#SAvotes Every election someone reads into preferences as if they are tea leaves and discerns some sort of scam that isn't there. I was bracing for the conspiracy theories from One Nation supporters (and I'm sure they're still coming), but in the meantime a bunch of people are making a big fuss over the ONP how to vote and the SA savings provisions.

It's not that complicated. The ONP how to vote is an open ticket. It tells people to number 1 for ONP and then number the others (some people are saying it directs voters to only number 1 - you can see them here to see that this isn't true https://www.ecsa.sa.gov.au/component/content/article/2026-state-election-candidates?catid=12:elections&Itemid=996 )
Anyone who has paid attention to any election ever before knows about open tickets, and those pretending ONP are doing something uniquely nefarious are being completely disingenuous.

There is a simple reason for open tickets - sometimes candidates hope to draw voters from multiple other parties, particularly both majors, and don't want to alienate some by showing a high preference for the one they don't like.

There is a conspiracy theory that they wanted voters to vote just 1 so that the savings provisions let them control their preferences. This is beyond stupid. They don't care about preferences they want your number 1 so that they win. This is true of all parties, nobody uses how to votes because they desperately care about who your lower preferences go to, they just want undecided voters who might only consider HTVs to choose them, or to make it easier for undecided voters who have already decided to cast a vote for them.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike and object to One Nation, I understand this, I even went to the trouble of numbering every box below the line in the Leg Co to put Cory last, but this is a pointless and stupid distraction which is trying to delegitimise a perfectly fine feature of our voting system.