Supun Liyanage

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Profile

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Im 18 years old from Penrith, NSW, Australia. i have completed my HSC. Interested in politics of Australia and America but mainly into psephology. During my spare time iv even developed my own electoral system. Im a huge motor racing fan, always watch the f1. Also love to watch the NFL, NRL as well as cricket. So a whole lot of sports lol. Used to play tennis reasonably well but stopped playing coz of year 11. Want to get bak in2 it soon though. As I said before im doing my HSC. Hope to get into uni and study soemething construction or engineering related. Would absolutely love to work on something like a stadium or universally recognised building.

Pages started by me

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Division of Wright

Kid detectives

St Dominics College, Sydney

Willagee state by-election, 2009

My Electoral System

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The system consists of a mix of prefential voting, IRV and a normal run off system. The system works where voters give a 1st and 2nd preference vote. To be elected, a candidate must recieve a majority of the vote. If nobody recieves a majority, the candidate with the least amount of votes is elminated and their second prefernce votes are distibuted. If after distribution no candidate has a majority then the candidate with the least number of votes is once again distbuted and so on until a candidate reaches a majority. Now under this system, some votes may exhaust. So it is possible that even after all perferences are distributed that no candidate has a majority. If this occurs, then the two leading candidates AFTER PREFERENCES go to a runoff in a seperate election. This in my view is the fairest election system though im sure a number will disagree. Here is an example of the system...

Theres five candidates, Albert (a liberal), Michelle (a conservative), Chris (a conservative), Steve (a moderate) and Sarah (a conservative). In the presidential election 100 votes were cast with 51 votes needed for the presidency.

Results of election

Candidates 1st Round 2nd Round 3rd Round 4th Round
Candidate Ideology Primary total Votes distributed Progressive total Votes distributed Progressive total Votes distributed Final total
Albert Liberal 37 0 37 3 40 2 42
Michelle Conservative 34 1 35 2 37 10 47
Chris Conservative 21 0 21 1 22
Steve Moderate 7 0 7
Sarah Conservative 1
EXHAUSTED PILE 0 0 0 1 1 9 21
TOTALS 100 1 100 7 100 21

EXPLANATION: In this election, virtually all liberal voters voted for Albert, who is ahead of all candidates but doesnt have a majority. The conservative vote has been split between the three conservative candidates. Once all votes are counted, Sarah is elminated and her one vote is distributed to Michelle, a conservative. Next to be eliminated is Steve and his votes are distributed. Still, no candidate has a majority. Next and last to to be eliminated is Chris. Most of his 21 votes are distributed to Michelle and she is able to go ahead of Albert. She however, does not have a majority. Two votes from Chris go to Albert. The other nine of his votes exhaust, because they preferenced candidates who have been eliminated. Most likly, those votes went to Sarah who is a conservative. The result is Michelle on 47 votes and Albert on 42. Becuase neither candidate recived a majority, the election will go onto a runoff between Albert and Michelle. Note, that a runoff occurs when no candidates recieve a majority AFTER ALL PREFERENCES, and that the candidates in a runoff will be the ones with the highest votes AFTER PREFERENCES. So for example, it would have been possible for Albert to not reach a runoff even though he finsihed 1st on primary vote. Ill add that under the system, it would be very rare for runoffs to occur. Runoffs would only be caused by major vote splitting and/or a large number of candidates. I chose to do this because vote splitting can still pose problems in a normal runoff system. A good example is the French_presidential_election,_2002. In the election, the left vote was split amongst several left wing parties, resulting in neither party reaching the run off. Under my system, a runoff would probably have occured, between the major centre right party vs major centre left party.