Preferential Voting in Australia

Since Australia has just completed another national election cycle, I thought I'd pass on this bit of preferential voting history from Wikipedia.  We often call it Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or ranked choice voting in the States. Also there's a very nice example of what preference voting ballots look like in the second Wikipedia reference noted below.

The potential for sustainable third parties in the United States would go up significantly if there was a major move to this kind of voting.  With the current non-preferential ballot (where you mark just one candidate rather than indicate your preference for all the candidates) the fear factor enters the picture.  By voting for a third party there's a risk of letting candidate you like the least to get in because of votes split between otherwise more preferred candidates.  This is the alternative history often referenced, perhaps wrongly I would argue, when the effect of votes for Nader in the 2004 Presidential balloting are mentioned in the mainstream press.  In my personal opinion, preferential voting should be the top item on the issues list of any third party who wants to be more than a target for protest votes.

Australian Electoral System - Wikipedia
Preferential Voting - Wikipedia

"Preferential voting

Australia uses various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. Under this system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference.

The preferential system was introduced in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote.

The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Corangamite by-election on 14 December 1918 [4]. It had previously been introduced as a result of the work of Thomas Hare and Andrew Inglis Clark in the Tasmanian House of Assembly.

Preferential voting has gradually extended to both upper and lower houses, in the federal, state and territory legislatures, and is also used in municipal elections, and most other kinds of elections as well, such as internal political party elections, trade union elections, church elections, elections to company boards and elections in voluntary bodies such as football clubs.

With the exception of an experiment with voting machines in the Australian Capital Territory [5], all Australian elections are carried out using paper ballots."

Preferential Voting in Australia

Since Australia has just completed another national election cycle, I thought I'd pass on this bit of preferential voting history from Wikipedia.  We often call it Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or ranked choice voting in the States. Also there's a very nice example of what preference voting ballots look like in the second Wikipedia reference noted below.

The potential for sustainable third parties in the United States would go up significantly if there was a major move to this kind of voting.  With the current non-preferential ballot (where you mark just one candidate rather than indicate your preference for all the candidates) the fear factor enters the picture.  By voting for a third party there's a risk of letting candidate you like the least to get in because of votes split between otherwise more preferred candidates.  This is the alternative history often referenced, perhaps wrongly I would argue, when the effect of votes for Nader in the 2004 Presidential balloting are mentioned in the mainstream press.  In my personal opinion, preferential voting should be the top item on the issues list of any third party who wants to be more than a target for protest votes.

Australian Electoral System - Wikipedia
Preferential Voting - Wikipedia

"Preferential voting

Australia uses various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. Under this system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference.

The preferential system was introduced in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote.

The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Corangamite by-election on 14 December 1918 [4]. It had previously been introduced as a result of the work of Thomas Hare and Andrew Inglis Clark in the Tasmanian House of Assembly.

Preferential voting has gradually extended to both upper and lower houses, in the federal, state and territory legislatures, and is also used in municipal elections, and most other kinds of elections as well, such as internal political party elections, trade union elections, church elections, elections to company boards and elections in voluntary bodies such as football clubs.

With the exception of an experiment with voting machines in the Australian Capital Territory [5], all Australian elections are carried out using paper ballots."