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Electoral Systems - Preferential Voting Systems

Preferential Voting Systems
The Full Preferential Count
First (Primary) Count
Second Count
Third Count
Result

Preferential Voting Systems

In Australia, preferential voting systems are majority systems where candidates must receive an absolute majority, 50% plus 1 of the total formal votes cast to be elected.

The term "preferential voting" means voters can indicate an order of preferences for candidates on the ballot paper, ie. who they want as their 1st choice, 2nd choice and so on.

Full preferential voting
The elector must show a preference for all candidates listed on the ballot paper. In some electoral systems which use full preferential voting, the voter can leave one box empty if the voter's intention with regard to the other preferences is clear. The empty box is treated as the voter's last preference, eg: voting for the Victorian Legislative Council and Assembly.

Optional preferential voting
The number "1" preference must be shown and other preferences may be indicated, eg: voting for the NSW Legislative Assembly.

Partial Preferential
The elector must show a minimum number of preferences as set out on the ballot paper. eg: voting for the Tasmanian Legislative Council.

The Full Preferential Count

On the election night……….
Polling officials sort and count formal and informal votes. Informal
votes are set aside and do not take further part in the count.
The formal votes are counted according to the first preferences
given by voters. This is the primary count and the results are displayed
on the tally board. These are about 85% of total votes cast in an
election and do not include absent, postal, or prepoll votes
(which are received and counted after election night).
If no candidate receives an absolute majority, 50% plus 1 of the
total first preference votes, then subsequent preferences have
to be distributed. This takes place after election night once all
votes have been included in the primary count.

Distributing preferences

First (Primary) Count
Formal votes received by each candidate are counted according to where the voter placed number ”1” for each candidate.

In this example there are 100,000 formal votes. The absolute majority is 50% plus 1, ie 50,001 votes.

	Sally 33,000		Jo 21,000
	Lee 16,000 Lee with the lowest number of first preference votes is excluded.		Paul 30,000

Second Count
No candidate received an absolute majority, in the first count.
So the candidate with the lowest number of first preference
votes is excluded. In this case Lee has the lowest number of
votes, 16,000. Those votes are distributed to the remaining
candidates according to the next available preference. In this
case, this is where voters placed their number “2” preference.

	Sally 33,000 +7,000 from Lee 40,000		Jo 21,000 +4,000 from Lee 25,000 Jo with the lowest number of votes is excluded.
	Paul 30,000 +5,000 from Lee 35,000

Third count
Still no candidate has an absolute majority so the counting
procedure continues.

Again the candidate with the lowest number of votes is excluded.
In this case Jo has the lowest number of votes, 25,000. Those votes
are distributed to the remaining candidates according to where
voters placed the next available preference for the candidates
remaining in the count.

	Sally 40,000 +6,000 from Jo 46,000 ( these will include ballot papers from voters who originally voted “1” for Lee. NB ballot paper shown on top of pile).
	Paul   35,000 +19,000 from Jo   54,000 ( these will include ballot papers from voters who originally voted “1” for Jo. NB ballot paper shown on top of pile).

Result
Paul is declared elected as he has
a majority of votes, 54,000.

Issued by
Electoral Council of Australia
Level 22, 2 Lonsdale Street Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone: (03) 9285 7108 Facsimile: (03) 9285 7153

The Electoral Council of Australia (ECA) is a consultative council of Electoral Commissioners and Chief Electoral Officers from the electoral authorities of the Commonwealth, States and Territories of Australia. The ECA considers issues about the development and maintenance of the electoral rolls for Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local Government elections and matters of electoral administration, which have implications for Australian electoral authorities.