Preferential Voting: How to make your vote count the most

Ahead of this year's federal election, we asked the Australian Electoral Commission how preferential voting works and why we use it.

Transcript

00:00We're about to be absolutely bombarded by information about the election in Australia.

00:05So how are we going to make our vote count?

00:07We spoke to the Australian Electoral Commission to answer just that.

00:11So when you go to vote at a federal election, you'll be given two pieces of paper.

00:15So you'll be given a smaller green one, which is for the House of Representatives in Parliament,

00:20and a much larger, sometimes white one, which is for the Senate with a lot more candidates

00:23on it.

00:24And the basic premise is that your vote will always end up where you want it to be.

00:28And that's because we have something called preferential voting.

00:30So you have to mark on the House of Representatives green ballot paper, mark all the boxes in

00:35the order of your preference.

00:37And basically what happens is that if your most preferred candidate gets knocked out,

00:41we keep moving down your preferences until it finally ends up with one of the final two

00:46candidates in the count.

00:47So effectively, your vote is always contributing to that final vote tally in those last two

00:52candidates.

00:53We see it in a few other countries, but a lot of times people can get confused between

00:56preferential voting and what's called first-past-the-post.

00:59So that's what they have in places like the UK or the US.

01:04And some of the differences there is that your preferences don't flow down the ballot

01:07paper.

01:08They'll be assigned to where you vote them in the first place.

01:10So part of our work here at the AEC is making sure that people understand how that preferential

01:15voting system works.

01:16And you'll see across different states and territories that they've got preferential

01:20voting, but sometimes there can be little small differences here or there between those

01:24different elections, such as whether you need to mark every box is a really big one.

01:29So that's why it's always best to double-check what the ballot paper is telling you to say.

01:35When you look at how preferential voting actually works, if you ever go on the AEC tally room,

01:40which is our online counting center, you can look at previous results and you can actually

01:43see where the preferences flow.

01:45It's quite interesting.

01:47And you can see when candidates are knocked out, where all the different votes have gone

01:51from there.

01:52And it sort of goes, might go from eight candidates to seven, six, so on, until it's with those

01:56final two.

01:57So that can also help gain an understanding of how that preferential voting system works.