One person, one vote is simple and fair, writes QUENTIN KILIAN

THIS recent Northern Territory election has highlighted one of my major gripes with our electoral system, and that is preferential voting. These are just my thoughts, as a grumpy old man, but I believe it is time to get rid of it and revert to a first past the post system.

The issue, to me at least, is that under preferential voting I am forced to give a vote to candidates and parties that I would never vote for … ever. Over which I have no control.

Watching the numbers unfold over the past week it was interesting to see the primary votes, on both sides of the political spectrum, indicating a clear choice of the voters in that jurisdiction. But as the minor parties dropped off and preferences took over, the people’s choice suddenly became irrelevant.

This, in my humble view, is wrong. If more people in a jurisdiction have placed their primary vote for Candidate X, then it clear that Candidate X should be their representative, not Candidate Y or Z because of a “deal” that was done with minor parties who were never going to be in the running in the first place.

According to an ABC article I recently read, Australia led the world in abandoning electoral franchises based on property ownership by extending the right to vote to all adult males. Australia also led the world in granting the vote to women, and in the introduction of the secret ballot, a reform that when introduced in the United States was often referred to as the “Australian ballot”. We are also the only country with preferential voting.

In almost all other countries, you get the right to cast a single vote for your party or candidate of choice. This single vote may be for a candidate in a single member electorate, as occurs in the United Kingdom, Canada or the United States, or it may be for parties elected by proportional representation, as in European countries.

All these systems work on the basis that if your choice of candidate or party does not get elected, your vote does not get a second chance to be counted.

Under our rather skewed system, if your first choice candidate is not elected and no candidate receives half of the vote, your vote may be reexamined for its next preference. The claim is to elect the “most preferred candidate” or a candidate that can “build an absolute majority of support in the electorate”.

But if that is the case then it ignores the obvious, which is that if more people place their primary vote for a certain candidate then that person is obviously the most popular candidate — at least according to the larger block of people who have voted for that person. To dilute their opinion by then handing out “second chances” as a result of trade-off deals simply says your “first vote” is essentially meaningless.

It is time to have a good hard look at our voting system, at least in the Territory, and give serious thought to bringing in a fairer system that actually reflects the opinions of the voters and not the deal makers in the political parties.

One vote to one candidate. Most votes wins. Doesn’t get simpler or fairer than that. Quentin Kilian is the chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of the NT and a selfproclaimed grumpy old man