Federal election soon? Admit it. You have no idea how to make your vote count.

I like to consider myself an intelligent human. I surround myself with smart humans too, so after a discussion with some close friends recently about our upcoming Federal Election (because that’s how we get our thrills these days!), I was more than little surprised to realise that 5 intelligent, worldly adults who have each been voting for at least two decades were incapable of explaining, or even understanding, how a fundamental part of our democratic political system works. I’m talking about preferences.

I thought I understood it but when we started discussing the impact of preferences on our vote, we all just fumbled our words, and at the end of the conversation, none of us could demonstrate we understood it at all. It’s a bit of a disgrace really, and it got me thinking about how and why this is possible.

I’ve spent the last few days researching it, and for the first time in my life, I get it, and you know what? I wasn’t even close to accurate all these years. I won’t explain my errors, but I will attempt to explain this in a way that is simple to understand. To do this, we need to understand some of the terminology we have heard for eons, but most of us misunderstand.

What does Two-Party Preferred mean?

Australian Democracy operates as a ‘two-party preferred’ political system. Now, most people take this to mean either Labor or Liberal, but of course, there are many other minor parties and others who stand as an independent. While it is usually Labor and Liberal parties in the top two spots, in any electorate, the two strongest candidates may come from any political party running a candidate in that area. In my electorate, Wentworth, the two strongest candidates in the recent by-election were Liberal (Sharma) and an Independent (Phelps). But how did these two end up with the number of votes they were ultimately credited with? Well, that is where the tricky bit starts.

Preferences

How preferences work is a murky unknown to most people I have asked over the last few days, but it’s actually quite simple. Where it gets confusing is when we hear politicians talking close to the election about who they are preferencing on their How To Vote card. These bits of paper that volunteers shove in your faces on the way into the polling place, are there to guide your vote in a way your chosen party feels is in their best interests.. Most of us do not understand how preferences work, but we usually have a preferred candidate. We take their How to Vote card, and then we number our ballot according to what they have written. A HUGE number of voters copy what is written on their preferred candidate’s card, and this is why there is always a frenzied discussion over who is being preferenced first or last by the major parties. We all understand how to vote for our preferred candidate —we put a 1 in their box, but why do we put a 2, 3, 4 or 5? Well, now we return to the Two Party Preferred idea. In Australia, to become elected, the winning candidate must win by a majority, that is, they must receive more than 50% of the vote to become the outright winner. But what if the top two candidates have less after the primary ballot count? There is no clear winner here, and this is where that number 2 you wrote down means a lot more than you thought it did. Here is where your second choice comes into play.

Assume the following numbers are candidates in your local election and their percentage of the vote after first count:

1. 35%

2. 28%

3. 17%

4. 12%

5. 6%

6. 2%

In a ‘first past the post’ election system, candidate 1 wins, if you voted for candidate 6? Bad luck. Your vote doesn’t count. But our system is set up so that if your preferred candidate is knocked out early, you still get a chance to have a say.

So you voted for candidate 6. As your second preference, you put candidate 3. Because number 6 has the lowest outright vote at first count, candidate 6 is eliminated. Everyone who voted for candidate 6, will have their second choice counted. So, my vote, which started with candidate 6, is now allocated to candidate 3.

And it looks something like this:

1. 35%

2. 28%

3. 18%

4. 13%

5. 6%

After the second count, we still don’t have a majority. The lowest candidate is eliminated again, and voters for that candidate now have their vote counted for their second preference (or third, if their number 2 choice has already been eliminated. Now we remove candidate 5.

1. 39%

2. 30%

3. 18%

4. 13%

And things are getting closer.

1. 42%

2. 39%

3. 19%

And one last round.

1. 49%

2. 51%

After all the eliminated candidates have been removed and the voter’s second or third or fourth preference has been counted, we see that candidate 2 now has a majority and will be declared the winner. Even though this candidate starts with less of the primary vote on the first count, with the distribution of preferences, this candidate has now won the election.

Simple right?

So this upcoming Federal Election, make your vote count. Don’t just number the boxes the way you are told on the How to Vote card. Be informed, vote based on what YOU value. Number the boxes carefully, particularly if the candidate you choose is unlikely to win because your preferences can and often do decide who will be representing you in running this country.