Confronting the Senate
Aug 15th, 2008 | By David Harper | Category: OpinionMichelle Grattan: It’s arguable whether proportional representation voting for the Senate is the ultimate in democracy or a pathway to its distortion.
Proportional representation often delivers the balance of power, and so the fate of key parts of a government’s program, into the hands of minor players whose clout is disproportionate to their share of the vote.
This problem is much discussed by apologists for the status quo, but is not much observed in practice. In any case, it is a trivial problem compared to the problems of first-past-the-post, which usually gives absolute power to one political party even though most people voted against them. The party with the most votes often loses the election.