Hi Australia.

I’m planning on voting as is my duty and my privilege at the upcoming election.

I’m going to preface by saying that I don’t want my votes to go to the Dark Lord or the Liberal Party or the liars in the Labour Party. They are both completely corrupt and I’m adamant that they need to feel some pain.

So then I want to look at the independents and consider what they do and what they don’t do, and will they be truly representative, or are they just there scrambling for votes to get some money and power? Who can say?

So what I’d like to do to make sure the Liberals and Labour don’t get my vote, is find some kind of flowchart, that shows if I vote for an independent or a smaller party, where does that preference go to, so that I don’t feed the party that I don’t want to get my vote in the end.

Is there any resource out there that can show me where the preferences get fed to, so I can make an informed choice.

I feel like this should be a legal obligation, that we are all given this kind of information in a flowchart. But I can’t find it. Can anybody help?

Thank you so much.

  • @zero_gravitas@aussie.zoneEnglish
    7•3 days ago

    Is there any resource out there that can show me where the preferences get fed to, so I can make an informed choice.

    You choose your own preferences.

    On the House of Representative ballot, this has always been the case. You must number all the boxes.

    On the Senate ballot it used to be the case that if you voted ‘above the line’, you could only vote ‘1’, and nothing more, and the parties decided the preference flow. That is not the case anymore. Now, the Senate ballot has partially-optional preferencing ‘above the line’. You must number at least 6 boxes if you vote above the line, but you can number all the boxes above the line if you choose. I would encourage numbering as many preferences as you can with the knowledge you have. (You can also number below the line if you want to pick your own ordering of the candidates for each party/group.)

    See: https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_Senate.htm

    Or: https://www.chickennation.com/voting/senate/ (and the one about House of Representatives voting: https://www.chickennation.com/voting/).

    I’m happy to answer any further questions if you have them, don’t hesitate to ask 🙂