Australia’s preferential voting system explained… IN FULL COLOUR

Australia is saturated in media from the USA and the UK. Through entertainment, current affairs, and social media, we hear things like:

“There’s no point voting for [Independent Candidate] because they’ll never get in — it’s a wasted vote!”

“Sure, [Good Minor Party] has good policies, but all they do is take votes away from [Bad Major Party]. We must vote for [Bad Major Party] to keep [Worse Major Party] out!”

Many Australians absorb these messages and assume they apply to our elections too — and our two major parties benefit from the misconception.

But whereas both the USA and the UK use ‘first-past-the-post’ voting systems for their national elections, Australia’s system is more elegant than that. In elections for the House of Representatives, we use preferential voting — also known as instant-runoff voting, ranked choice voting, or ‘the alternative vote’ in the UK.

So here’s Dennis the Election Koala to give Ken the Voting Dingo an important lesson in civics!

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