Preferential voting

Preferential voting is a system of voting by which the candidates are ranked in a list from 1 - 6 for example. It is used in some countries around the world to a various extent such as Ireland but it is far more widely used in Australia in both Local government elections, State election and Federal elections to decide candidates.

Australia

In Australia this form of voting has been in place for a long time and has given some benefit to small parties such as the Democrats, The Greens and One Nation who would find it Financially hard to run a campaign in a country which uses first past the post systems such as the US and the UK. A result in an Australian electorate could look something like this:

Ling (One Nation)	6,000	06.0%
Smith (Labor)	45,000	45.0%
Jones (Liberal)	35,000	35.0%
Johnson (Green)	10,000	10.0%
Davies (Ind)	4,000	04.0%

As in most cases a single candidate will not receive more than 50% of the votes need to Win that electorate so then after the first preference votes are counted the person with the lowest amount of votes, which in this case is Davies who is an independent will have their votes divided among who was number 2 on that list.

Ling (One Nation)	6,000	06.0%
Smith (Labor)	45,000	45.0%
Jones (Liberal)	39,000	39.0%
Johnson (Green)	10,000	10.0%

Davies 4000 votes were all given to Jones the Liberal Candidate (Note that this is a heavily simplified version as most of the time votes will go to every other candidate and not 100% to just 1 candidate) giving him 36% of the total vote.

Smith (Labor)	51,000	51.0%
Jones (Liberal)	39,000	39.0%
Johnson (Green)	10,000	10.0%

Ling from the One Nation political party is next to have their preferences tallied up as they have the next lowest amount of primary votes. In this case all of his second preference votes go to the Australian Labor Party meaning that the ALP now has 51% of the total vote so now they have won and in this case the Greens second preference does not have to be counted as even if 100% of their preferences go to the Liberal Party they will still have a minority of votes with 49% of the Votes. Smith has now officially won that particular electorate or seat and no more voting will be done unless the result was really close and therefore a second check will be needed to confirm the results.

Advantages

Advantages of this system include:

• It ensures that only a candidate with the support of an absolute majority of the electorate can win, eliminating the possibility of minority winners. Put another way, the winning candidate is the "most preferred" or "least disliked" candidate.

• It ensures that voters can support minor parties and independent candidates, knowing that their preferences may be used to decide the winner. Thus, votes for minor parties and independents are not wasted.

• It allows parties of like-minded philosophies or policies to "exchange preferences" in order to assist each other to win.

• It promotes a strong two-party system, ensuring stability in the parliamentary process.

Disadvantages

Some disadvantages of this system include:

• It is more complicated to administer and count.

• It can produce a higher level of informal voting.

• It promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents.

• Voters are forced to express a preference for candidates they may not wish to support in any way. (The use of optional preferential voting, as used in New South Wales State elections, is a solution to this problem.)

Further Reading

http://www.australianpolitics.com/elections/features/preferential.shtml