P&L11 - Democracy and the Rule of Law/Representation & Justice: Preferential

Preferential Voting, the voting system known in the United Kingdom as the Alternative Vote and in the USA as Instant Run-off Voting , is widely used for Australian lower house elections. With Fiji and Papua New Guinea (the latter from 2007), Australia is one of only three nations to use this system for national elections. Some Australian elections use full Preferential Voting, some use optional Preferential Voting.

Preferential voting is a system largely unique to Australia, so what does it mean and how does it work?

The term "preferential voting" means voters can indicate an order of preferences for candidates on the ballot paper, i.e. who they want as their 1st choice, 2nd choice and so on.