Group voting ticket
Encyclopedia
Group voting tickets are a way to simplify preferential voting
Preferential voting
Preferential voting is a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank candidates in order of relative preference. For example, the voter may select their first choice as '1', their second preference a '2', and so on...

, usually in an election held under the single transferable vote
Single transferable vote
The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or...

 or the alternative vote system.
Voters can choose to vote for a ticket by placing the number '1' in one of the ticket boxes or can vote for individual candidates by numbering all the boxes in that section. Ticket votes are distributed according to the party or group voting ticket registered before the election with the election management body
Election management body
An election management body or EMB is the authority in a nation charged with administering the electoral process. EMBs can be independent, mixed, judicial or governmental. The EMB may also be responsible for electoral boundary delimitation...

. In some elections, voters can express an order of preferences among different tickets by voting '1', '2' and so on in different ticket boxes.

Group voting tickets are used in many of the upper houses of Australian parliaments, most notably the Australian Senate
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...

. They are also used for some elections in Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

. They were originally introduced to reduce the growing proportion of voters who cast invalid votes, as a single mark is all that is needed to cast a valid vote. In Australia, this reduced the rate of informal voting in the Senate from around nine percent previous to 1984, to around three percent during the time of group voting tickets.

In Australian elections for the upper houses which use proportional representation as well as preferential voting, it may be daunting to have to fill in 70 boxes—preferences are compulsory in Commonwealth, Victorian and South Australian elections. Some voters would choose their early preferences and then vote for other candidates in the order they appeared on the ballot paper—known as a donkey vote
Donkey vote
Donkey voters vote the way candidates appear on the ballot paper. Sometimes the term "donkey vote" is incorrectly used to refer to an informal vote although this use is not included in major dictionaries....

; or fill in the form incorrectly, leading to an informal vote.

To ease this task, above the line voting allows the voter to choose one party or group, and all the remaining squares are deemed to be filled in according to a registered party ticket. About 95% of voters choose to use this method. This leads to pre-election trading between parties on how each party will allocate later preferences to other parties and candidates.

"Above the line" voting has been criticised as electors not knowing, and having no practical way of finding out, where their preferences are being directed. All details are published in advance, both electronically and in a free booklet published by the Australian Electoral Commission
Australian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission, or the AEC, is the federal government agency in charge of organising and supervising federal elections and referendums. State and local government elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission in each state and territory.The Australian Electoral Commission...

. The booklets may be viewed at polling booths on request to the poll officials. However, such is the complexity of the information that it is unlikely that the average voter could easily determine the fate of his or her vote's preferences particularly, as some parties submit multiple allocations (e.g., 33% to one party, 66% to another, and so on), and the effects are integrally wound up in preference deals between other parties.

Tactical voting

Using GVTs, the potential for tactical voting
Tactical voting
In voting systems, tactical voting occurs, in elections with more than two viable candidates, when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome.It has been shown by the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem that any voting method which is...

 by parties is greatly increased. Because voters are not usually aware of how a party's preferences are directed, GVTs have allowed minor parties with low support in the community to be elected almost exclusively on the preferences of other parties, for example, where small parties with very different views have agreed to exchange preferences, or where larger parties have sought to minimise votes for opponents with similar views.

A notable case came in the New South Wales Legislative Council
New South Wales Legislative Council
The New South Wales Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of New South Wales in Australia. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney. The Assembly is referred to as the lower house and the Council as...

 election of 1999
New South Wales state election, 1999
Elections to the 52nd Parliament of New South Wales were held on Saturday, 27 March 1999. All seats in the Legislative Assembly and half the seats in the Legislative Council were up for election...

, when the Outdoor Recreation Party
Outdoor Recreation Party
The Outdoor Recreation Party is a minor political party in Australia. It largely represents the outdoor community and such interests as cycling, mountain biking, bushwalking, camping, kayaking, 4WDing, skiing, fishing lobbies, as well as similar recreational groups with an interest in the outdoors...

's Malcolm Jones
Malcolm Jones (politician)
Malcolm Irving Jones is a former Australian politician. Born in Chester, England, to Philip and Lena Mary Jones, he migrated to Australia in 1974. He was an employee benefits consultant with his own company from 1981 to 1994...

 was elected with a primary vote of 0.19%, or 0.042 of a quota. Another example was the Family First Party
Family First Party
The Family First Party is a socially conservative minor political party in Australia. It has two members in the South Australian Legislative Council...

 senator Steve Fielding
Steve Fielding
Steven "Steve" Fielding , was a Senator representing the state of Victoria and the federal parliamentary leader of the Family First Party in Australia. Elected to the Senate at the 2004 federal election on two percent of the Victorian vote, he failed to gain re-election at the 2010 federal election...

 elected to the Australian Senate
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...

 on a primary vote of 1.76% (or 0.123 of a quota) in the 2004 federal election, on the preferences of several other parties including the Australian Democrats
Australian Democrats
The Australian Democrats is an Australian political party espousing a socially liberal ideology. It was formed in 1977, by a merger of the Australia Party and the New LM, after principals of those minor parties secured the commitment of former Liberal minister Don Chipp, as a high profile leader...

, liberals for forests
Liberals for Forests
Liberals for Forests is an Australian political minor party. It has contested both state and federal elections in recent years, but has only achieved one elected representative - Janet Woollard in Western Australia...

 and a reciprocal deal with the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

.

2003 changes in NSW

Following the use of tactical preference tickets and the record number of minor parties contesting the 1999 Council election, a modified form of group ticket voting was introduced in the 2003 election
New South Wales state election, 2003
Elections to the 53rd Parliament of New South Wales were held on Saturday 22 March 2003. All seats in the Legislative Assembly and half the seats in the Legislative Council were up for election...

. A candidate group for NSW Legislative Council elections now requires 15 candidates to be eligible for an "above the line" box. Parties do not lodge preference tickets and a single 1 in that box only preferences the candidates in the group. Voters wishing to preference multiple parties with an "above the line" vote can use lower preferences ("2", "3", and so on) in those parties' "above the line" boxes. Other changes to party registration processes have also resulted in many fewer parties contesting NSW Legislative Council elections.

External links

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