Antony Green’s Election Blog

So you don’t want to risk voting above the line for a party in the Senate and find your preferences sent somewhere you don’t expect?

A sensible problem to be concerned about, so what are your options?

Here’s my suggested solutions.

You could consult the preference tickets at http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/guide/gtv/, but let me assure you, unless you really know who the Senate’s voting system works, this could be more mis-leading than helpful. It is also incredibly time consuming.

It is probably quicker and certainly more fulfilling to vote below the line, to make up your own mind on who you want to give preferences to.

The team who run the ABC website had been preparing a tool that allowed you to decide who you wanted to vote for below the line. We’ve decided we have too many other things to do, and instead we’ll recommend two other sites which allow you to do exactly this.

Compose your own below the line vote at one of the two following website.

https://www.clueyvoter.com/, or

http://www.belowtheline.org.au/

In both cases it guides you through the various options on ordering parties and then allows you to print a preference list that you can take along to help you fill in the ballot paper.

Remember, you still have to fill in the ballot paper. You can’t lodge your print out, you have to transcribe it on to the ballot paper.

Give either site a go, but direct questions about the sites to them, not back to me.

Now some advice from me on what to do with your preferences.

I often get asked all sorts of questions about strategic voting and how to do it in the Senate.

My advice, don’t even try unless you have perfect knowledge of the order that various parties will finish. Don’t try and withhold your ballot paper from a certain candidate until a certain point because you won’t have enough knowledge of the order candidates and parties will finish.

My advice is to list the parties in the order you would like to see them elected. It is the only sensible way to vote unless you have perfect knoweldge of the order parties will finish.

Another piece of advice, don’t split a party’s ticket. Vote for all candidates of a party with consecutive numbers in whatever order you like, but don’t split preferences between tickets unless you really know what you are doing. Splitting preferences between parties can have consequences you can’t predict without perfect knowledge of the order candidates will finish.

The instructions say you must fill in every square, but the savings provision of the act require that only 90% of the squares be filled in, and will allow a maximum of three sequencing errors. A sequencing error is any doubling up of numbers and any break in the number sequence.

If you want to be ultra safe, fill in below the line and the fill in one of the above the line squares. The below the line vote takes priority, but if proves to be informal, the ballot paper will revert to the above the line option.

My advice is fill in every square and don’t muck around working out what 90% of the squares is, and try not to break your sequence. Vote a formal vote rather than try and get fiddly with the meaning of formality.

Which is why the two site above come in useful.

Above all, always order candidate and parties in the order you would want to see them elected. If you’ve numbered half the ballot and there’s another 50 you’ve never heard of still to go, you can consider going random, or left to right, or right to left, or even boustrophedon.

(Boustrophedon is a fancy old Greek word meaning as the ox plows, down the field, then back, then down again etc)

And don’t, under any circumstances, vote for a party with an unknown but interesting name above the line. You will never know where your ballot paper will end up.