How To Vote

Australians aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.  We regularly complain about governments yet it seems that the majority of us only vote for one of two political parties and as a result have very little affect on government policy.

It seems to me that this is not because we don't care about politics, it's just that nobody bothers to understand how our voting system works.  Every election I come across many people who claim to be intelligent yet fall victim to the myths of voting.

We use a preferential system of voting and there is a common misconception that if we don't place either Labor or Liberal first on the ballot sheet, we are wasting our vote.  This is absolutely incorrect.  In fact, it's likely the opposite.

If you look on your ballot sheet you'll see that you have the option to number boxes from 1 to whatever. This gives you the chance to have PREFERENCES.  If you vote for a smaller party first, say for example The Greens, and the Greens candidate does not win the election, then your vote goes to your second preference!  If your second preferred candidate does not win, your vote goes to your third preferred candidate and so on and so on until there are only two candidates left in the running.   As long as you fill out your ballot correctly, your vote is always counted towards one of the two most popular candidates.

Even if there are 8 candidates and you vote the Liberals 7th and Labor 8th, that still gives you the chance to have a say over which major political party you prefer, in this example, The Liberals.

By voting either Labor or Liberal first, your democratic voice is saying that you agree 100% with that party's policy.  As a result, if you do not agree with them 100% then you are not correctly expressing your democratic choice and you put no pressure on either major party to do anything but try and contradict the other.

For example....   If you would ultimately prefer a Labor government over a Liberal one, but you feel the Labor policy on the environment was not as 100% committed as another party such as the Greens, you can vote the Greens 1st and Labor 2nd (or at least above the Liberals).   You are then using your democratic voice to say, yes, I do prefer Labor over Liberal but I would really like Labor to improve their policy on the environment.

Considering smaller parties and using your voting preferences to their full potential maximizes the power of your vote.

Putting one of the two major parties 1st on your ballet sheet means your vote will never make it past the first round, and in my opinion, that is a truly wasted vote.