should have the option to assign numeric preferences both below and above the line, so long as no number is duplicated, so for example I could cast a "1" vote for an independent, a "2" vote for the Democrats, a "3" vote for party X, a "5" for party "Y" and then a "6" for a particular candidate in party X (thus putting that candidate after party "Y".
As it is, I am not even looking at the independents in the Legislative Council because I believe this system so effectively discriminates them as to leave them with no chance at all of success.