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INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING IN NORTH CAROLINA - PILOT PROGRAMS
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Hendersonville NC's instant runoff voting pilot is not scientific. There will be no hard data to analyze the election. IRV votes may go uncounted and unreported if there is a winner in the first round. (If there is not a winner in the first round, then some of the ranked choice votes will be counted). This means that all we will have to measure the pilot with are opinion polls and anecdotal reports.
North Carolina lawmakers did it again, they passed another Instant Runoff Voting Pilot/Experiment in July 2008. The pilot was hidden within SB 1263 - an omnibus election bill entitled Election Law Amendments
Lawmakers put restrictions on the IRV pilot this time, in order to (hopefully) ensure that the pilot is conducted within accordance of existing election laws, requires that voter education is addressed and that jurisdictions cannot be forced by their Board of Elections into participating:
SECTION 3.(a)The State Board of Elections is authorized to select elections for offices of local government in which to use instant runoff voting in up to 10 local jurisdictions in each of the following years: 2009, 2010, and 2011. The selection of jurisdictions and administration of instant runoff voting shall follow the provisions of Section 1(a) of Session Law 2006‑192, except that the local governing board that is the subject of the election must approve participation in the pilot and also must agree to cooperate with the county board of elections and the Board in the development and implementation of a plan to educate candidates and voters about how to use the runoff voting method.
In a multiseat contest, the Board shall modify the method used for instant runoff voting in single‑seat contests to apply its essential principles suitably to that election.
In the case of a board of education election where the "local governing board" must be asked to authorize instant runoff voting because nonpartisan plurality elections are normally used, the "local governing board" is the board of education itself. If instant runoff voting is used in place of the nonpartisan election and runoff method as described in G.S. 163‑293, the county board of elections, with the approval of the local governing board, may hold the election on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The State Board of Elections, in consultation with the School of Government at the University of North Carolina, shall by January 1, 2009, develop for the pilot program authorized in this section goals, standards consistent with general election law, and criteria for implementation and evaluation. The pilot program shall be conducted according to those goals, standards, and criteria.
SECTION 3.(b) This section is effective when it becomes law. |
North Carolina lawmakers passed SL 2006-192 for an Instant Runoff Voting Pilot Program in August 2006:
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"AN ACT to authorize the state Board of elections to conduct a pilot program in which the INSTANT RUNOFF METHOD OF VOTING WOULD BE USED IN LOCAL ELECTIONS;"
What is IRV? "Instant runoff voting" means a system in which voters rank up to three of the candidates by order of preference, first, second, or third. If the candidate with the most first-choice votes receives the threshold of victory of the first-choice votes, that candidate wins. If no candidate receives the threshold of victory of first-choice votes, the two candidates with the greatest number of first-choice votes advance to a second round of counting. In this round, each ballot counts as a vote for whichever of the two final candidates is ranked highest by the voter. The candidate with the most votes in the second round wins the election. More on the Pilot Program here
North Carolina adopted an instant runoff voting "pilot program for use in the 2007 and 2008 elections for local offices in volunteering jurisdictions. The pilot program instructs the State Board of Elections to select up to 10 cities for the 2007 elections and up to 10 counties for the 2008 elections. "The State Board of Elections shall closely monitor the pilot program established in this section and report its findings and recommendations to the 2007 General Assembly."
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HOW TO COUNT THE IRV BALLOTS IN NORTH CAROLINA and the LAW
North Carolina's voting machines do not have the software to tabulate IRV ballots. In fact, there are NO federally certified voting systems that are compatible with IRV.
Neither the hardware or the software of North Carolina's new optical scan machines can accommodate IRV. The touch screens can accommodate IRV with the use of an illegal work around. If IRV became permanent, counties would either switch to touch screens and use an illegal work around , thus weakening the Public Confidence in Elections Law, or end up looking for a source for optical scanners certified to do IRV.
Optical Scan & IRV: With optical scan there will be sorting and re-sorting and manual tabulating of the second or third rounds. This increase the chances of mistakes and risk that all of the ballots won't all be counted. (It will be harder to detect).
In the Cary, North Carolina "instant runoff", election workers had to manually sort and stack the paper ballots in order to count the second round of votes in the contest for District B City Council.
The election workers count didn't match the candidates' informal count. An "audit" was done (not in a public meeting) and it resulted in the ballots being recounted and a "correction" of the results.
See "Critics Take Runoff Concerns to Elections Board" NBC 17
Touch-screen machines & IRV: Instead of making the Instant Runoff Voting Pilot fit our law, a "work around" has been crafted that will in effect gut key sections of the law to fit IRV. Because there is no software to accommodate IRV, and perhaps to make IRV attractive to the touch-screen counties like Henderson County, an uncertified work around was created to avoid the approved legal method of manually sorting and counting of the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Since Hendersonville did not have to hold a "runoff", this uncertified method was not tested. With this illegal work around, the State BoE has made touch-screens a more attractive option than optical scanners.
Do you understand how the IRV ballots are counted?
INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING in NORTH CAROLINA
2007 PILOT PROGRAM M100 (OPTICAL SCAN) METHODOLOGY (like used in Cary)
Instructions on counting optical scan IRV ballots are on pages 1- 3, and sample ballots are on page 5 (provided by the Rocky Mount Telegram)
See how the IRV ballot will appear on Henderson touchscreen machines - it is very confusing:
A sample ballot shows how instant runoff voting will affect the way voters choose Hendersonville City Council members this year. (105 KB) Asheville Citizen Times
With IRV, the 2nd and 3rd choices are uncounted and unaccounted for unless there is a "instant runoff" -
The law says that ballots cast at the polling place are to be counted there immediately after the polls close.
In the 2007 IRV Pilot:
1. Counting ballots away from where they were cast. In Cary, NC - the 2nd and 3rd choice votes for the "instant runoff" were not counted on election night. Instead, they were carried away from where they were cast and then counted at a later date.
§ 163-182.2. Initial counting of official ballots . (a) The initial counting of official ballots shall be conducted according to the following principles:(1) Vote counting at the precinct shall occur immediately after the polls close and shall be continuous until completed.
This puts those choices at risk of tampering after being hauled away from the polling places and put into storage.
2. There was no Election night reporting for voters' second and third choices. There are no election night reports/poll tapes for these results because the machines cannot count the 2nd and 3rd choices, and officials did not themselves count the 2nd and 3rd choices on election night. North Carolina's voting machines are incapable of doing such reporting, The only way to account for the voters choices and secure them against fraud would be to count all second and third choices on election night at the polling places and create a manual report of that data.
3. Incomplete vote data. Only partial data was reported for the District B contest where voters second and third choices were utlimately counted. No raw vote data was reported for the other IRV contests that had a winner in the first round. Without all raw vote data, i.e the tallies for all choices, whether they were needed to ascertain a winner - we cannot ascertain if this election was "non monotonic", i.e voters hurt their first choice by voting for them. Campaigns cannot see where their efforts succeeded or failed in campaigning and even cross endorsing as IRV advocates promote.
4. Provisional ballots were not counted until after the 2nd and 3rd choices were counted, and supposedly "added" back in. Since IRV is not "additive", it is not clear how these votes could possibly be added back in without doing a complete recount.
5. Absentee ballots. It is not clear when the absentee ballots were counted, so the question is - were they counted with the first, second and third rounds?
6. Audits and recounts must be publicly announced and observed, and notice must be given in time for the public to attend. Wake County miscounted just 3,000 ballots in the Cary IRV experiment, (Oct 30, 2007 Critics Take Runoff Concerns To Elections Board NBC 17) and ended up doing an audit without citizens having an opportunity to observe.
7. Canvassing was done after counting the 2nd and 3rd rounds of ballots for District B. Provisional ballots weren't included in the count of the 2nd and 3rd rounds of voting. Officials say they "added" these votes in later. All votes should be counted in the 2nd and 3rd round, provisional votes and absentee votes included.
8. Uncertified software to count the votes on touchscreen machines. There is no federally approved software to count instant runoff voting so the NC State BoE set up an uncertified "workaround" to help out Henderson County, NC, a touchscreen jurisdiction. Luckily there was no "runoff" so the work around was not used. This work around violates North Carolina election law that requires all vote counting systems and software to be federally certified.
This work around violates at least 2 sections of NC Election Law
§ 163-165.7. Voting systems: powers and duties of State Board of Elections. (a) Only voting systems that have been certified by the State Board of Elections in accordance with the procedures and subject to the standards set forth in this section and that have not been subsequently decertified shall be permitted for use in elections in this State.
...The State Board may certify additional voting systems only if they meet the requirements of the request for proposal process set forth in this section...
(1) That the vendor post a bond or letter of credit to cover damages resulting from defects in the voting system. Damages shall include, among other items, any costs of conducting a new election attributable to those defects.
(2) That the voting system comply with all federal requirements for voting systems. (There is no federally certified IRV tabulating software).
§ 163-165.9A. Voting systems: requirements for voting systems vendors; penalties.
This touch screen work around removes vote data from the ES&S Unity system to a system not tested with it - exporting data first to notepad/wordpad and then excell to tabulate the votes.
a. neither word pad, note pad or excell have been tested for their vote tabulation ability.
b. this process erases audit data as it progresses, excell doesn't have an audit trail, and some versions of excell have bugs.
c. it is not known what happens to the data as it is moved from the ES&S vote tabulation system to a non ES&S vote tabulation system.
All parts of the vote tabulation system must be federally tested together, to ensure they work together.
There are over 100 steps in the process, with instructions like "click on the red tab, or click on the blue tab", and one single keystroke error would change the outcome of the election, and there is no audit trail for this process. Audit data is deleted as steps are performed.
More on vote counting:
§ 163-182.2. Initial counting of official ballots. (a)...
(2) Vote counting at the precinct shall be conducted with the participation of precinct officials of all political parties then present. Vote counting at the county board of elections shall be conducted in the presence or under the supervision of board members of all political parties then present.
(3) Any member of the public wishing to witness the vote count at any level shall be allowed to do so. No witness shall interfere with the orderly counting of the official ballots. Witnesses shall not participate in the official counting of official ballots.
(4) Provisional official ballots shall be counted by the county board of elections before the canvass. If the county board finds that an individual voting a provisional official ballot is not eligible to vote in one or more ballot items on the official ballot, the board shall not count the official ballot in those ballot items, but shall count the official ballot in any ballot items for which the individual is eligible to vote. Eligibility shall be determined by whether the voter is registered in the county as provided in G.S. 163-82.1 and whether the voter is qualified by residency to vote in the election district as provided in G.S. 163-55 and G.S. 163-57. If a voter was properly registered to vote in the election by the county board,no mistake of an election official in giving the voter a ballot or in failing to comply with G.S. 163-82.15 or G.S. 163-166.11 shall serve to prevent the counting of the vote on any ballot item the voter was eligible by registration and qualified by residency to vote.
(5) Precinct officials shall provide a preliminary report of the vote counting to the county board of elections as quickly as possible. The preliminary report shall be unofficial and has no binding effect upon the official county canvass to follow.
(6) In counties that use any certified mechanical or electronic voting system, subject to the sample counts under G.S. 163-182.1 and subdivision (1a) of subsection (b) of this section, and of a hand-to-eye recount under G.S. 163-182.7 and G.S. 163-182.7A, a board of elections shall rely in its canvass on the mechanical or electronic count of the vote rather than the full hand-to-eye count of the paper ballots or records. In the event of a material discrepancy between the electronic or mechanical count and a hand-to-eye count or recount, the hand-to-eye count or recount shall control, except where paper ballots or records have been lost or destroyed or where there is another reasonable basis to conclude that the hand-to-eye count is not the true count.
The whole reason for 161-182.2 (a)(1) is for transparency and fraud prevention
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Learn from San Francisco - the largest IRV jurisdiction in the US - they have used IRV since 2004
The Los Angeles Voter Empowerment Circle recommended touch screen voting machines for IRV to the state of California in 2003: "touch screen machines for DRE systems are also better able to ccommodate alternative voting methods such as Instant Runoff Voting. We therefore believe that DRE systems are preferable to paper-based systems, such as punch cards or optical scans.
Touch screens were recommended to San Francisco: From the San Francisco Dept of Elections report on IRV in 2004. ES&S realized that its current paper ballot system could not provide voters the opportunity to rank all candidates that qualified for the ballot. For instance, if 22 candidates qualified for one contest, the system could not accommodate voters making 22 selections in order of their preference among the candidates. Touch-screen systems could most likely accommodate the ranking of all candidates.... For absentee voting, however, the formatting for the paper ballots for the current optical scan system limits the number of choices. The RCV Charter amendment allows for voters to have no less than three selections for an RCV contest if it is not technically feasible for the system to allow for voters to rank all of the candidates on the ballot. Thus, the City agreed to have its system modified to allow voters three rankings among the qualified candidates appearing on the RCV ballot.
IRV software relies upon complex algorithms that could be faulty without anyone realizing it. San Francisco used software that had a flawed algorithm for several years before it was detected by a review of the voting machines:
California's former SOS McPherson letter to the Board of Supervisors describes the anomaly in the RCV algorithm,in a report dated June 20, 2007. .The Secretary of State’s staff report from 2006 explains the issues experienced during testing which caused Secretary McPherson to approve one-time use of the system. Some of these issues are noted below:
...An anomaly in the RCV algorithm concerning the elimination of the lowest ranking candidates who are tied.
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Instant Runoff Voting Costs and Feasibility
Proponents are right that if you have IRV, you dont have a runoff election, not usually. But it is arguable as to whether IRV decreases costs to elections departments, and with some consistency.
But look at San Francisco, the largest real life example of IRV in the United States:
San Francisco forecasts doubling their budget in 2007-2008. San Francisco’s higher expenses include special voting software, special poll worker training, more laborious and costly recounts, and IRV related voter education costing about $1.87 per registered voter.
Fact: The Department of Election’s proposed $19,809,917 budget for FY 2007-2008 is $10,683,599 or 117.1 percent more than the original FY 2006-2007 budget of $9,126,318.
San Francisco had 418,285 registered voters in Nov 2006. Their current budget is almost 10 times that of Wake County North Carolina's budget with 460,821 reg voters in 2004.
Compare that to Wake County North Carolina, which has been in at under $2 million a year subtracting income from expenditures) from 1999 to 2004. See actual Wake NC Budget
San Francisco may not be paying for traditional runoff elections, but they have new costs. San Francisco’s new expenses include special voting software, special poll worker training, more laborious and costly recounts, and IRV related voter education costing about $1.87 per registered voter. San Francisco is also seeking a replacement voting system, and recently considered spending about $12 Million on Sequoia Voting machines.
San Francisco had 421,094 registered voters in 2004, spent $776,000 on IRV related voter education , with $210,000 specifically allotted to the community organizations for their efforts. 700 public outreach events were held.
Maybe IRV saves money, but there isn't a solid cost savings analysis using actual election department's net annual expenditures.
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Take a look at some of the findings in these studies of San Francisco’s 2004 & 2005 IRV election, conducted by the Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University:
An Assessment of Ranked-Choice Voting in the San Francisco 2004 Election
SUMMARY
The majority of voters appear to have made the transition to Ranked-Choice Voting with little problem: about seven out of eight we surveyed said that, overall, they understood it "fairly well" or "perfectly well." However, that leaves one in eight who expressed some lack of understanding.
…We found differences across racial and ethnic groups in regard to their prior knowledge of RCV, their overall understanding, and their propensity to rank candidates on the ballot.
Non-Hispanic Whites and Asian Americans came to the polls more aware of RCV than others. Whites and Asians also reported a higher level of overall understanding than other groups.
African Americans reported less understanding than other racial/ethnic groups, a difference that grows once other influences are considered.
2005 was worse for voters than 2004:
An Assessment of Ranked-Choice Voting in the San Francisco 2005 Election
IRV was re-named Ranked-Choice Voting because it can take days or weeks to get the results.
Prior Knowledge of Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV)
- A narrow majority of voters surveyed (54%) knew before voting that they would be asked to rank candidates for City Treasurer and Assessor in the 2005 election.
- The proportion of voters who had prior knowledge of RCV was lower in 2005 (54%) than in the 2004 election for the Board of Supervisors (67%).
- Those with lower rates of prior knowledge tended to be those who were less educated, reported having lower incomes, and spoke a primary language other than Spanish.
- African Americans were considerably less likely than other racial and ethnic groups (41.9%) to know they would be ranking their choices for these offices.
-The majority of voters reported ranking three candidates in the race for City Treasurer (57%), while 33% reported selecting only one candidate.*
*That means that in the event the first choice does not win, 33% do not participate in the "run-off".
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See this analysis of "Spoilage and Error Rates with Range Voting versus other Voting Systems" from http://rangevoting.org/SPRates.htm Valid votes, overvotes and undervotes (also known as DROP-OFF) in IRV races:
Overvote means a voter selected two or more candidates for the same office. Undervote/drop-off means voter selected no candidate for that race. In either IRV or plurality voting, undervoting has the same effect as not voting at all in that race.
So from this we see that the overvote error rates in San Francisco ranged from 3 to 11 times higher with IRV than with plurality voting, typically 7 times higher. (If double-ranking a non-top candidate in IRV were also considered – we haven't – then IRV overvote error rates would have been even higher.) And this conclusion is fully statistically significant.
Meanwhile, the undervotes and dropoffs probably mostly were "intentional" rather than "errors," but anyhow were comparable for both Plurality and IRV.
___________________________________________________________ When IRV first premiered in San Francisco, it was not smooth:
Instant Runnoff Voting in US:
First used in San Francisco in Fall of 2004.
[Note: The San Francisco Department of Elections
( link ) prefers the term "Ranked Choice Voting" because "the word 'instant'might create an expectation that final results will be available immediately after the polls close on election night."] The new system did not work as well as was hoped due to software and logistical difficulties; it took several days to produce definitive results. Article : (Wikipedia)
November 4, 2004. Mysterious malfunction with the custom computer software, some votes not counted, results skewed.
When the San Francisco Department of Elections on Wednesday tried to test run the program that is supposed to redistribute voters' second and third-place preferences among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results. News Target article
November 4, 2004. "you don't really know who you elected until several weeks or longer after the election," said Eric Jaye, a political consultant to two candidates who ran for supervisor on Tuesday. AP News article
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Sunday, January 09, 2005. Programming problems. |
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Despite promise, ranked-choice voting gets fouled up in California. Ranked-choice voting is the only sane voting system around: it's an instant runoff election that opens up the possibility of third-party competition for major elections.
Unfortunately, in an example that proves bureaucrats hardly ever have the brains to do anything right, the San Francisco Department of Elections muffed this one up. Apparently, their programmers forgot how to count. Someone needs to teach them the old "fingers and toes" method, apparently. News Target article
December 31, 2004 Claims of minority disenfranchisement:
But David Lee from the Chinese American Voter Education Committee argues that the system disenfranchised minority voters. The organization released a poll saying that only 49 percent of Chinese-speaking voters found the system "easy to use." San Francisco Examiner article
November 16, 2004 Don't Toss Out System Yet - Leader of Voter Ed Group suggests scrapping ranked choice voting:
LAST WEEK, THE head of a San Francisco voter-education group said he was considering options including working to repeal The City's new ranked-choice voting system because the system was too difficult for Chinese-speaking voters.
In RCV -- used to select city supervisors for the first time Nov. 2 --
voters may list three candidates for supervisor in order of preference,eliminating the need for a separate runoff election.
The Chinese American Voter Education Committee's interest in educating and protecting voters whose first language is not English is well placed. These voters are as important as any others, and making sure they understand their rights and the mechanisms by which they cast their votes is a good goal. Unfortunately, when it comes to the idea of potentially filing suit or attempting to repeal ranked-choice voting at the ballot box CAVEC's aim is off the mark and premature. The Examiner: Article
November 11, 2004 Voting Group says IRV esp difficult for minority group.
A voter education group charged Wednesday that The City's new voting system was especially difficult for Chinese-speaking citizens but concluded it may take more than one election to see if those citizens are being disenfranchised. San Francisco Examiner article
November 4, 2004. Machines fail to count votes correctly for second and third votes.
Ranked-choice results delayed due to glitches.
The voting system had cleared state and federal testing, and Arntz said the failure to get a proper tally of second and third votes was a surprise.
"I think we can fix this," Arntz said. "A hand count is something I really don't want to do..."
Lillian Sing, who came in second in District 1, said the delay leads her to question the count.
"The system is completely untrustworthy and therefore nothing is accurate as far as I'm concerned," she said...
"The department also has yet to count and release tallies for as many as 60,000 absentee and provisional ballots from Tuesday's election. Arntz said he plans to release those tallies
daily over the next two weeks, and that he's confident the ranked-choice result will be complete and accurate before the statutory deadline at the end of the month."
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Pierce Co, Washington - switch to IRV forces change to all mail voting, auditor cites increased complexity, increased ballot styles and papers, and affect on integrity of election.
Pierce County elections chief wants to switch to mail-only voting
SEAN COCKERHAM; The News Tribune
Published: June 21st, 2007 01:00 AM
Voting at the polls in Pierce County could soon go the way of cheap gas and vinyl records. The county’s top elections official is proposing to switch to all-mail voting starting next year.
“It is with a heavy heart I have done this,” Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy said in an interview this week. “I love my polling places.”
McCarthy said the county’s new instant runoff voting system, also known as ranked-choice voting, will require at least one additional ballot for each voter in the 2008 election. That could overwhelm poll workers in what will be a high-turnout election....
McCarthy argues the situation is different here than in San Francisco and Burlington.
Burlington is a lot smaller than Pierce County, McCarthy said. And San Francisco hasn’t consolidated polling places like Pierce has. That means each polling place in San Francisco serves only a single precinct, unlike in Pierce County.
Poll workers here manage multiple kinds of ballots at each polling place based on what council district, water district and fire district – among others – that a voter lives in.
McCarthy said the South Prairie Community Center polling place is the most complicated, with up to 22 different ballots for a poll worker to manage. That could turn into a stack of 44 under ranked choice.
Moreover, she said, poll workers will also be managing sophisticated voting equipment and issues such as provisional ballots, which are issued to people who don’t have identification and will be checked out later.
“I need to ensure we have an election that we can carry out with great integrity,” she said... |
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“This is not a ballot, this is a portal into hell.” — Asheville City Council member Carl Mumpower on instant-runoff ballots, in ”Votes and Slopes,” May 16, 2007 |
News, Reports & Opposition positions
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"Some pollworkers and voters told the Jury that they did not understand how to vote for candidates where RCV ballots were used." 2007-2008 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury |
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Blogs about Instant Runoff Voting updated frequently with local and national IRV news
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IRV Facts and Fiction: Fact sheet that rebutts and discusses the pro IRV talking points from Democracy for NC's website. Point by point many talking points fall apart when researched. |
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IRV as a 21st Century Literacy Test Article about how IRV affects certain segments of voters. "Literacy is using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential." |
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IRV - A Tale of Two North Carolina Cities Read our overview of two elections, two cities: Cary North Carolina (IRV) and Rocky Mount North Carolina (Traditional Runoff). Find out How Instant Runoff Voting helped elect the candidate affiliated with the un-popular defeated mayor in one city, and how the traditional runoff system resulted in more voters turning out and a doubling of one candidate's votes. |
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Instant Runoff - What They Don't Tell You:
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Negatively impacts election integrity, increases costs and labor for elections, makes audits and recounts more onerus.
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Voters do not get 2nd chance to elect their preferred candidate.
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Requires an informed and educated electorate.
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Can cause voters to hurt their preferred candidate by voting for him/her.
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NC's new voting machines do not have software to tabulate IRV.
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IRV hurts third parties.
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Makes campaigning more complicated. |
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Logistical issues
Ballots in IRV cannot be easily summarized. (Political scientists call this the Summability criterion.) In most forms of voting, each district can examine the ballots locally and publish the total votes for each candidate. Anyone can add up the published totals to determine the winner, and if there are allegations of irregularities in one district only that district needs to be recounted.
With IRV, each time a candidate is dropped, the ballots assigned to them must be re-examined to determine which remaining candidate to assign them to. Repeated several times, this can be time-consuming. If there is a candidate X who got more votes than all of the candidates who got less than X put together, then all of these candidates who lost to X can be dropped simultaneously without affecting the final outcome, which can speed up counting.
If counting takes place in several places for a single IRV election (as in Australia), these counting centers must be connected by a securely authenticated channel (historically the telegraph was used) to inform them which candidate has come last and should be dropped. Centralizing the counting to avoid this problem can add opportunity for tampering. Wikipedia article
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Australia uses limited IRV, but also is using e-voting machines now.
Benefits and drawbacks on IRV (called preferential voting) as used in Australia. This system is used in the House of Representatives and the lower house of every Australian State Parliament, aside from the ACT and Tasmania.
According to ,www.AustralianPolitics.com
Disadvantages of the Preferential System
It is more complicated to administer and count.
It can produce a higher level of informal voting.
It promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents.
Voters are forced to express a preference for candidates they may not wish to support in any way.
(The use of optional preferential voting, as used in New South Wales State elections,
is a solution to this problem.) Link:
Australia began using electronic voting:
The ACT's electronic voting system, which was first used at the October 2001 election and was again used in the October 2004 election, is the first of its kind to be used for parliamentary elections in Australia.
The system uses standard personal computers as voting terminals, with voters using a barcode to authenticate their votes.
Voting terminals are linked to a server in each polling
location using a secure local area network.
No votes are taken or transmitted over a public network like the Internet. Link:
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