Preferential voting
From Freepedia
The term preferential voting (or preference voting) has several different meanings:
- A ranked ballot or preferential voting system is a type of voting system in which each voter casts their vote by ranking candidates in order of preference. Voting systems which use a ranked ballot include:
- Preferential voting is a synonym for instant-runoff voting, especially in Australia, where such ballots are actually in use in elections. See Australian electoral system.
- In Europe, preferential voting denotes what is in United States known as the Open List Proportional Representation (Open list PR). It is a voting system giving a voter an option to vote for one of the party lists and then also express a preference for one of the candidates of this list.
- Often the term preferential voting is used for any kind of intraparty preference.
Ballot design or voting machine instructions are particularly important in such systems, as each voter is expected to express a rather complex set of tolerances or preferences in each vote.
Contents |
Ballot variations
- Column marks: Optical scanner ballots use the ballot with column voting with ovals.
- Column rank ballots have limits rankings due primarily to available paper space. For example the image below is limited to three rankings.
- Write numbers: Hand-written numeric rankings are more compact to vote and easier to hand count.
- Write names: Hand-written names as a list from first to last preference.
- Touch screen: A slightly different category of voting is a computer Touch screen could also be used, asking voters their first, second, etc preferences, and showing the selections so far and remaining choices, allowing selections to be removed if the voter makes a mistake or changes her mind during voting. Some people want touch screen voting to print a paper ballot at the end as a hardcopy backup.
| Image:Rankballotoval.gif | Image:Rankballotnumber2.gif | Image:Rankballotname2.gif | Image:Rankballottouch.gif |
Uniqueness of votes
If there are more than a small number of candidates then it becomes likely that many preference voting patterns will be unique to individual voters. For example, in the Irish general election, 2002, the electronic votes were published for the Dublin North constituency. There were 12 candidates and almost 44,000 votes cast. The most common pattern (for the three candidates from one party in a particular order) was chosen by 800 voters, and more than 16,000 patterns were chosen by just one voter each.
How to Vote Cards
In Australia, which uses preferential voting for both houses, party workers hand out "How to Vote" cards (HTVs) at the entrance to Polling Stations, advising voters how to fill in their ballots to support that candidate. Taking these cards is voluntary, and no voter is obliged to follow their instructions, but a high proportion are happy to do so.
Group voting tickets
Some preferential voting systems in Australia allow group voting tickets or "above the line voting" where a voter can with a single mark indicate support for a predefined set of preferences. This reduces the burden on voters, especially where there are large numbers of candidates and when a complete preference list is required to make a vote valid. However it then gives the political parties drawing up the lists considerable tactical power.
Counting of ballots
In Australia, lower house ballots (which might have 5 to 10 candidates) are counted by hand.
Upper house ballot with 50 to 100 candidates are now data-entered into computer systems, which then process the ballots.
See also
Further reading
Works of Richard S. Katz, David Farrell, Michael Marsh, Arend Lijphart, Lauri Karvonen.
