Optional preferential voting

Last updated

Example of an optional preferential ballot paper Preferential ballot.svg
Example of an optional preferential ballot paper

One of the ways in which ranked voting systems vary is whether an individual vote must express a minimum number of preferences to avoid being considered invalid ("spoiled" or "informal"). Possibilities are:

Contents

Ranked-voting systems typically use a ballot paper in which the voter is required to write numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. opposite the name of the candidate who is their first, second, third, etc. preference. In OPV and semi-optional systems, candidates not explicitly ranked by the voter are implicitly ranked lower than all numbered candidates. Some OPV jurisdictions permit a ballot expressing a single preference to use some other mark than the digit '1', such as a cross or tick-mark, opposite the preferred candidate's name, on the basis that the voter's intention is clear; other do not, arguing for example that an 'X' might be an expression of dislike. FPV may not be possible if write-in candidates are allowed.

In a transferable-vote system like the single transferable vote (STV) or instant runoff voting (IRV), a ballot is initially allocated to the first-preference candidate but if the first preference candidate is elected or found to be un-electable, the vote may be transferred one or more times to successively lower preferences. If there is no lower preference available when such a transfer is applicable, the ballot is said to be exhausted.

FPV prevents exhausted ballots. On the other hand, FPV increases the risk of invalid ballots: the more numbers a voter is required to mark, the greater the opportunity for mistakes, by repeating or skipping numbers or skipping candidates. Some Australian elections which mandate FPV have reduced informal (invalid) votes by adding group voting tickets "above the line" on ballot papers: these allow voters to select a complete party list prepared by one of the parties, instead of manually entering personal preferences marked for individual candidates "below the line".

Ranked vote systems vary in that some cast aside, at the start of the vote count, a ballot not correctly filled out but other systems allow a vote even if not fully and correctly marked to be used until the first mistake annuls the ballot. That was the case in federal Australian elections prior to 1998 (a Langer vote) but after 1998 Australia classified those votes as informal (invalid). Australia now allows ballots to express less than complete preferences (optional preferential voting) for Senate elections but still full-preferential voting is used for members of Australia's House of Representatives. [1]

Australia

The terms OPV and FPV are used mainly in Australia, in relation to elections at state and territory and Commonwealth (federal) level, which use proportional representation (Single transferable voting/STV) or preferential voting (IRV).

OPV is used in elections in the Australian state of New South Wales. [2] It was used in Queensland [3] from 1992 [4] to 2015, when it was replaced by full-preferential voting. [5]

OPV was adopted in the Northern Territory in 2016. [6]

In both the Tasmanian House of Assembly and the Tasmanian Legislative Council, semi-optional voting is used, with a minimum number of preferences required to be expressed; but there is no requirement to complete the entire ballot paper. Elections for all other Australian lower houses use full-preferential voting. In the New South Wales Legislative Council, semi-optional preferencing has been used since 1978, with a minimum 10 preferences required for 15 seats before 1991, and 15 preferences for 21 seats since. Voters also have the option since 1984 of voting "above the line". In the Victorian Legislative Council, semi-optional voting is used if a voter chooses to vote below the line. Voting above the line requires only a '1' being placed in one box, and group voting tickets voting has applied since 1988. [7]

Around 1999 Melbourne's Albert Langer engaged in campaign to assist voters to mark fewer than all the candidates but still have their vote not deemed informal and rejected. This was a way to use vote as if under optional voting system. [8]

The Australian Senate voting reform of 2016 switched from full-preferential voting to optional. A minimum number is specified in the instructions on the ballot paper. Since in the past a single number '1' above the line was valid, that is still a formal vote even though voters are encouraged to number six squares.

Elsewhere

STV Elections in Malta, in the Republic of Ireland, and in Northern Ireland use OPV. The ranked-choice voting system used in Maine, United States, Instant-runoff voting, can be considered optional-preferential as voters are allowed to rank just one candidate. The system also allows voters to skip one ranking (e.g. marking a first choice and a third choice, but not a second choice). In that case, the next ranking would be advanced to the next highest ranking, but more than one skip exhausts the ballot.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Single transferable vote</span> Multi-winner electoral system

The single transferable vote (STV), a type of proportional ranked choice voting (P-RCV), is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternative preferences if their preferred candidate is eliminated or elected with surplus votes, so that their vote is used to elect someone they prefer over others in the running. STV aims to approach proportional representation based on votes cast in the district where it is used, so that each vote is worth about the same as another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voting</span> Method to make collective decisions

Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, convenes together for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting. Residents of a jurisdiction represented by an elected official are called "constituents", and the constituents who choose to cast a ballot for their chosen candidate are called "voters." There are different systems for collecting votes, but while many of the systems used in decision-making can also be used as electoral systems, any which cater to proportional representation can only be used in elections.

The electoral system of Australia comprises the laws and processes used for the election of members of the Australian Parliament and is governed primarily by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The system presently has a number of distinctive features including compulsory enrolment; compulsory voting; majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats to elect the lower house, the House of Representatives; and the use of the single transferable vote proportional representation system to elect the upper house, the Senate.

Electoral systems of the Australian states and territories are broadly similar to the electoral system used in federal elections in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donkey vote</span> Type of cast ballot in ranked voting in which candidates are ranked in order of appearance

In electoral systems which use ranked voting, a donkey vote is a cast ballot where the voter ranks the candidates based on the order they appear on the ballot itself. The voter that votes in this manner is referred to as a donkey voter.

A group voting ticket (GVT) is a shortcut for voters in a preferential voting system, where a voter can indicate support for a list of candidates instead of marking preferences for individual candidates. For multi-member electoral divisions with single transferable voting, a group or party registers a GVT before an election with the electoral commission. When a voter selects a group or party above the line on a ballot paper, their vote is distributed according to the registered GVT for that group.

The single transferable vote (STV) is a semi-proportional representation system that elects multiple winners. It is one of several ways of choosing winners from ballots that rank candidates by preference. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to their first-ranked candidate. Candidates are elected (winners) if their vote tally reaches quota. After the winners in the first count are determined, if seats are still open, surplus votes — those in excess of an electoral quota— are transferred from winners to the remaining candidates (hopefuls) according to the surplus ballots' next usable back-up preference.

Historically, the single transferable vote (STV) electoral system has seen a series of relatively modest periods of usage and disusage throughout the world; however, today it is seeing increasing popularity and proposed implementation as a method of proportional representation and a goal of electoral reform. STV has been used in many different local, regional and national electoral systems, as well as in various other types of bodies, around the world.

Preferential voting or preference voting (PV) may refer to different election systems or groups of election systems:

Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a ranked voting method used in single-winner elections. IRV is also known outside the US as the alternative vote (AV). Today it is in use at a national level to elect the Australian House of Representatives, the National Parliament of Papua New Guinea, the President of Ireland and President of India. In Australia it is also used for elections to the legislative assemblies of all states and territories except Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, and for the Tasmanian Legislative Council.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spoilt vote</span> Ballot that is invalid and not counted

In voting, a ballot is considered spoilt, spoiled, void, null, informal, invalid or stray if a law declares or an election authority determines that it is invalid and thus not included in the vote count. This may occur accidentally or deliberately. The total number of spoilt votes in a United States election has been called the residual vote. In Australia, such votes are generally referred to as informal votes, and in Canada they are referred to as rejected votes.

A Langer vote was a style of voting in the Australian electoral system designed to avoid the requirement to express preferences for all candidates without the vote being rejected as informal. The title is a tribute to Albert Langer, an Australian political activist, who advocated for the use of this style as a de facto method of optional preferential voting for making a valid vote for the voter's preferred candidates while the deliberate "error" avoided the vote being counted for one of the major political parties.

There are a number of complications and issues surrounding the application and use of single transferable vote proportional representation that form the basis of discussions between its advocates and detractors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">How-to-vote card</span> Handed-out leaflets in Australian elections with voting instructions

In Australia, how-to-vote cards (HTV) are small leaflets that are handed out by party supporters during elections. Voting in the Australian lower house uses a preferential voting system. Voters must rank every candidate on the ballot in order for their vote to count. There are often numerous candidates on the ballot, some with little public profile, so voters may find it difficult to decide on all of them. Parties produce how-to-vote cards ostensibly to help voters. They contain details about the candidate or party, as well as instruction on how to cast a ranked vote in the order that the party would prefer the voter follow. The flow of preferences can assist the party dispersing the cards directly and indirectly help allied parties.

Multiple transferable voting, sometimes called block preferential or block instant-runoff voting, is a winner-take-all system for electing several representatives from a multimember constituency. Unlike single transferable voting (STV), preferential block voting is not a method for obtaining proportional representation, and instead produces similar results to plurality block voting. Preferential block voting can be seen as a multiple-winner version of instant-runoff.

The Wright system is a refinement of rules associated with proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (PR-STV) electoral system. It was developed and written by Anthony van der Craats, a system analyst and life member of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia. It is described in a submission into a parliamentary review of the 2007 Australian federal election.

Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as ranked-choice voting or the alternative vote (AV), combines ranked voting together with a system for choosing winners from these rankings by repeatedly eliminating the candidate with the fewest first-place votes and reassigning their votes until only one candidate is left. It can be seen as a modified form of a runoff election or exhaustive ballot in which, after eliminating some candidates, the choice among the rest is made from already-given voter rankings rather than from a separate election. Many sources conflate this system of choosing winners with ranked-choice voting more generally, for which several other systems of choosing winners have also been used.

The mixed ballot transferable vote (MBTV) refers to a type of vote linkage-based mixed-member electoral system where a group of members are elected on local (lower) tier, for example in single-member districts (SMDs). Other members are elected on a compensatory national (upper) tier from a list and voters cast a single ballot where they may indicate their preferences separately.

The spare vote is a version of single transferable voting applied to the ranking of parties, first proposed for elections in Germany in 2013. This preferential party system is a ranked proportional representation electoral system applying to political parties instead of individual candidates. The spare vote refers to a secondary vote (preference) of the voter, which only comes into play if the first preference for the political party preferred by the voter, is below the electoral threshold. In Germany, there were draft laws for the spare vote system in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg federal states, but they were not implemented.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2020 Queensland local elections</span>

The 2020 Queensland local elections were held on 28 March 2020 to elect the mayors and councils of the 77 local government areas in Queensland, Australia.

References

  1. ↑ Bryant v Commonwealth of Australia [1998] FCA 1242 (30 September 1998)
  2. ↑ Optional Preferential: Elections NSW
  3. ↑ Stevens, Bronwyn. "Are Queenslanders in danger of 'wasting' their votes". The Conversation. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  4. ↑ "The Queensland Electoral System". Queensland Parliament. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
  5. ↑ Burke, Gail (22 April 2016). "Compulsory preferential voting returns to Queensland as Parliament passes bill for more MPs". Australian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved 15 December 2017.
  6. ↑ Northern Territory Adopts Optional Preferential Voting and Bans Campaigning Near Polling Places: Antony Green ABC 11 February 2016
  7. ↑ http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/bill/crb1988520.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  8. ↑ Farrell and McAllister. The Australian Electoral System. pp. 56–57.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.