A fair voting system would have put 18 Greens into the House of Representatives

If our federal parliament truly reflected the way we voted in 2010, there would now be 18 Greens in the 150-member House of Representatives. The Greens polled 11.76 % across the country, the Independents 2.52%, equivalent to the four seats they won first-past-the-post.

If you voted Green anywhere outside Melbourne, your vote was wasted in our iniquitous, unfair electoral system. Melbourne returned Adam Bandt, the one and only Green in the House.

I contend that Libor and Laberal deliberately keep the system this way to lock out real change and keep the adversarial, purchasable (mining!) puppet theatre in Canberra going. For goodness sake, don’t let new ideas get traction!

I was reminded of this by a recent state election in Germany’s most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia, which has a parliament of 237 seats. According to the percentages won, Social Democrats got 99 seats, Christian Democrats (equivalent to Tony Abbott’s coalition) 67 seats, Greens 29 seats, FDP Liberals 22 seats and a relatively new party, The Pirates 20 seats.

With their combined total of 128 seats – nine more than a majority – the Social Democrats and The Greens continue a two-party coalition government – not always comfy, but workable. One major area of friction between them is nuclear policy, with the nuclear industry in all its facets heavily present in the state. The Greens want to close it down, the Social Democrats are ducking the issue despite promises to do the same.

But the biggest “party” among the 13,264,231 enrolled voters were those who didn’t vote: 40.4%, one of the lowest turnouts ever.

And they won’t get punished with a fine, like we do for not voting. Voting is voluntary. And to my mind the best way to show your disgust to pollies is not to turn up to their rigged circus.

We don’t have that democratic right. In most elections we even have to give a “preference” (what a misnomer!) to someone we may loathe in order for our vote for the one we do want elected to be valid.

North-Rhine Westphalia has 17.8 million people. Divide that number by the 237 seats in the state parliament (Landtag) and you get one MP per 75,105 people. We Australians numbered 22,910,056 on 20 May; divide that by the 150 seats in the House of Representatives and you get one MP for every 152,734 people, i.e. around twice as many as in North Rhine-Westphalia. That workload also has to be detrimental to democracy, especially given our tyranny of distance.

The Australian Electoral Commission has reported that there are just over 14 million people on the electoral roll, but 1.5 million who should be, aren’t.

Another way of avoiding being sucked into the sick system. The other, of course, is to cast a donkey vote, which 729,304 (5.55%) of the 13,131,667 who voted in 2010 did. But why should anyone be forced to cast a vote when they despise the entire system? Democracy? People’s will? It's to make it look like democracy.

German voters get two votes, one for the candidates in their constituency, i.e. where they live, the other for the parties. It’s the party votes that always determine the composition of the parliaments. The parties draw up the lists of candidates in what is usually fierce internal competition for the top places.

If a candidate is on the party list, but wins a constituency seat, they do not receive two seats; they are instead crossed off the party list and the next candidate on it moves up. 128 of the new North Rhine Westphalian parliament's members won their seats personally in their constituencies, the other 109 entered from party lists, i.e. according to the percentages their parties scored.

A party needs to poll at least five percent to get in. There are exceptions in two of Germany’s 16 states, which I’ll explain further down.

The German system is called “mixed-member proportional representation” or “mixed-member proportional voting”.

Parties finance the election campaigns; the candidates themselves do not need to raise substantial amounts of money.

In return, party loyalty in German parliaments is very high. Parliamentarians vote their conscience only on rare, very important questions; most of the time, they vote the party line.

Parties are financed from tax revenue according to the proportion of votes they received, by donations from big business, and by membership dues.

Here we use various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. Under our system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference.

In Germany the state parliaments are responsible for economics, cultural matters, the education system, internal security (i.e. the police), building supervision, health supervision and the media. They can be, but seldom are, trumped by federal legislation.

The British postwar occupation formed North Rhine-Westphalia and ironically installed the German electoral system, which has migrated to many other countries.
The system in Britain itself now wastes huge proportions of votes. For example, in the UK general election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for losing candidates and 18% were excess votes - a total of 70% wasted votes.

This is perhaps the most fundamental criticism of first-past-the-post systems, in which a large majority of votes may play no part in determining the outcome. Alternative electoral systems attempt to ensure that almost all votes effectively influence the result and so to minimise wasted votes.

North Rhine-Westphalia is a diverse economic powerhouse, generating a fifth of Germany’s GDP, making it the world’s 16th largest economy.

The state contains 30 of the 80 largest cities in Germany. The state's capital is Düsseldorf, the largest city Cologne. Others are Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, Wuppertal, Bielefeld, Bonn and Münster. Its 34,092 km2 would fit an incredible 223 times into our 7,682,300 km2. (I did the sum several times because it seemed so incredible. Correct me if I got it wrong!)

Back to the two German states where parties or voter groups don’t need to win at least five percent to get parliamentary seats. One is the northernmost, Schleswig-Holstein, the other is Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin. In Schleswig-Holstein a minority of about 50,000 Danes and Frisians and in Brandenburg a minority of Sorbs are exempted from the five percent barrier.

In Schleswig-Holstein 4.6% put three Danish MPs into the house of 69 where they’re likely to become the kingmakers after a recent election by teaming up with Social Democrats and Greens to form a new government. That state parliament comprises 22 seats each for the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, 10 Greens, six Liberals, the three Danes and 6 Members of a new party calling themselves The Pirates. The Pirate Party, which campaigns for transparency and Internet freedom, says it would tolerate a government of Social Democrats, Greens and the Danish minority party SSW.

A reminder: these seats were allocated according to first past the post winners and candidates off the party lists so that the percentages of votes they’d attracted were reflected in the number of seats. About 2.24 million people were entitled to vote, 60.2% did, the lowest turnout in decades.

Which brings me to how various countries give their minorities special representation rights, which are denied to our Aborigines.

Afghanistan guarantees at least 64 delegates to be female in the lower house of the bicameral National Assembly. The Argentine constitution requires 30% quota for female candidates for Congress. In Bangladesh 50 seats out of 350 in the parliament are reserved for women. 10 seats out of the 105 seats in the Eritrean parliament are reserved for women. Iraq held its first post-Saddam parliamentary elections in January 2005 under an electoral law providing for compulsory integration of women on the candidates lists, like several European countries with a proportional electoral system. Pakistan reserves a fixed number of parliamentary seats for non-Muslims and women. In the parliament of Rwanda, a minimum of 30% of elected members of the 26-member Senate must be women, in the 80-member Chamber of Deputies, twenty-four seats are reserved for women. 15 seats out of 255 in the Tanzanian parliament are reserved for women. The Ugandan constitution provides for a reserved woman's parliamentary seat from each of the 39 districts.

Iran reserves a fixed number of seats for certain recognized non-Muslim ethnoreligious groups. Jordan has reserved seats for Christians, Circassians and Bedouins. Lebanon specifies the religious affiliation of several of its high officers, such as the President (Maronite), the Prime Minister (Sunni Muslim) and the parliament's Speaker (Shia Muslim). Every electoral district for the parliamentary elections includes a fixed number of the various religious communities.

France reserves 12 seats in the Senate for expatriates. Italy reserves seats in its parliament for Italian expatriates, with twelve members of the Chamber of Deputies and six in the Senate representing an Overseas constituency. Portugal's Assembly of the Republic has two seats reserved for Portuguese living abroad, one for those living in Europe, the other for those living in other parts of the world. In Romania (18 recognized minorities) and Serbia, political parties representing recognized ethnic minorities are exempted from the election threshold.

All seats in the Belgian Senate (except those for the throne heirs) are allocated to the three linguistic communities: 41 for the Dutch language group, 29 for the French language group, plus one German-speaking community senator. Croatia reserves eight seats from the minorities and five for citizens living abroad in its parliament. There are three seats for Serbs, one for Italians, and a few more for other ethnic groups. In the bi-communal republic of Cyprus, certain posts are always appropriated among Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

Fiji provides for the election of MPs from three racially-defined constituencies: indigenous Fijians, Fijian Indians and the "general" electorate. India reserves 15% of seats at all levels of governance for untouchable castes, and 7.5% for tribes or the aborigines. New Zealand reserves a proportion of its parliamentary seats for the representation of persons electing to register on a separate Māori roll. The number of seats depends upon the number of people on the roll - there are currently seven seats.

Suggest special voting rights for our Aborigines and you get the idiotic response that it would split the country. As if it weren’t split…..