How To Make Best Use Of Your Vote In The Victorian Upper House

This is just a quick piece to give my voting advice for the benefit of those who have seen the recent publicity about voting below the line in Victoria but would like advice on how to do it. This is what I advise as being the best way to make effective use of your vote.  

1. On the large ballot paper (Legislative Council), vote below the line for candidates.  Do not number any boxes above the line for parties.

The Victorian system is different to the federal Senate system.  In the federal Senate system, you can put the parties in an order of your choice above the line, but in Victoria you cannot do that: if you rank parties above the line as nearly all voters did in the Senate in May, your preferences beyond 1 will be ignored.  If you do vote 1 above the line then your preference is allocated according to a ticket lodged by the party you have voted for.  This system is called Group Ticket Voting.  It is long-discredited and has been abolished everywhere in Australia except for the Victorian upper house.  It results in parties using networked preference deals to elect MPs who have no real voter support (in cases less than 1% of the vote) at the expense of deserving candidates.  (For more see my recent article about the history of party policies around this disaster.)

How To Make Best Use Of Your 2022 Senate Vote

People are starting to vote already (by post) so I thought I'd get a revised version of this guide up for this year.  It is largely copied from the previous one but I have made a few minor changes and dropped some no longer relevant content.   Many regular readers of the site will already be aware of many of the points below.  I hope the main part of the post will also be useful, however, for those who want to know what advice to give less politically engaged (or more easily confused) voters.  I will vote below the line and number every square, and I'm sure many other readers will too (at least in the smaller states!), but not everyone is up for that.

Under the system introduced in 2016, voters determine where their preferences go - there is no longer any "group ticket voting" in which if you vote for one party, your preference also goes to another.  Voters have great flexibility - they can vote above the line (in which case they are asked to number at least six boxes) or below the line (in which case they are asked to number at least twelve).  Voters who vote below the line are no longer forced to number all the boxes.  

This freedom is fantastic, but it's still taking some getting used to, and most voters are not using their vote in the most effective way they could.  If you don't have time to use your vote effectively and just want to get out of the polling box as fast as you like, that's fine, that's up to you.  But not making the best use of your vote might end up helping a party you can't stand beat one you are merely disappointed by.  This guide tells you how to avoid that, if you want to.   

Here I give some answers to the sorts of questions people are asking or likely to ask about the system.  At the bottom there is a section on tactical voting for advanced players only.  The vast majority of readers should stop when they get to that point.

How To Make Best Use Of Your 2019 Senate Vote

This piece is written to provide advice on the best way voters can use their vote most effectively at this year's Senate election.  It's a new version of the article I wrote in 2016, that takes account of the experience of that election and since, including with Section 44.  Many regular readers of the site will already be aware of many of the points below.  I hope the main part of the post will also be useful, however, for those who want to know what advice to give less politically engaged (or more easily confused) voters.  I will vote below the line and number every square, and I'm sure many other readers will too (at least in the smaller states!), but not everyone is up for that.

Under the system introduced in 2016, voters determine where their preferences go - there is no longer any "group ticket voting" in which if you vote for one party, your preference also goes to another.  Voters have great flexibility - they can vote above the line (in which case they are asked to number at least six boxes) or below the line (in which case they are asked to number at least twelve).  Voters who vote below the line are no longer forced to number all the boxes.