The outcome of tomorrow’s election will depend on a few votes at the very end of the count.
Whether Smith or Jones gets elected could be determined by 14th or 15th preferences of some voters. But other voters who have only numbered five or seven boxes will have denied themselves the chance to influence whether Smith or Jones gets elected.
The importance of number all the squares on the ballot paper is greater in the Hare Clark system than elsewhere. This is because only the voter can express preferences. Unlike the Senate system, there are no registered preference cards by the political party and no party box.
Further, the party does not determine the order of candidates in the party box. Under Robson rotation, different batches of ballot papers are printed. One batch will have Berry at the top of the Labor column; another batch will have Stanhope and another McRae. So my ballot paper will look different from yours. The candidates will be in a different order.
If every Labor voter votes a donkey vote, each Labor candidates will get exactly the same number of first-preference votes. And similarly for the Liberal Party.
The theory is you can punish sitting members while still voting for the party of your choice. Or you can reward sitting members who perform well over those that do not.
The voter directs preferences not the party.
There is another reason for voting the whole ballot paper under Hare-Clark.
Even if you vote Liberal or Labor first up, your preferences for minor parties will count in the end, unlike, say, a House of Representatives election, where there is only one member per electorate. In the House of Representatives a major party is not going to be excluded early in the count, so the preferences from a major party are never going to be counted.
In Hare Clark usually three major party candidates get excluded and the preferences matter. They might initially go to candidates of the same party, but if those candidates have already gained a quota and are elected the vote stays in the count, ultimately mattering when the last seat is determined between, say, a Democrat or an Osborne group.
Once again, only the voter can express that preference. If the voter stops at five (or seven in Molonglo) the ballot paper is exhausted.
Also, the full preferences matter even if you put Carnell or Berry first.
This is because they are likely to get more than one quota. The extra vote over the quota gets counted as preferences.
For example, if the quota is 8000 votes and Carnell gets 12,000 votes, the preferences of half a quota (4000) get distributed. This is done by counting the whole 12,000 votes again and distributing all of them at one half value to their second preference.
This process continues throughout the count as more candidates go over the quota as candidates are excluded from the bottom and their preferences distributed.
In way, you can look at the Hare-Clark count as coming from both ends and the preferences from both the tiniest off-beat candidate and the strongest major candidate run till the last seat is determined. That’s why you should number every box.
Tomorrow — how the vote is counted in detail.