How does preferential voting actually work in Australia?
Here in Australia, we use preferential voting for our federal elections (and some state & local elections). But what is it, how does it work, and what do we get confused about as voters?
Preferential voting comes from the word ‘preference’. It refers to the system used to vote by ranking our candidates in order of preference. You have a ballot with a list of candidates, and you number them in the order you prefer. Depending on the preferential system in use, you may have to number all candidates or a minimum number of candidates (more on that in a second). You might also hear (especially outside of Australia) this style of voting referred to as ranked-choice voting or instant-runoff voting.
Once you’ve numbered your candidate and cast your ballot, your vote is counted based on your preferences. There are a few different ways that preferences can be counted. The two main ways we count preferences (and that we use in Australian federal elections) are absolute majority and vote quota.
Absolute Majority Preferential Voting
Absolute majority preferential voting is what we use for Australian Federal House of Representatives elections. It’s also a little simpler to understand than the method we use for the Senate.
When you vote in a federal election for the House of Representatives, you’re given a green ballot paper with a list of the candidates for your electorate. You need to number all the candidates on this ballot, starting with 1 for your first choice. On a ballot with five candidates, you’ll number the candidates one to five.
When the votes are counted, for a candidate to win, they have to receive an absolute majority of votes. That is more than half of all votes (plus one).
If, after counting first preference (number 1 votes), no candidate has an absolute majority, then the candidate with the least votes is excluded. Any votes for the excluded candidate are counted based on the voter’s second preference (number two vote). This process continues until a single candidate has more than half of the votes.
This means, no matter what order you vote for your prefered candidates in — your vote still counts, and you have full control over who gets your vote.
If your first choice candidate doesn’t have enough votes, your second choice candidate gets your vote. There is no ‘wasted’ voting in this system (as long as your vote is a formal vote), and the party you choose as your first preference has no say in who gets your second preference goes. Despite parties and the media talking about ‘preference deals’ — the only preferences that actually count are what you write on your ballot. These ‘preference deals’ really only refer to the political parties behind-the-scenes to decided what to put on their ‘how-to-vote cards’. Then they hand these out on election day to try and convince you how to distribute your preferences. You don’t have to follow a parties how-to-vote card — or even accept the flyer when they try and hand it to you in the polling lines. You decide how your preferences get distributed by your numbering of the candidates. End of.
Quota Based Preferential Voting
Voting in the Australian federal senate is a little more complicated — the 2016 senate ballot in most states was almost a metre long. It got compared to tablecloths, height charts and beach towels. Unlike voting for the House of Representatives, where you have a small number of candidates for your local electorate and one winner, everyone in the state gets the same senate ballot, and there are multiple senators elected. (Each state has 12 senators, and the ACT and NT have two each. Every three years, half of the senate positions require election).
And this is where it gets a little (read: a lot) trickier. With the entire state voting, six senators to be elected, and a whole bunch of possible candidates, numbering every single individual candidate is pretty unrealistic. For example, in the 2019 federal election, the NSW senate ballot had 105 candidates, Queensland had 83, and Victoria and 82. No one has time for that!
Instead, you need to fill out a minimum number of preferences — 6 if you vote ‘above the line’ and 12 if you vote ‘below the line’. You can fill out as many preferences as you like, but these are the minimum.
Side note: voting ‘above the line’ you selecting parties, and voting ‘below the line’, you select individual candidates. Yeah, like I said, the senate is not nearly as straight forward as the house.
So instead of a candidate having to get more than half the votes, they have to reach a set number — the quota. This is calculated by dividing the number of formal votes by the number of senators that need to be elected plus one and adding one vote. For example, if an election has 140,000 formal votes and 6 senators to elect — the quota is 20,001.
The counting is where it gets real. So I’ll try and break it down as best I can, but if you want to see more details, the AEC has a full guide here.
The first count of a senate ballot looks at first preferences, just like it does in the House of Representatives. And if any candidates meet the quota required, they’re elected. If they exceed the quota needed, any extra votes are ‘transferred’. But because all votes are equal (yay! democracy) we can’t just take the extra votes off the top of the pile and count their second preferences. Instead, we use a formula to create a ‘transfer value’ for each vote.
So back to our example where a candidate needs a quota of 20,001 votes. If that candidate gets 40,001 first preference votes, they have a surplus of 20,000 votes. To calculate the transfer value, the AEC divides the surplus votes by the total first preference votes that the candidate received. In our example, that’s 20,000 divided by 40,001, or 0.499. Those 40,001 votes are then counted again using the second preference votes and transferred at the transfer value. So if 20,000 of the votes had the same candidate, that candidate receives 20,000 times 0.499 votes, (or 9,980).
After all of these surplus votes are counted and transferred, any candidate that meets the quota is elected. If we still haven’t elected the full number of required candidates, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is excluded, and the second preference of those votes is counted. And if a candidate has surplus votes? We go through the same transfer process as first preference votes.
If you’ve numbered your preferences one to six or one to twelve, and all your preferences have been used, your vote is said to be ‘exhausted’ (not tired, used up) and is set aside. This can be avoided by numbering more than the minimum number of preferences.
This repeats until one of two things happens: all vacancies are filled, or the number of remaining votes is not high enough to reach the quota. If there is only one vacancy remaining, then the candidate with the highest number of votes is elected. If there are two vacancies and two remaining candidates, then they’re both elected.
On the AEC results pages, you can see count totals and the number of counts the ballots have been subjected to. For example, in the 2019 Federal Senate election, NSW senate ballots were counted 429 times, Victoria 367 times, Queensland 288 times and Tasmania 139 times.
Like I said, complicated. But the main thing to remember is that you control where your preferences go — not the parties!
Are you confused about how to correctly fill out a ballot? Same. The AEC has practice ballots you can complete here and check whether they’re formal (though the senate ballot is not nearly as long as it is in real life).
Just as a note, this worked pretty differently prior to 2016. If you want to read about what changed, why, and how that affected subsequent elections — I’d set aside a couple of hours and head over to the Parliament of Australia website and check out their report on the new Senate voting system and the 2016 election
***
This information on our federal voting process has been created relying on primarily information from the Australian Electoral Commission — you can get a lot of other great info from them about how this all works.
This is my first time at writing something like this and it’s my attempt to help Australian’s be more informed about political processes, procedures and systems. I’d love your honest feedback and I’d also love to hear what else you want to know about Australian politics. Follow for more. Or follow me on Twitter @FloRoberts93—though be warned there is swearing, and a lot of opinions.
