Comments by "Philip Rayment" (@PJRayment) on "‘Preference whisperer’ Glenn Druery caught ‘bragging’ about manipulating voting system" video.

Not voting means that you're leaving the decision up to others. That's a bad idea.
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The question is, when will the government change the rules to make this illegal. At the moment, what he's doing is legal, albeit improper.
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@countyorga764 "The question is - when will the government terminate your oxygen supply ?" No, that is you simply being a troll. You haven't addressed the topic, instead just being nasty.
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@Vote Early Vic "But if Mathew Guy wins, it was free and fair?" He didn't say that there would be something wrong with the voting system. (Although for all I know he meant that.) Rather, if Andrews wins, that's a bad thing, i.e. there's something wrong. Even if that's with the voters, or with the mainstream media whitewashing Andrews, or various other options. Actually, if Matthew Guy wins, there's also something wrong. But not as badly wrong as Andrews winning.
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I don't believe that's a fair characterisation. There have been very few allegations of the electoral commissions manipulating the ballots. There are no voting machines. All votes are properly handled and counted in front of proper scrutiny, i.e. in front of scrutineers from the various parties. That's not to suggest that no improvements could be made. But on the whole the ballots are handled properly. The issue here is not the vote counting or the electoral commissions, but the legislated rules about preference deals.
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"I have always said preferences voting is bad for voters." Then you've always been wrong. "I'm right again,..." Ummm, no. Preferential voting is better (fairer) than the alternatives. However, for it to work properly, you should distribute your preferences the way you want them. These preference deals are only a problem when you vote above the line and leave the distribution of your preferences to the parties. That's fine if you agree with how they distribute them, but otherwise you should allocate your preferences accordingly.
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@Vote Early Vic "Because the incumbent government is the only real choice for educated Victorians, who are by far the majority?" The word before "Victorians" should be "indoctrinated". Sensible people will vote against the Andrews death cult.
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The problem is that he's not actually a criminal, because what he's doing is legal, even if underhanded and unfair.
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@Vote Early Vic "Yep, by far the majority (after preferences)." Hopefully not any longer.
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@Tyronepeader "More deranged accusations from the Skynuts. Is there nothing they won't do..." More name-calling, vilification, and evidence-free claims from the left. Is there nothing you won't stoop to?
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@Vote Early Vic "Major parties have no use for what Druery sells." This video says otherwise.
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@deanpd3402 "...this is another reason why preferences should be scrapped." Not at all. Preferential voting is a much fairer system. The problem here is with those voters who leave the distribution of their preferences to the parties, instead of allocating them themselves.
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@Tyronepeader "I'm afraid that the Liberals have always been corrupt or corrupted from within." You could probably find evidence of corruption in all major and long-lived parties. But that's not the point. "Guy, along with his former Chief of Staff is currently being investigated by ICAC ..." Actually, from my understanding, his Chief of Staff is being investigated. Guy is not, although he was interviewed. "...the party is being invaded by religious extremists." Please define "extremists" in a way that doesn't involve you saying "holding views that I don't agree with". Because the 60 minutes story is looking very much like it's an unhinged witch hunt. "A vote for Guy is a vote for his "lobster with a mobster" mate, Tony Madafferi." That is illogical. But then logic is not strong with the left.
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@ricky6864 "to many dirty deals done" That's not a problem with preferential voting, but preference deal. So, any other reasons, or was that your only one?
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Why? Preferential voting is about the fairest system there is.
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@oliverbranok9898 "Victorian and not jabbed. Still human." Victorian and jabbed by choice. Still human. "As for those that took it and are suffering from the side effects now, ..." I suffered no side effects, and when I caught covid, it was about as bad as a head cold. "...what was it you lot said when people like us complained about being locked out the other year.......'your choice'." Well, I'm not in that camp. I chose to get vaccinated because vaccines are, in principle, good things, and these ones had already been 'tested' on millions. But I agree that it should never have been mandated.
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@iankearns774 "I bet you have photos of Dan all over the walls in your toilet..." You would lose that bet, which would be deserved, given your complete invention of that claim.
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@Tyronepeader "Hypothetical nonsense ..." You've not shown it's nonsense. "...more accurately a Liberal wet dream about Guy winning." So you didn't read my comment well enough to notice that I'm not a fan of Guy winning either. How about you don't stereotype me? "Get back to reality and a comprehensive election thumping." Says the person who is attempting to predict the future instead of stick with reality. And further, I made no comment about the likelihood of either side winning. I was commenting on the merits of each side, which is a different topic entirely.
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We didn't need a referendum. A referendum is only needed to change the federal constitution.
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@wadjula8455 "Won't make a difference but whatever" Why is that? It means that your preferences go where you want them to.
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@meredithisme3752 "Below the line five boxes" I would do more. But it depends on who you're voting for. If you put several minor parties first (e.g. One Nation, Freedom, Family First) then it could well be the case that all your numbers will be used up and you've handed your vote over to one of the parties. If you're voting for a major party, then perhaps five will be enough. But I'd play it safe and do more anyway.
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@wadjula8455 "because the majority of people are sheep" And that's a reason to have an unfair system? How so? "made intentionally confusing for a reason" Please explain how it could be simplified and still be no less fair than now.
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@wadjula8455 "that's the point, ballots are invalidated, people donkey vote, etc., etc." A relative few votes are invalid, and relatively few donkey vote. That does not justify changing the system to a less-fair one. "Your vote really doesn't matter, sorry to say." Why not? You're just making another baseless allegation. And you haven't answered either of my questions in my last comment? Why not? Can't?
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@wadjula8455 "I'm not trying to argue to the point." Actually, you are. "Just pointing out the system is [bad]" No, you're claiming that it's bad, but your reasons don't support your claim. "Oh and you have a massive number of CCP Chy niz employees staffing AEC / VEC... Just like Medibank" What's your evidence for that?
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@Barney_Rubble247 "Why vote early?" Because then it's too late when you subsequently find out more problems with Andrews.
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@oliverbranok9898 "..not that's as unscientific as it gets, testing takes years, ..." That doesn't change the vaccines are, in principle, good things. That criticism can only be lodged against very new ones, such as the covid ones. I was referring to vaccines in general. "...testing takes years, ..." Vaccines are required to go through several rounds of testing. The first and second rounds were completed before they were made available. The third round is basically a long-term round. That one was not completed at the time (but since has been), but the vaccines had passed the first and second rounds of testing. Claims that the vaccines were "untested" were simply false. What would have been accurate is to say that they were not fully tested. And that, I agree, is one reason to not force people to take them. But the risk run by releasing them before the final stage was considered lesser than the risk of people dying in the meantime. "...the fact that they are keeping what's inside the vaxx a secret,..." I'm not sure that's correct. We actually have a fairly good idea of what's in them. "...not to mention that you had to sign a no liability clause, what, that didn't make you think." No, because that sort of thing is fairly routine. Freeing the companies of liability only applies, I believe, to the risk of a small percentage of the population having a bad reaction. It would not absolve them of negligence or malfeasance. All drugs can have side effects, even fatal. When you have an operation under anaesthetic, there is a (very small) risk that you won't wake up. It happens. "Now add to that the large number of adverse effects, ..." That there is a large number is disputed. "...and I know a few personally,..." You need proper studies, not anecdotal evidence, for this sort of thing. "You are a fool." No, I'm not. I believe that a lot of the government hype of the disease (and to a much smaller extent, the vaccine) was fake news (e.g., "it doesn't discriminate", when it was well known to affect some people more than others), but then a lot of the opposition to it was also fake news, with some really bizarre conspiracy theories out there. I made a carefully-considered decision, being careful to not believe everything I heard (from both sides), and being careful to take notice of reliable sources.
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"Prefernce voting is one of the most damaging rorts ever forced on the Australian people." Except that it's actually about the fairest system. "Where else outside of communism are people forced to vote for a person or party they might not otherwise vote for if they choose to not vote for a major party?" You're not forced to vote for any party. You're required to put the candidates in your order of preference. "...if you place the Greens or Teals last on the preference list you still voted for them..." No, you're not voting for them. You're allocating a very low preference for them, saying that they are the last ones you'd want in power. If you only provide some preferences (which you can in some circumstances), then you're basically saying that if your preferred candidates don't get in, you're handing the vote over to others. Is that really what you want?
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@myday805 "What a load of rubbish and total failure in understanding the voting process." Except that it's not. "When you number the boxes say 1to 6 what that means is that you voted for every single one of them." So you're saying that you cast six votes? No, that's incorrect. You only get one vote. You have cast your vote for the candidate you've put "1" against. If, and only if, that candidate gets eliminated (because nobody has received 50% of the vote), then your one vote gets transferred to the candidate you put "2" against. And so on. "It doesn' matter that you've preferenced them they're still votes..." No, "they" are not still "votes". You get one vote. "...they're votes they'll use to haggle with the major parties." Huh? No haggling is involved. You're one vote goes to whoever you have given it to. End of story. "Labor got only about 30% of the votes in the last election and the Greens used all their votes, including the votes they got from people who preferenced them last, and gave them to Labor." False. It is you who doesn't understand the voting process. The Greens did nothing with their votes. If the Greens were eliminated, then all the people who voted Greens had the voters' next preference reallocated to whichever candidate the voters preferenced next. "I think that anyone who wouldn't prefer to vote one vote for just one candidate or party rather than this preference voting rort is an idiot.." The idiots would be those who don't understand how the vote counting works. Having said all that, that applies to the Legislative Assembly (the lower house), where you elect one person with your one vote. The Legislative Council (the upper house) has you electing five people, so you effectively get five votes. This process is more complicated, but the principle is similar. In the lower house, a candidate must get 50% of the vote. In the upper house, the quota is smaller. If a candidate gets more than the quota, then the next preference of the voter is used to select the next candidate. So if the top Liberal candidate (A) get's 40% of the vote and the quota is 16%, then the next preference of the people who voted for A are counted. As most people who vote Liberal will (explicitly or effectively) put the second Liberal candidate second, votes are passed onto them. And so on. If there are not five candidates getting the quota, then, as in the lower house, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the voter's next preference is used. The complication is that if you vote above the line (in the upper house), then you are telling the vote counters that you want your preferences allocated according to the parties' wishes. That's what his video is about—the deals done behind the scenes about those preference. That is where the haggling is done. Before the election. But that is only a problem if you vote above the line. Vote below the line and it's all under your control.
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@myday805 "If you didn't repeat what others say you'd have no content." Avoiding the actual issue with that comment. In fact the large majority of my comment was my own. "Believe what you want." I go with the evidence, not with what I want. "At the end of the day the major parties when coming up short still sell their sole to minor parties for those imaginary preference votes..." No, that is simply false. Preference deals are decided before the election, not "at the end of the day". What is (sometimes) decided after the election is who a party might go into coalition with in order to have enough seats to claim government. "It's ignorance like yours..." You've shown no ignorance on my part. You claim I'm ignorant simply because you think I'm wrong. But you've not shown that.
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Only if you leave your preferences up to the parties. Allocate them yourself, and it's about the best system around.
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An informal vote also won't go to the one you do want.
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We don't. The states have governors, and the country has a governor general.
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The problem is the preference deals, not the preferential voting system which is about the fairest system there is.
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