After every election, sure as bears leaving droppings in the woods, you will hear the cries from right wing think tanks for a change to our electoral system. This time the cries have been even more strident than usual – “Hung parliament – change the electoral system” “Informal votes – change the electoral system’. Ignore them, is the best advice; but ignoring my own advice, here is a guide to the silliness (apparently to conservatives you don’t change anything that ain’t broke except the Australian electoral system, arguably, and I would be happy to argue the case, the best in the world by a long long way).

The demands will be made for three changes. An end to what they call compulsory voting (failing to recognise the total failure of logic in using a rise in informal votes to call for no compulsory voting!); an end to preferential voting (supposedly to achieve “certain” results); a call for computerised voting machines.

Let me deal with the last one first. The day that Australia introduces voting machines built, programmed, and run by private companies is the day democracy dies in Australia. From then on don’t bother turning up to vote, it will be pointless.

And now the “compulsory turning up at a polling station on or before polling day and getting your name ticked off or sending in something by post” question. Really? Of all the questions about “freedom” you might ask (what to read, hear, watch, ingest, write, draw, see on internet, discuss on phone without listeners, speak, marry, die etc) the biggest imposition on us is ten minutes to consider our democracy every few years? Really? You don’t want to vote for anyone, feel free. Go for it, no one’s making it compulsory (sadly) for you to behave intelligently – scribble some obscenity on your paper or leave it blank, shove it in the box, stroll out whistling to yourself on a job well done.

And preferential voting? Well, nothing to do with the election result. The Australian people were split down the middle in their views as to whether they wanted a conservative Liberal government of a conservative Labor government. Couldn’t absolutely decide which was the lesser of the two evils. But also wanted to send a message to Labor, by voting Green more than ever before, that when people are given a choice between real conservatives and pretend conservatives they will choose the real ones, so Labor better move back to the left a bit (the preferences giving them a decided nudge). But in the meantime, whoever wants to form government has to deal with an assorted group of independents, and the Greens, has to modify policies and attitudes and approaches to governing. Pretty good result I’d say.

So, puzzled about why the calls for change? The conservatives think that not asking people to turn up for ten minutes at a polling booth an a Saturday every three years will result in the people who do turn up being generally more conservative. They also know that stopping people influencing party policy by gently nudging them through the preference system will quickly kill the smaller parties, and leave it up to a contest between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Now, where have I seen (including the use of voting machines) an outcome like that in real life?

Familiar with the American voting system are you?

It ain’t broke. Ignore them.