Motoring Enthusiast Party & Group Voting Tickets for Ireland?
The story of the Australian Motoring Enthusiasm Party is legendary in the discussion of proportional representation voting. With six seats in the Australian Senate to be filled, a rookie candidate with just 0.51 percent of votes was able to profit from a series of preference transfers that saw him elected ahead of other candidates who appeared to be more popular to outside observers.
The party subsequently ended up in a fight over who controls their facebook account.
The count for Ireland's Midland-North-West district in the European Parliament is ongoing. Thirteen out of twenty seven candidates have been eliminated. It looks like four candidates have a high chance of success and another three or four candidates could take the fifth seat based on the transfer of preferences. Two of the candidates with high hopes of a preference transfer are Ciaran Mullooly of Independents Ireland party and Michelle Gildernew of Sinn Fein. I've been fortunate to meet with a few of the other candidates on the campaign trail and during the counting process.
Imagine for a moment if I was able to take the 524 votes that I received and jump ahead of people who have higher first preference counts. That is exactly what happened in the Australian Senate election of 2013. The Irish voting system uses proportional representation but it doesn't include group voting tickets.
By coincidence, in 1997 I took one subject in the mechanical engineering department, 436-104 High Performance Vehicles Design & Manufacture (HPV). Our professor was Harry Watson. He is an expert on traffic. The Galway traffic problems were a significant local issue in the election campaign. Some candidates exacerbated the congestion and emissions by commissioning advertising on the back of purpose built trucks that crawl through the evening gridlock.
The Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party was established to protect motorists from Government plans to restrict hooning and other poor behavior. Our practical lab project for 436-104 HPV involved doing circles in the mech eng department's utility while taking measurements of the steering wheel position and slip angle with varying levels of tyre pressure. No animals were harmed in these lab experiments.
AMEP's candidate worked for a leather company making car seats. In HPV, we had a guest lecture from a well known car enthusiast called Peter Brock. There is a video where Brock, who doesn't do formula one, talks about his behavior on public roads.
Here is an example of an Australian Senate ballot paper with the names of some unusual parties including Wikileaks, the Animal Justice Party and the Sex Party. Just as the Open Source Definition tells us we don't discriminate against any field of endeavour, the magic of group voting tickets can also be exploited for whatever cause takes your fancy.
The leading candidate in the Midlands-North-West ballot, Luke "Ming" Flanagan, demonstrates his authenticity by driving a car from 2001. When constituents seek advice about motoring issues, Ming is just as prepared as any other candidate to share his experience.
Looking at the tiny number of votes that elected the AMEP senator, it is very tempting to criticize the group voting ticket system. On the other hand, looking at the count taking place here in Castlebar, we can see very few people fill out all 27 boxes on the enormous ballot papers. Therefore, approximately ten percent of ballot papers are being set aside in each transfer of preferences. Could there be a middle ground?
Election officials pushing these trolleys full of ballot papers up the ramp may be tempted to vote for a solution from the motoring enthusiasts party.
