Welcome, to possibly the most confusing, jargon-laden – but certainly the fairest – voting system in the world. There is none which tries so hard to capture and reflect the wishes of all those who participate in it.

At the Polling Booth

Whether you’re voting early, or on polling day, you’ll find a bunch of people near the entrance to the polling booth (these aren’t “officials”) handing out “how-to-vote” cards for the candidate they’re supporting. You’re not obliged to take one.

You’ll be given two ballot papers: a light green one for the House of Representatives – your local electorate representative (MP); and a big white one for the Senate, where we are electing six people to represent the entire state of NSW. Armed with these, you’ll go into the privacy of a little booth, ready to mark you ballot papers.

A Valid Vote

Let’s start with the House of Representatives, because this is where you’re voting for a member of parliament to represent your electorate and, hopefully, to assist you in dealing with the Australian government, if the need arises.

Regardless of the number of candidates listed on the ballot paper, you must put a number in every square, in sequence, from the one you “like best”, to the one you “like least”. If there are seven candidates, you must number 1 to 7.

What is Preferencing?

Now, the hugely misunderstood business of preferences comes in. And, not only are there some differences between local government, state and federal elections, there are even differences between voting for the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Remember the How-to-Vote card you might have been handed outside the polling booth? If you hear a party or a candidate saying, “We’re giving our preferences to xyz”, they are not. They’re not “giving” their preferences to anybody. All they’re doing is issuing a How to Vote card which shows their recommendation on how they want you to indicate their preferences.

But it’s really none of their business. The decision on how you number that ballot paper is entirely yours, and it’s done in perfect privacy.

What’s the Point of Preferential Voting?

In the House of Representatives there are now 150 seats, each with one member of parliament. They are called “single member constituencies”.

In many countries, like the UK, single member constituencies are filled with what’s called a “first-past-the post” voting system. You just mark one box, for the candidate you want to win, and that’s it. Whoever receives the most votes, wins the seat.

Sounds simple, but it can – and does – produce bizarre results which don’t reflect the wishes of the majority of the electorate. For instance, let’s say there are four candidates in the race, with “A” representing the “Rather Nasty” Party, B representing the “Really Nice” Party, “C” the “Fairly Nice” Party and D the “OK” Party.

If “Rather Nasty” A wins 30% of the votes, “B” 28%, “C” 22% and “D” 20%, “A” is declared the winner, even though “A” would probably not have been even the second (or third or fourth) choice of those people who voted for any of the other three candidates.

The Count

We’ll limit ourselves, here, to counting the House of Reps votes for each electorate.

As soon as the polls close, at 6.00pm on Saturday 3 May, the AEC staff at each voting place will lock the doors and start counting the votes.

Pre-poll, absent and postal votes are counted elsewhere, with postal votes being accepted until 13 days after 3 May.

The box marked “1” on the ballot paper is called a “primary” vote. All these are sorted, manually, into piles for the primary vote for each candidate.

When all the primary votes from the entire electorate are tallied, from this “first count”, if one candidate has more than 50 per cent of primary votes, that’s it – they’re the winner!

However, in many seats, the so-called “marginals”, none of the candidates achieves more than 50 per cent of the primary vote. Here’s where your preferences come in.

To start the “preference distribution” process, the candidate with the lowest number of primary votes is “eliminated”, and their votes are re-distributed according to who was marked #2 on the ballot papers of those who voted for this last-placed candidate. Then all the piles are counted again. Sometimes this pushes a candidate over the “50 per cent” mark, and they’re declared the winner.

Just as frequently, though, there is still no winner so the candidate who is now in last place is eliminated, and the votes cast for them are examined. Again, the “second preferences” are distributed as votes to the candidates remaining in the race. But what if the second preference is for the candidate who was eliminated a little earlier? Good question! They look at the #3 on the ballot paper and so forth.

One of the important considerations for voters is that while preferential voting allows you to indicate who you favour most, it makes it just as important for you to indicate who you favour least.

Good luck. You can make a difference!