Tips for voting below the line

There is a lot of conversation out there about voting below the line on the Legislative Council ballot for the Victorian state election.

Usually when I talk about voting below the line, I emphasise how easy it is. You just need to number 1 to 5, and you can then number more boxes as you like. I stand by that – everyone should vote below the line. Even if everyone just numbered five boxes, the results would still be better than under group voting tickets.

Yet still, it is better if people fill in more than just the minimum five boxes. Ideally winning candidates should get as close to a quota as possible, and exhausted votes should be kept to a minimum. On an individual basis as a voter, you don’t want your vote to exhaust when it still has value, and not play a role in deciding who wins a seat where you might have an opinion.

So in this post I want to run through some things to think about when planning your vote.

Before I get into my suggestions, there are two rules you need to follow:

• Sequentially number at least 1 to 5 to ensure your vote is formal.
• Don’t skip any numbers or double up any numbers – if you do so, the vote will exhaust at that point and can flow no further.

The first rule is the more boxes, the better. This isn’t to say that you need to number every box, but more preferences gives your vote a better chance of lasting further in a count.

There is no defined number of preferences that ensures your vote will be maximally powerful. You could number five preferences that prove crucial and your vote will not exhaust – or you could number 30 preferences, none of which are for someone who comes close to winning, and the vote exhausts entirely.

To fully maximise the power of your vote, it’s worth understanding how a vote flows. The system is called a “single transferable vote” – you only have one vote, but it can be transferred.

Your vote only passes on from your first preference when that candidate is either elected or excluded. If that candidate is elected, your vote is reduced in value proportionately with what share of that candidate’s votes were needed to elect them. So if a candidate had 10,000 votes at the point of election and the quota was 5,000, each vote becomes worth half as much.

This process means that STV satisfies the ‘later no harm’ principle – a later preference cannot harm a candidate who receives an earlier preference. Likewise a preference will not help any candidate until all of those ahead of them have left the race.

With this in mind, there is no harm in numbering additional candidates. You need to imagine how you would feel if the race for the final seat came down to a contest between any two candidates on the ballot. Would you care who won? If so, you should give at least some preference to the one you would rather win. Say for example the final seat is between a Liberal and One Nation. If you dislike Liberal but despise One Nation, there is value in preferencing the Liberal.

Ultimately, if you number every box, and if the race turns into a contest between your second-last preference and your last preference, your vote will count for your second-last preference.

Now I don’t want to exaggerate the value – if these candidates are far down your ballot order, it’s likely most of your vote will be used up electing other candidates. But it can help a bit, and if you want to make the effort you might as well do it.

If there are candidates who you know nothing about or would never want to help win a seat, though, there is nothing wrong with leaving them off the ballot.

Group voting tickets give parties incentive to run candidates everywhere, to form new parties with misleading names and to clog up the ballot. If you can’t find out anything useful about a party or candidate, and don’t know where they stand politically, don’t treat them as neutral, and don’t reward them. Treat them as potentially dangerous and leave them off. It’s the job of parties and candidates to inform you about their policies and positioning.

I’d encourage people to pre-plan how they want to vote. I remember at my first federal election in 2004 for the Senate I ripped out the list of candidates from the Sydney Morning Herald, numbered every candidate and used it as my own how-to-vote. That feels a bit old-fashioned now. Thankfully at Victorian elections it is not necessary to number every box, so the stakes of making a mistake are far lower.

You can use a website like Cluey Voter if you want to help you with this task. It lets you sort the parties into five tiers of preference and then gives you a ballot paper with the numbers filled out for you to modify.

I have come up with a few questions I think will come up. But please ask more questions in the comments.

Can I save myself some trouble by just numbering the first candidates in each group?

Outside of Labor and the Coalition, no other group has a serious chance of electing a second candidate. So you can save some trouble by only numbering the first candidate in other groups. But if Labor or Coalition are in the contest at the end of the count it will probably not be their first candidate, more likely their second or third.

I really want to put this candidate last!

You can do that if you wish, but don’t fool yourself that is has any political significance. Only the person data entering your ballot will see how you preferenced, and you’re just adding work for them.

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