Australian electoral system

The Australian electoral system has evolved over nearly 150 years of continuous democratic government, and has a number of distinctive features including compulsory voting, preferential voting (known elsewhere as instant runoff voting) and the use of proportional voting to elect the upper house, the Australian Senate. This article deals with elections to the Australian Parliament. Different systems are used for the states and territories.

Preferential voting

Australia uses various forms of preferential voting for almost all elections. Under this system, voters number the candidates on the ballot paper in the order of their preference. The preferential system was introduced in 1918, in response to the rise of the Country Party, a party representing small farmers. The Country Party split the anti-Labor vote in conservative country areas, allowing Labor candidates to win on a minority vote. The conservative government of Billy Hughes introduced preferential voting as a means of allowing competition between the two conservative parties without putting seats at risk. It was first used at the Corangamite by-election on 14 December 1918http://www.australianpolitics.com/voting/history/voting-methods.shtml. It had previously been introduced as a result of the work of Thomas Hare and Andrew Inglis Clark in the Tasmanian House of Assembly.

Related Topics:
Preferential voting - 1918 - Country Party - Billy Hughes - Thomas Hare - Andrew Inglis Clark - Tasmanian House of Assembly

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Preferential voting has gradually extended to both upper and lower houses, in the federal, state and territory legislatures, and is also used in municipal elections, and most other kinds of elections as well, such as internal political party elections, trade union elections, church elections, elections to company boards and elections in voluntary bodies such as football clubs.

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With the exception of an experiment with voting machines in the Australian Capital Territoryhttp://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html, all Australian elections are carried out using paper ballots.

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