The State Voting system - NSW

Our State Government is made up of two 'Houses' - the Legislative Assembly comprised of 93 popularly-elected Members representing a specific location (or 'Seat') in NSW, and the Legislative Council consisting of representatives elected by a quota system based on all votes within the State. Government is traditionally formed by the Party that has control of the Lower House (Assembly) either outright or through coalition with another Party. The Legislative Council acts as a 'House of Review' for legislation passed through the Lower House.

The Legislative Assembly

Each NSW resident lives in an Electoral Division (Seat). Wherever possible the 93 seats are roughly the same in terms of numbers of voters, though the physical size may be vastly different, and therefore the voting patterns are also different.

The type of voting used in the House of Representatives election is known as "optional preferential". This means that for a vote to be counted, one or more squares on the ballot paper must be marked with numbers starting from 1 to however many the voter decides to distribute. When the votes are tallied, they will go through a number of counts, and at each count the candidate receiving the lowest number of primary votes (1 in their square) is eliminated. That candidate's ballots are redistributed at full value to the remaining candidates according to the next ranking on each ballot if a redirection has been chosen.

Eventually there will remain two candidates - those with the most primary and re-distributed votes - and they will be the contestants of what is called the "two-Party preferred vote". 

The thing to be fully aware of here is that for the Legislative Assembly the voter is the person who determines the order of selection on the voting paper. Individual candidates or Parties cannot 'give' the preferences to any other candidate - it purely depends on what the voter puts on the ballot paper. It is also important to remember that the voter does not need to number every square for the vote to count - this is different to the Federal system.

So what are 'preference deals'? Preference deals are where a Party or candidate promise another candidate a position high on their 'How-to-Vote' material handed out at the polling booth on election day. In a system where only one square has to be numbered (like our State system), the How-to-Vote recommendations are less powerful, though many voters will stick to the order their favoured Party advises them to use.

The Conservative candidates and Parties often attack the Greens as being "just another vote for Labor". This is completely bogus at a State level, because in most cases the Greens will simply recommend 1 vote and let the voter decide. Where we do make recommendation for Labor over the Liberals in marginal seats, it is because the ALP (as bad as they are) are less objectionable in their social policies than the Libs.  

Most of the time we simply won't preference either. 

The Legislative Council is elected on a 'proportional' system, with Members elected for a term of 8 years. Terms overlap, with half of the Legislative Council up for election at each State Election.

The type of voting used for the Legislative Council has been changed so that Parties no longer have the power over where the votes end up. Members are elected when a Party/Group reaches a specific 'quota' of votes. Anything left over is distributed. The above-the-line voting system for the Legislative Council means that if a voter places a number above a specific 'group', vote will exhaust unless the voter has specified a second or more choices. This means that Parties can't 'group direct' as they can in the Feds.

Individuals still have the option of filling in as many squares as they want 'below-the-line', however when the list of candidates is a tablecloth as it has been in the past, most people simply don't take the time.

Preference deals are less critical in this system.