Comment on [Labor senator] Fatima Payman says she's been 'exiled' and is 'reflecting on future' within Labor
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 months agoHappy cake day!
I’m curious, do you vote below the line because you vote in a way that has to be BTL, or just because you’re used to it from the old GVT days? Personally I’ve not done it since 2016, because for the most part I trust each party’s internal ordering of their candidates.
But damn, if I were a Western Australian, and Payman were still in Labor, and she were still preselected in the 2028 election (that’s a lot of ifs), I would definitely be voting BTL just to support her. Not sure if I’d vote her 1, then Greens just as a way to provide maximal support for her bravery, or vote Greens first, then her, then the rest of Labor, in a more honest assessment of my political views (disregarding my vote for other smaller parties before and in between Greens & Labor).
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I don’t always agree with the party’s ordering. Some people I just fundamentally do not trust. I think there’s some concern with weird vote exhaustion (e.g. my 2nd is party 1st, my 1st is party 2nd, my 3rd is party I don’t want. My 1st goes to my 2nd, which doesn’t win, so my 3rd is counted and party 2nd loses by one vote) but I don’t know how likely that really is in practice and I mostly just drop horrible people and political schemers /shrug
TBH I’ve basically lost faith in the Westminster system. I participate because absolutely fuck disempowering yourself to any degree but I put my energy in smaller scale stuff and trying to build community.
stepchook@mastodon.au 2 months ago
@naevaTheRat @Zagorath I think the Westminster system is designed for exactly that purpose. It was invented to separate powers and stop various denominations from flogging each other. Democracy is served when the greater number decide, even when they're wrong.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I think you’re ascribing too much benign intention to something which was realistically the result of a complex power struggle between monarchs, nobles, intellectual elites, and a new class of merchants/financiers where everyone was trying to use everyone else to fuck everyone else in their favour and riling up the proles as needed.
It’s not some planned genius system carefully crafted for utmost morality. It’s a way for rich business owners to get a slice of the pie normally reserved for nobles while offering enough compromises/threat of revolt to keep the smaller but culturally and militarily powerful class of old money happy enough.
Your participation as a prole is highly limited, you are basically unable, short of mass violence, to hold anyone accountable for any particular decision; you are not allowed to force certain things to even be discussed or debated. It is not a system made for you to participate in, it is a system where you have some (extremely limited) participation because your class of people were a piece on someone else’s board.
Compared to actual democratic institutions which work by consensus and direct representation, or representation at the continued will of a consensus body it is a joke. It does not require your consent, and what little privilege you have does not extent to any practical considerations in your life (housing, work etc) which remain dictatorial.
Dream bigger dude.