Preferencing Statement for Federal Election 2013

Preferencing Process

Pirate Party Australia has completed its preferencing for its first federal election. All group voting tickets (GVT) have been published on the Australian Electoral Commission’s website.

In keeping with the Pirate Party’s commitment to transparency and participatory democracy, this election the Party pioneered a form of preferencing unprecedented in Australian politics.

All parties were invited to provide members of Pirate Party Australia with a statement explaining why they deserve preferences. These statements can be found on the wiki.

After publishing the statements publicly, the members of Pirate Party Australia ranked all 53 registered parties according to how they should be preferenced.

A rundown of the process is as follows:

Party members were given a ballot listing the parties to be preferenced in an order predetermined by the Party’s Election Committee to be a good general order of preferences based on the Committee’s research. They were given three days to respond to the ballot.

The Committee used the preferencing order prior to the closing of the ballot in order to determine how to best go about negotiating preferences with other parties in order to get them to reciprocate the preference order determined by our members.

As soon as the GVT ballot closed, the deals ballot was put to our members.

24 hours later, the deal results were determined and the other parties were informed.

The Election Committee met as soon as possible after receiving the Group Voting Tickets for each state and democratically determined any changes necessary to the GVT that were not possible to determine in advance. The minutes of that meeting can be found here.

These results are now being published in this statement.

An example of the digital ballot that the members of the Party used to determine their preference order can be found here!

Member-determined Preference Order

The member determined preference order can be found below:

(1) Pirate Party Australia (2) Australian Greens (3) The Wikileaks Party (4) Australian Democrats (5) Secular Party of Australia (6) Senator Online (Internet Voting Bills/Issues) (7) Australian Sex Party (8) Future Party (9) Australian Independents (10) Drug Law Reform Party (11) Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) Party (12) Voluntary Euthanasia Party (13) Stop CSG Party (14) Liberal Democratic Party (15) Animal Justice Party (16) Nick Xenophon Group (17) Australian First Nations Political Party (18) Australian Stable Population Party (19) Carers Alliance (20) Bullet Train For Australia (21) Coke in the Bubblers Party (22) Republican Party of Australia (23) Bank Reform Party (24) Building Australia Party (25) Australian Sports Party (26) Socialist Alliance (27) Australian Voice Party (28) Socialist Equality Party (29) Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party (30) The 23 Million (31) Democratic Labour Party (DLP) (32) Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting) (33) Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party (34) Australian Labor Party (ALP) (35) Uniting Australia Party (36) Country Alliance (37) National Party of Australia (38) Shooters and Fishers Party (39) Liberal Party of Australia (40) Katter's Australian Party (41) Australian Sovereignty Party (42) Smokers Rights Party (43) Palmer United Party (44) Outdoor Recreation Party (Stop The Greens) (45) Australian Protectionist Party (46) No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics (47) Australian Christians (48) Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) (49) Family First Party (50) Citizens Electoral Council of Australia (51) Rise Up Australia Party (52) One Nation (53) Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated

The raw ballot data and pair-wise comparison tables can be found here.

Member-determined Preference Deals

In line with the preference order determined by the membership, the Election Committee attempted to forge deals with other parties that would result in the reciprocation of preferences as closely as possible to the decision made by the members. These deals were then put to a majority vote of the membership before they would be put in place.

The deals as put to the members that were agreed to are as follows:

Greens

The Greens offer:

3rd preference in Queensland

2nd preference in NSW

4th preference in Victoria

2nd preference in Tasmania

We offer in exchange:

3rd preference in Queensland

2nd preference in NSW

4th preference in Victoria

2nd preference in Tasmania

Wikileaks Party

The Wikileaks Party offer:

3rd preference in NSW

3rd preference in Victoria

We offer in exchange:

3rd preference in NSW

3rd preference in Victoria

Australian Democrats

2nd preference in Queensland

4th preference in NSW

2nd preference in Victoria

4th preference in Tasmania The Australian Democrats offer:

We offer in exchange:

2nd preference in Queensland

4th preference in NSW

2nd preference in Victoria

4th preference in Tasmania

Sex Party

The Sex Party offer:

8th preference in Queensland

7th preference in NSW

8th preference in Victoria

3rd preference in Tasmania

We offer in exchange:

8th preference in Queensland

7th preference in NSW

8th preference in Victoria

3rd preference in Tasmania

Australian Democrats deal considered null and void ¶

Due to an apparent misrepresentation by a group claiming to be representatives of the Australian Democrats as registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, the reciprocation deal between the Pirate Party and the Australian Democrats is considered null and void.

We had sent an email to [email protected] requesting someone to speak to regarding preferencing. The respondent, Stuart Horrex, claiming to be the National Secretary of the Australian Democrats, put us in contact with their alleged National Campaign Director, Dan McMillan.

We received a phone call from Mr McMillan at 7:39pm on August 12 to discuss a reciprocation deal based on the preference decisions made by our members. The phone call lasted approximately 10 minutes. We roughly agreed to some terms and continued our discussions with other groups.

On August 13 at 7:03pm, we called Mr McMillan back to confirm the terms of the arrangement to be put to our members by majority vote. These terms were sent by email to Mr McMillan with a suggestion of a slightly better deal. He responded saying they could not make a better deal, and the deal was put to members as worded, and the deal was carried by our members.

Unfortunately, the preferencing deal was not held up by the Australian Democrats, as can be seen by the group voting tickets for each state. It has become apparent that Mr McMillan and Mr Horrex do not represent the registered political party Australian Democrats, and as such, this deal is considered null and void. They seem to have falsely claimed that they represented the Australian Democrats from day one, including having a strong Twitter presence and having the first result in Google for Australian Democrats. Nothing in our communications led us to believe that these individuals were acting fraudulently, as they even provided a response to our initial email asking for information on why our members should preference them in the upcoming elections. Not only did these individuals apparently misrepresent themselves to the Election Committee, they have misrepresented themselves to over 700 members of the Pirate Party.

It has come to our attention however that the AEC has dealt with these individuals before, apparently attempting to take over the Australian Democrats by submitting documentation unsupported by the current executive. We will be reporting this matter to the AEC as we believe these actions may have contravened certain provisions of the Electoral Act and we will keep you up-to-date on the results.

The real Australian Democrats can be found at http://australian-democrats.org.au. We took part in these negotiations in good faith and we were misled. The Election Committee apologises to the members of the Pirate Party for this entire situation.

At least one thing has been proven in this preferencing debacle: the Pirate Party can be trusted to follow through with the deals democratically and transparently determined by our members.

Update (22 Aug 2013): the original group we discussed preferences with has sent us an email. We are publishing it and our response to it here.

Update (22 Aug 2013): a follow up email has been received, confirming that the period of time we negotiated was between the time they knew the AEC had denied their request and before they had filed their new appeal.

How other parties have ordered their preferences

All parties have submitted their preferencing order to the Australian Electoral Commission and can be viewed here.

Voting below the line

The Pirate Party wholeheartedly recommends that if you wish to vote below the line in this election, to assist you in limiting your chance of accidentally voting informally:

Place a 1 above the line for the Pirate Party. In the case where your below the line is considered informal, the above the line will take precedence and your vote will still be counted.

above the line for the Pirate Party. In the case where your below the line is considered informal, the above the line will take precedence and your vote will still be counted. Use a service such as belowtheline.org.au or senate.io to prepare your below the line ballot in advance. (These websites are not endorsed by the Party and you should consider your privacy before entering any information into these websites)

Raw Results and Datasets

The raw results and datasets can be found here.