Group voting tickets

Group voting tickets (also known as "above the line" voting) are a way to simplify preferential voting, usually in an election held under the single transferable vote or the alternative vote system. Ranking each candidate individually is called "below the line" voting. The system is used for the upper houses of the Australian state parliaments of Victoria and Western Australia, and for some elections in Fiji. It was used in the Australian Senate from the 1984 election until the 2013 federal election.

Voters can choose to vote for a group ticket by placing the number '1' in one of the ticket boxes above the line or can vote for individual candidates by numbering all the boxes below the line. Ticket votes are distributed according to the party or group voting ticket registered before the election with the electoral commission. In some elections, voters can express an order of preferences among different tickets by voting '1', '2' and so on in different ticket boxes.

In Australian elections for the upper houses which use proportional representation as well as preferential voting, it may be daunting to have to fill in scores of boxes—preferences are compulsory in Western Australian elections. Some voters would choose their early preferences and then vote for other candidates in the order they appeared on the ballot paper—known as a donkey vote; or fill in the form incorrectly, leading to an informal vote.

To ease this task, above the line voting allows the voter to choose one party or group, and all the remaining squares are deemed to be filled in according to a registered party ticket. About 95% of voters choose to use this method. This leads to pre-election trading between parties on how each party will allocate later preferences to other parties and candidates.

"Above the line" voting has been criticised as electors not knowing, and having no practical way of finding out, where their preferences are being directed. All details are published in advance, both electronically and in a free booklet published by the Australian Electoral Commission or the appropriate State electoral commission. The booklets may be viewed at polling booths on request to the poll officials. However, such is the complexity of the information that it is unlikely that the average voter could easily determine the fate of his or her vote's preferences particularly, as some parties submit multiple allocations (e.g., 33% to one party, 66% to another, and so on), and the effects are integrally wound up in preference deals between other parties.

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