If you’re voting in the Victorian state election, you should vote below the line on your Legislative Council ballot paper. While the party how-to-votes will undoubtedly tell you to vote above the line, there is absolutely no reason why you need to do that.
Voting below the line is easy and ensures you control where your vote might end up. Voting above the line is risky and unpredictable. It empowers the backroom party deals and the preference harvesters. While Victoria’s political class has failed to reform the system, that doesn’t mean that voters don’t have a choice: vote below the line and opt out of the backroom deals.
In yesterday’s post I explained all of the main reasons why the group voting ticket (GVT) system is bad. The system was previously used for the Senate and upper houses in New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia, but Victoria is the only place still using it.
So why should you care as a voter? Well, in short, GVTs corrupt the electoral system and produce unfair outcomes.
If you vote above the line, you don’t know where your vote might end up. Your vote may well help elect someone who is not only personally unknown, but from an unknown party. I would argue it is not ethical to vote above the line, surrendering your vote to backroom party deals.
On top of that, it’s really easy to opt out of the party deals by voting below the line! Under the old Senate voting system it was quite hard to vote below the line, but that is not the case in Victoria.
You simply need to number 1 to 5 on your ballot, and then number as many extra boxes as you wish. As long as your first 5 numbers are unique and sequential, your vote is formal.
Ideally you’d want to mark more preferences to ensure that your vote is more likely to count, but even if preferences didn’t flow it would still be a significant improvement on letting group voting tickets decide those preferences.
If you mark more preferences, your vote is more likely to remain in the count, but there is no need to give preferences to candidates or parties you’ve never heard of. Better to just leave them off. You can use a tool like Cluey Voter to pre-plan your ballot if you want to mark a lot of preferences.
There was a notable increase in below the line voting at the 2018 Victorian election, with the BTL rate climbing from a low of 4% in 2010 to 8.8% in 2018. I don’t see why a concerted effort to urge all voters to vote below the line couldn’t see a much higher rate in 2022.
If I was a Victorian voter, I would be embarrassed that my state was the only one that hasn't fixed this glaring flaw in the democratic system. But Victorian voters can opt out of that system, and do it quite easily. So spread the word! Tell every Victorian voter you know to vote below the line and take back control of their vote.
I have planned out my preferences for numbering ALL the candidates below the line. But, the last 20 or so candidates are all people I equally hate. Since I hate them equally, is there any point numbering them, or is it better to simply leave them blank so they get even less votes if the count goes down that far?
I don’t think you need to bother with those people. It won’t cause you harm if you do preference them, but if you equally hate them all, just stop.
Of course it is better to vote below the line, it’s all I’ve ever done and GVT should be abolished, however your line “If you vote above the line, you don’t know where your vote might end up. Your vote may well help elect someone who is not only personally unknown, but from an unknown party.” doesn’t take into account that the GVTs are published before the election and anybody can look and see how those preferences are directed and make their choice on whether that order suits them or not and pick ATL or BTL accordingly. They aren’t mysterious sly unpredictable things stealing your preferences and sending them places unknown, they’re just shitty and the federal system is better and we should be going for uniform voting methods, that’s all.
I don’t agree Dan. They are complex and it is difficult to know how they will play out even when you’re an expert, and that is not a reasonable expectation for voters to have that level of knowledge. Yes they are lodged in advance and can be analysed but they are also mysterious and unpredictable.
I’d be really interested to know which booths had the highest and lowest proportions of BTL voting.
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