Traditionally, every ballot paper in an election is identical, with the candidates' names and their party groups (if any) in the same order. Within the party or group ticket, the order of their candidates' names is decided by the group. The order of the candidates or groups on the ballot is now usually determined by lot, by the authority running the election, although alphabetical order by surname was formerly used for elections contested by individual candidates.
Having all ballot papers the same can give a slight advantage to the candidate or group listed at the top, or top left, of the ballot paper (depending on the format of the paper) because they will attract a donkey vote. Donkey voters number the preferences on their ballots from left to right and/or top to bottom, purely in the order of the candidates' names and groups on the ballot.
Such voters are a feature of voting systems which require people to express their degree of preference for every candidate or group, by numbering them in preferential order, or have their vote declared invalid. While donkey votes may only form a small percentage of votes cast, they could affect the result in a close contest. The more candidates there are on the ballot paper, the greater the donkey vote is likely to be.
To eliminate any donkey vote advantage, the Robson Rotation system requires ballot papers to be printed in equal-sized batches, with each batch having a different candidate's name appearing at prescribed positions in the party columns on those ballots. Consequently, there are several possible permutations of where candidates' names appear on the various versions of the ballot paper. Although that doesn't eliminate donkey voting, it spreads its effect more or less equally among all the candidates standing for election.
A similar kind of ballot rotation was introduced in St. Joseph County, Indiana, in the 1970s. The method, used for both printed ballots and lever-operated machine voting, was developed and introduced by Aloysius J. Kromkowski, the head of the election commission, and one of the most popular elected officials (St. Joseph County Clerk until term limited and St. Joseph County Treasurer until term limited). Every precinct had alphabetically shifted ballots. For example, in precinct 1, names on the ballot would be in standard alphabetical order. In precinct 2, names on the ballot would start with the second alphabetically-ordered candidate and the first ordered would be shifted to the bottom, and so on.
The single transferable vote (STV) or 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 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.
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.
A random ballot or random dictatorship is a randomized electoral system where the election is decided on the basis of a single randomly-selected ballot. A closely-related variant is called random serialdictatorship, which repeats the procedure and draws another ballot if multiple candidates are tied on the first ballot.
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 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.
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.
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.
A by-election for the Tasmanian House of Assembly was held in the Division of Denison in the Australian state of Tasmania on Saturday 16 February 1980.
The 1979 Tasmanian state election was held on 28 July 1979 in the Australian state of Tasmania to elect 35 members of the Tasmanian House of Assembly. The election used the Hare-Clark proportional representation system — seven members were elected from each of five electorates. The quota required for election was 12.5% in each division.
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.
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) is a single-winner, multi-round elimination rule that uses ranked voting to simulate a series of runoffs with only one vote. In each round, the candidate with the fewest votes counting towards them is eliminated, and the votes are transferred to their next available preference until one of the options reaches a majority of the remaining votes. Instant runoff falls under the plurality-with-elimination family of voting methods, and is thus closely related to rules like the exhaustive ballot and two-round runoff system.
Neil Leonard Charles Batt, Australian politician, is a former Tasmanian government minister, Deputy Premier and Member of the Tasmanian House of Assembly. A member of the Labor Party, he was leader of the party in Tasmania, and Leader of the Opposition from 1986 to 1988.
Proportional Representation Society of Australia Inc. is an electoral reform organisation in Australia. Its membership includes people that have successfully promoted electoral reform.
Ranked voting is any voting system that uses voters' rankings of candidates to choose a single winner or multiple winners. More formally, a ranked system is one that depends only on which of two candidates is preferred by a voter, and as such does not incorporate any information about intensity of preferences. Ranked voting systems vary dramatically in how preferences are tabulated and counted, which gives them very different properties. In instant-runoff voting (IRV) and the single transferable vote system (STV), lower preferences are used as contingencies and are only applied when all higher-ranked preferences on a ballot have been eliminated or when one of the higher ranked preferences has been elected and surplus votes need to be transferred.
Section 13 of the Constitution of Australia provides for three aspects of the terms of members of the Australian Senate: the timing of elections, the commencement date of their terms and for the Senate to allocate long (six-year) and short (three-year) terms following a double dissolution of the Parliament of Australia. While members of the House of Representatives and territory senators have a maximum three-year term, state senators have a fixed six-year term, subject only to the parliament being dissolved by a double dissolution.
Hare–Clark is a type of single transferable vote electoral system of proportional representation used for elections in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. It was one of the first uses of the Gregory method for transfers of winner's surplus votes.
The 5 September 1914 election was a double dissolution election which meant all 36 seats in the Senate were up for election, with each Australian states electing six members, with half to serve a six-year term and the rest to serve a three year term. Terms were taken to have commenced on 1 July 1914. The Senate resolved that in each State the three senators who received the most votes would sit for a six-year term, finishing on 30 June 1920 while the other half would sit for a three-year term, finishing on 30 June 1917.
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