Australia's electoral systems provide reasonably good democracy compared with many other countries. However, having a democratic system of government does not mean that the fairest and best get elected. Far from it. The most successful politicians are those who have the most ability to appear plausible and dependable while actually lying through their teeth. It is one of life's great mysteries why most people will readily give their votes to professional politicians.

In Australia, professional politicians are in paradise because, by joining one of the established political parties, they can rise through the party machine to positions of great importance even if they have absolutely no competence in any useful field or have zero ability to be wise, just and visionary leaders.



Voting is compulsory in Australia. If you are not happy with any of the candidates in an election then vote informal. Make sure that you send the right message.

What's that you say, Ms Scipio?

If zero is exactly how much a voter rates each candidate, then one of the best ways to vote informal is to put a zero in every box. It is not a good idea to leave all the boxes on a ballot paper blank because somebody else might fill in the empty boxes later.

Also, a voter who wishes to vote informal can write comments onto the ballot paper. Any comments written onto a ballot paper cannot be traced back to whoever wrote them, so an election is a rare opportunity to experience genuine freedom of speech with impunity.

A symbolic picture such as a pig's snout can also be drawn on the ballot paper. Appropriately, six zeroes can be used to draw a pigface. Then just add a pair of ears. One snout is enough to send a message, although one pigface for each candidate may give greater emphasis.
     

• Voting should not be compulsory.
  
  
• Every ballot paper should include an additional box that says "none of the candidates". If, after normal distribution of preferences, the "none" option ends up with the most votes then that particular election must be held again at a later date and none of the rejected candidates would be permitted to stand for election in the re-run. The election for that seat would continue to be repeated, with rejected candidates cumulatively excluded, until eventually a new candidate gets more votes than the "none of the candidates" option.
  
  The "none of the candidates" option would be particularly important in elections where there is only one candidate who gets elected unopposed, because under the current electoral system voters are in effect completely disenfranchised.
  
  However, the main aim of this reform is to put an end to the practice of people feeling compelled to vote for their least awful choice of candidate in an election. Very often the least awful candidate is only slightly less awful than any other candidate. This reform would enable voters to force professional politicians to substantially raise their game because no longer would voters be forced to vote for a substandard candidate just to keep an even worse candidate out. Eventually, better candidates would emerge. Self-important political hucksters, big-mouths, confidence tricksters and party-machine hacks would gradually get weeded out from the political stage. This reform could lead to the flowering of a higher quality of democratic governance than has ever been known.
  
  
• All elections should use optional preferential voting, whereby a voter votes for only as many candidates as the voter chooses. Thus, a voter can vote for only one candidate by marking one box only, or vote for some but not all candidates by marking some boxes in order of preference, or vote for all candidates by marking every box in order of preference.
  
  
• All federal senate elections should use optional preferential voting, enabling the very peculiar "above/below the line" senate voting system to be scrapped. Henceforth, a voter could vote for as many or as few senate candidates as they wish.
  
  
• To reduce opportunities for fraud in elections that use optional preferential voting, a voter should be allowed to put any mark other than a number in any box without risk that the ballot paper will be invalidated or classified as informal, provided that one box contains an integer number one. This would allow a voter to prevent anybody else from later fraudulently filling in one or more of the empty boxes. A box marked by the voter with any symbol other than an integer number would be treated in the same way as an empty box.