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Proportional
Representation Society of Australia
Inc. |
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info@prsa.org.au Tel +61429176725 www.prsa.org.au 2024-02-22 |
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The ‘How-to-vote’ Cards in Australia’s elections with transferable voting |
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Introduction:
The first jurisdiction in
Australia to legislate for
all of the seats in at least
one of its Houses to be
elected by a modern
transferable voting system
was Tasmania, when
Tasmania's Electoral
Act 1907 extended, to
the whole State, the use of
the Hare-Clark
system of PR-STV
(proportional representation
with the single transferable
vote) in multi-member
electoral districts that had
been used, since 1896,
just for the election of the
members of the House of
Assembly for Hobart and
Launceston. That Act also
substituted transferable
voting for the
first-past-the-post
voting that had, until then,
been used for Legislative
Council elections. Tasmanians
have long valued the real
choice that Hare-Clark gives,
and that seems to have
prevented 'How-to-Vote'
cards from
gaining the foothold
they have on the mainland,
which accepted them
when transferable voting
spread there around 1919 to
prevent the two conservative
parties - the urban
Nationalist Party and the
rural Country Party - from
splitting the conservative
vote, particularly in the
State-wide electoral districts
used for Senate elections. Use of
'How-to-vote' Cards:
Except in A.C.T. and Tasmanian State
elections,
supporters of a range of voters
and candidates energetically ply
voters with 'How-to-vote' cards
as they enter polling booths at
most Australian elections to
encourage voters to diligently
follow their recommendations by
copying the recommended voting
order onto their ballot-papers.
Many voters mistakenly think that
the law requires them to
scrupulously follow the order on
the card if their vote is to be
valid, whereas others just decide
that they need go no further than
follow that order, which saves
them from further effort or
thought.
Constructive
initiative by the Greens
Party: At
the 2010 Federal election, the
Australian Greens followed the
practice established earlier by
the Australian Democrats of
respecting below-the-line
voters by giving equal weighting
on its how-to-vote cards to the
recommendation of numbering all
squares there. More
recently, all the parties
- possibly to their disadvantage
- discourage below-the-line
voters,
and herd them into just
following a party line. The
Greens once did better, by their
initiative of adding a brief
explanation of How Preferences Work,
as clicking on their 2010
card to enlarge
it shows. Sadly, the Greens
failed to explain that on their
cards in later years. See 2016
cards for Liberals,
ALP
and Greens.
Group
Voting Tickets: From
1983 until they were discontinued
by a change to the law in March
2016, there was a Group
Voting Ticket option
on all Senate ballot papers to
further tempt voters to follow
parties' recommendations. That
device still persists for
Victoria's Upper House, and
unfortunately has even been
extended to municipal
elections in NSW and the City of
Examples
of 'How-to-Vote
Cards' at various other polls: How-to-vote
cards preceded the use of
the
single transferable vote
in Australia, as a Labour
Party card issued for
the election of ten
South Australian
representatives to the
1897 Australian Federal
Constitution Convention shows. The
1984 Liberal card
(first
year with the now discontinued Group
Voting Tickets)
set out the below-the-line
equivalent of an above-the-line
Liberal Senate vote, and explained
that “Your 1
Liberal vote means that you have
voted as below”, with the below-the-line
equivalent overwritten with the
message, “No need to mark this
section”. The
2001 Liberal card
omitted that first statement, but
still set out the below-the-line
equivalent of an above-the-line
Liberal Senate vote, and still
overwrote it with the message, “No
need to complete this part”. Labor
and the Democrats named their top
3 and 4 Senate candidates
respectively, but only the
Democrats were even-handed in
advising voters whether they could
vote above-the-line or below-the-line. By
2010, neither
the explanation nor the below-the-line
equivalent remained, but there was
still the message, ‘No need to
complete the “below-the-line”
section. At the 2010 poll, the Labor card used a similar message to the Liberals. It stated “No need to fill in this part”. By 2013, part of that had moved off the edge. The Greens' message was to vote above-the-line, or vote below-the-line by numbering every box in order of your preference, and they did name their No. 1 Senate candidate.
At
the 2016 poll, by which time
the optional preferential voting
for individual candidates that was
last
available in 1934 had been
restored, and Group
Voting Tickets had
fortunately been discontinued, the
Liberals had become the only large
party that still gave the
gratuitous advice on their
how-to-vote cards that there was "no
need to number the boxes below
the thick black line".
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| Federal
Polls |
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| Year | How-to-Vote-Cards for
both Houses |
Results |
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| 2016 | Liberal | Labor | Greens | Xenophon Team | Voluntary Euthanasia Party | 2016 Goldstein |
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| 2013 |
Liberal |
Labor |
Greens |
2013
Goldstein |
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| 2010 | Liberal | Labor |
Greens | 2010
Goldstein |
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| 2001 | Liberal | Labor | Democrats |
Independent | 2001 Goldstein | ||||||||||||||||
| 1984 | Liberal | 1984 Isaacs | |||||||||||||||||||
* Note
that, for Tasmania's House of
Assembly polls below, the
documents shown are not the normal
How-to-Vote Cards handed out at
polling booths in other Australian
public elections, as Hare-Clark
has given such free choice since
its first State-wide use in 1909
that issuing cards did not become
the practice. Since then, Robson
Rotation has made such
cards ineffective, and State
legislation has outlawed their
distribution on polling day within
100 metres of a polling place,
so the documents shown below are
brochures distributed before
polling day.
Each of the two larger parties' candidates recommends a first preference vote for him or herself, with next preferences to his or her colleagues, but they are silent about later preferences. The Greens party often recommends a single order, as its vote has so far been too low to elect two or more candidates. Unlike larger parties, it might worry over its voters placing its preferred first preference too low on the ballot. |
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| State Polls | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Year | House | Electorate | How-to-Vote-Cards* | Results | |||||||||||||||||
| 2021 | Tasmanian
House of Assembly |
Clark (Denison
before 2019) |
Liberal |
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| Franklin | Liberal |
Labor | Greens | ||||||||||||||||||
| 2014 | Tasmanian House of Assembly |
Bass |
Liberal | Greens | 2014 Bass |
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| Denison |
Liberal |
Labor | Greens | 2014 Denison | |||||||||||||||||
| Lyons |
Liberal | Labor | Greens | 2014 Lyons | |||||||||||||||||
| 2010 | South Australian
Legislative Council |
Whole State |
2010 SA Legislative Council | ||||||||||||||||||
| 1996 | Tasmanian House of Assembly |
Bass |
Liberal | 1996 Bass | |||||||||||||||||
| Franklin |
Labor | 1996 Franklin | |||||||||||||||||||
| Lyons |
Greens | 1996 Lyons | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1992 | Tasmanian House of Assembly |
Denison |
Liberal |
1992 Denison |
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