Breaking down the informal vote

Hi Ben,
Thanks for your analysis but it doesn’t mention a likely influence in NSW because of the difference in preferential voting in NSW State and Local Government elections. In those elections it is optional preferential but for Federal it is compulsory preferential where a number needs to be placed in every square. As a Labor volunteer it is incumbent on us at polling places to remind people that they need to complete every square in the House of Reps ballot paper. Maybe the AEC survey of informality will shed some light on this.
Personally I believe that all elections should be compulsory preferential as this would make the will of the voter clearer. In the Sept 2024 Local Government elections for Mayor in the Bega Shire this was a major contributor to the ALP candidate falling short by 35 votes to beat the Lib candidate on 2PP as so many votes for the greens candidate exhausted because there just a one in the greens square. The ALP candidate won the primary vote quite clearly.
I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
David

Yes, I did mention that NSW has a higher rate than other states and that is obviously because of the use of OPV for state elections. To be honest I didn’t go there because it’s not a new finding.

I don’t know how you can look at all the damage compulsory preferential voting does in throwing out so many votes and think that the problem is with the one state that doesn’t do that.

This sort of analysis can drive funding for information and education into particular electorates at election time.

In addition, perhaps extra information should be provided to those electorates with 8+ candidates standing.

Describing CPV as the “will of the voters” is a bit of an odd one. Maybe those Greens voters in Bega Valley didn’t want to preference Labor? I do agree that some voters are sometimes misled into voting just ‘1’ when they have a genuine preference but there’s plenty of others who don’t want to and are forced to mark preferences so their vote counts.

Optional preferential sounds the way to go, that’s essentially the Senate voting system anyway.
What’s wrong with the voter picking the one theywant and leaving it at that?
The only beneficiaries of compulsory most times are the major parties, which 33% don’t want anyway.

I think CPV also means elections are a contest of both parties trying to win people who don’t really have a preference either way, instead of putting out actual ideas for engaged people to debate.

The increase in informal voting also correlated with:
1. The increase in turnout. This means some voters didn’t vote last federal election, including first-time voters.
2. Teal independents. Most of them have a 1 next to their name on the HTV card and that’s it.
3. Increased appetite for non-major parties and disengagement.

“I don’t know how you can look at all the damage compulsory preferential voting does in throwing out so many votes and think that the problem is with the one state that doesn’t do that.”

Given that Federal elections are CPV, the inconsistency of one state having optional at state level obviously causes more formals within the CPV system, that’s not an unfair point.

Your point that these votes would not be informal in the first place with OPV is also fair. That said, the informal rate at NSW state elections is not that far below the informal rate in federal elections, and that’s with the informal rate in federal elections being bulked up by this NSW confusion issue. I wonder- if NSW seats had the same informal rate as Victorian seats, what would the federal formality rate be?

Thanks Ben for this research. It suggests the AEC needs to do targeted civic education in Western Sydney, and also that NSW’s inconsistent voting system at state level is a problem. NSW needs compulsory preferential voting for consistency’s sake as much as for the other reasons for it. The best-of-both-worlds option would be consistent use of CPV with a savings mechanism, as this system satisfies both the interests of deciding the election upon the preferences of as many voters as possible as well as the interests of saving partially completed votes.

Also, the theories about independents’ how-to-vote cards appear unfounded. In NSW, Wentworth, Warringah, Mackellar, and Bradfield are all low for informal votes relative to other NSW electorates with the same numbers of candidates. It’s a similar picture for Clark, Curtin, Kooyong, and Goldstein relative to all federal electorates with the same numbers of candidates. Meanwhile Indi and plenty of others like Wannon and Dickson are middling to low too. And the cluster of western Sydney electorates appears consistently relatively high for informal votes no matter whether there are prominent independent MPs or candidates (as in Fowler, Watson, Blaxland) or not (as in Werriwa, Chifley, Macarthur). There doesn’t appear to be a correlation between independents and informal voting.

I remember working a state election as a polling booth official. We had an aged care facility nearby, and they had had problems getting to patients. Some turned up at the booth, and I took their votes. Fortunately it was optional preferential voting so they could just vote 1. However, it would have been very hard work in the Hospital and Aged Care homes, especially where all squares are meant to be numbered. My only surprise is that the informal vote is lower than I expected from the article.

I strongly disagree that NSW needs to change its system to deal with this problem. It’s the federal system that is excluding votes for unnecessary reasons. Why should NSW need to change?

Insisting on consistency between levels of government is a recipe for never innovating or trying new things.

CPV says that if you do not express all of your preferences, then none of them will count – your vote will be thrown out. A voter who votes “just one” has very clearly expressed a preference for that candidate, yet this is discarded – not to mention a voter who numbers six of eight candidates! My view is that this is tantamount to institutionalised voter suppression. I strongly support preferential voting and understand the desirability of voters numbering as many candidates as they can. But disenfranchising voters to this end cannot be justified.

Ben Thanks for this. A proper study on informal is a prelude to reform before the next election. In other words AEC should be told to get on with it quick so the polls can think about it quick.
Same trend in Whitlam with 10 candidates the informal vote was 9.81% compared to 6 candidates in 2022 the informal vote was 4.9%. Ballot size obviously matters. Whitlam is also interesting because it covers 4 different distinct regions:
Shellharbour region
Dapto region (both state seat of Shellharbour)
Albion Park/Calderwood/Tulimbar (AP region State seat Kiama) which has now broken away socio/economically from the Shellharbour region with huge new private developed housing estates &, of course,
The Highlands.
The divergence in informal vote is huge with the Highlands in the range of 6 – 7.5%, AP in the range of 10 -11.5%, Dapto region in the range of 11 – 15.9% & Shellharbour in the range 13.2 – 15% (Barrack Heights 18.10%, Mt Warrigal 14.25%, Blackbutt 13.8%, Oak Flats PS 13.3% & an outlier Oak Flats/Balarang 11.28%).
Needless to say the informal is highest in safer/safest labor areas. I do not hasten to say lower socio-economic because you could drive around Shell Cove & Oak Flats & Lake Macquarie waterfront & see better housing & views than Cronulla. Resident just don’t know it?
Obviously some rules about say making a vote with six numbers formal would help. (Incidentally to diverge I see that the conservative leader lost his seat in Canada after being opposed by 79 other candidates in what I think was a protest for electoral reform). Instead spending of $ 80 million on advertising it will surely occur to Clive Palmer that he could gum up the works against Labor more easily in mixed geographic/regional seats like Whitlam be paying nomination fees for heaps of candidates in each seat.
& he can evade the new limitations on advertising funding?
I believe from careful observation as a scrutineer that more candidates encourages voters to simply spoil their paper or not touch it all rather than failled attempts to vote formal. The AEC study will show if this is general, socio-economic general or my booth is just unique?
.

Ben a final thought which you may or may not want published.
A final local thought that concerns a local phenomena which is the plethora of Facebook My this & My that (over 50) alone in Shellharbour/AP region which are often just toxic in content. This is not a phenomenon seen in cities (I think). I certainly don’t remember a “MY Rushcutters Bay” or “MY GLEBE”? Almost all of these semi-closed sites do not follow the constitutional law & allow freedom of political communication & I think that this is another example of the internet eroding democracy in that they encourage contempt for all politics in the end & informal voting. For instance one site had a comment “I voted for a penis without balls on my ballot paper and my candidate won”. (a reference I think to Albo not Carol Perry)

The constitution does not oblige internet forums to allow anyone to post anything on their pages. I don’t see anything undemocratic about that, just as I am free to limit what is posted here.

My seat of Cowper went from 4%+ informal 2022 to 9%+ 2025, with an increase of candidates from 8 to 11. Almost successful Teal had an open ticket – ie. htv was number 1 then number all squares – which would not have helped, but she did this in 2022! Go figure – does seem counting / deciding who is palatable, past say 6 is a problem. The Nats tagetted negative campaign (‘preferences’ and ‘rich greenie bloke’ finding her millions $) made it very hard for her to decide to mark preferences.

I had noted the big increase in informal in my electorate (Mackellar) from 2022 to 2025. Close to doubling being up 3.65 % points.

I am one who wonders about the open HTV card, the same as in Bradfield. If only we could see who the in-error informals “voted” for …

It didn’t hurt Scamps who increased her vote (she got a bit of redistribution help) but may have cost Boele. Informal votes also rose a lot from 2022 to 2025. Boele put question marks in the boxes in 2022, not this time I think.

Those talking about optional preferential voting…I say no. If it’s a preferential system, then it should be every box ie decreasing preference.

There’s a loophole in optional pref voting the Liberals exploited at the NSW election where they faced teal independents. It could apply other places where the threat was an independent. They told everyone (signs, exhaustively on the day) in Pittwater and I believe on the north shore that they only needed to number one square.

This is true, but irrelevant for Liberal voters as the candidate will always finish first and at worst second, so their preferences aren’t used. It was a gambit to encourage Labor and Green voters to exhaust their votes rather than give prefs to the teal candidate Jacqui Scruby and it worked. They won narrowly by far less than the exhausted votes x % pref flow to Scruby.

She was subsequently elected at the by-election after the resignation of the Liberal MP as it happened, but that doesn’t change the Liberal cynical gambit.

Is there any suggestion or sign that the increase in informal votes was a concerted ‘donkey vote’?

The worst effected seats in Western Sydney seem to correlate with the groups worst affected by COVID lockdowns and containing the highest Muslim vote likely to be influenced by Gaza and I wondered if there had been any signs of a public push to disengage with the compulsory voting process, rather just than accidentally informal votes?

With our voting system it seems very difficult to disentangle deliberate disengagement from accidental and the assumption appears to be the latter but it doesn’t seem beyond question that effective absenteeism (while avoiding the fine) would be increasing alongside the shift away from the majors. The potential remedies would appear quite different where this to be the case.

@Ben re: your 1:10pm comment:

“It’s the federal system that is excluding votes for unnecessary reasons.”

That’s an ideological rather than an evidence-based argument. Your article is great, but it doesn’t include any data on the numbers of votes that were excluded due to numbering errors verses the number of votes that were excluded due to voters deliberate choices to vote informally, so there is no data here that addresses the issue of how many votes were excluded due to mistakes.

“Why should NSW need to change?”

Because there clearly is data here that evidently says that NSW is over-represented in informal voting. A NSW-specific problem requires NSW-specific solutions.

The data is also showing us that the numbers of candidates is also linked to rates of informal voting, and that could also be addressed with specific solutions, such as Julian’s excellent suggestion for targeted education in electorates with 8+ candidates.

“Insisting on consistency between levels of government is a recipe for never innovating or trying new things.”

Sure, but personal preference for inconsistency is cold comfort for the people in 11 electorates where more than 1 in 10 people voted informally, and where 10 of 11 of those electorates were in NSW.

It’s an education problem. We don’t say we need the same candidates on all levels so voters don’t get confused, we don’t need the same system either. Voters aren’t stupid, they just don’t know how to vote, so the solution is to tell them, not to dumb down our democracy.

OPV proved itself at the ’12 & ’15 Qld elections, imo.
In 2012, voters had had enough of 14 years of Labor and responded to Just Vote 1.
3 years later, LNP ran with that slogan again and lost 35 seats, it was all over at 6:20 pm. Here’s AG’s analysis: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-28/the-impact-of-optional-preferential-voting-at-the-2012-queenslan/9390104

Thanks for your insightful writing.
From the perspective of someone who scrutineers, the largest number of informal ballots are blank, followed by ‘1 only’, then duplicate numbering, followed by indecipherable numbers.
Very few are 1-6 – under the assumption the voter was mistakenly using Senate numbering rules in HoR.
A driver of informals not discussed is a product of HTVs, when a voter decides they wish to alter part of their preferred party’s HTV. This is the most common driver of duplicate numbers, not voters consciously indicating a tie.
Obviously the benefit of HTVs is fewer informals from low engagement voters, and those with language / comprehension difficulties. However more could be done to alert voters to potential change of numbering issues.

I looked at two historical examples – Lowe in 1972 when there were 9 candidates in Billy McMahons seat when he was PM and Werriwa in 1974 when there were 13 candidates or 12 running against Gough Whitlam. Both were exceptional candidate numbers at the time. In Werriwa the informal vote was 2.5% and in Lowe 2.9%. Were voters more numerate in the 1970s? In both those cases, beyond the ALP and Liberals the other candidates polled very poorly. Was that a factor?
There seems to be periodic spikes in informal voting. Why in Werriwa was there a spike from 3.0% in 1983 to 7.9% in 1984? And in Lowe there was a similar spike in 1984 as well. I do recall there was a similar issue in the 1980s particularly in Western Sydney and voter education seemed to be the answer.

In those electorates with a high CALD population and high informal votes it would be interesting to know if there is an issue with the numbers 1 and 7. These are two numbers that people in various countries are taught to write differently particularly if they put a stroke on the 1. It is possible that polling officials see two #1 or two #7 or can’t differentiate which is meant to be a 1 or a 7. Hence confusion past 6 candidates.

European 1s and 7s are recognised as valid, as well as roman numerals.
I’d say more people are expressing an opinion on a voting system that makes no sense to them. Reading earlier comments, it sounds like the will of the voters in Bradfield was to elect Boele, so she’d be entitled to feel dudded if she loses, imo.

It is a statement of fact that the *federal* electoral system is the one that excludes votes for not being complete even when a first preference is clear.

“Sure, but personal preference for inconsistency is cold comfort for the people in 11 electorates where more than 1 in 10 people voted informally, and where 10 of 11 of those electorates were in NSW.”

Sure, so the jurisdiction that is excluding those votes should fix it. NSW is not the jurisdiction doing this.

I think education has a role to play but there is also a question of practicality. When you have to number nine boxes, some people are going to make mistakes no matter their education levels.

I do think the higher levels of how-to-vote obedience in the 1970s probably helped too. A lot more voters mark their own preferences now and some of them stuff it up.

“Your article is great, but it doesn’t include any data on the numbers of votes that were excluded due to numbering errors verses the number of votes that were excluded due to voters deliberate choices to vote informally”

We know the data on this, but there is no fresh data. I will analyse them when the informality survey is conducted. The last time there was a survey in 2016, roughly half of the informal votes appeared to be deliberate, the other half accidental.

The other issue is that maybe voters don’t know that they can go back and get another ballot paper if they make a mistake or they may be intimidated by queues etc. In the days before 1-12 I went back twice once because I had made a mistake voting below the line.

The preference issues are more complex than the NSW Optional Preferential System and the compulsory preference systems used everywhere else in single-member lower house elections.

The NSW system is unfortunately embedded in the NSW Constitution. It requires a referendum to change it, but there should be scope to get the ballot instructions to be more encouraging of additional preferences. The current wording can be found at https://elections.nsw.gov.au/candidate-handbook-nsw-state-by-elections/nomination/legislative-assembly-ballot-paper – it could be more like “Number the candidates in the order of your choice, starting with 1, then 2, 3 and so on. You may leave some boxes empty if you wish.”

The full-preferential systems can be improved by moving toward the current Senate arrangements, which require ballot instructions and electoral material to indicate the need to number at least 6 boxes above the line (or 12 below), but where savings provisions ensure that ballots with fewer numbers are still counted. A possible alternative would be to require instructions and electoral material to specify that at least 6 (or maybe 5) boxes be numbered, but with savings provisions to count ballots with fewer boxes numbered.

There will be some exhaustion of votes, but this would almost certainly be balanced by the inclusion of significant numbers of presently informal papers.

Antony Green wrote a paper on the political impact of OPV in the 2019 NSW election – https://antonygreen.com.au/preference-flows-by-party-2019-nsw-election/

It is absurd and unjust to demand that NSW changes to CPV merely because it leads to confusion in federal elections. Western Australia since the mid 1990s at Legislative Assembly elections allows a break in numerical sequence, so long as there is a 1 and numbers in all but one square. This was introduced to prevent the injustice of a vote being invalidated just because there was a mistake in sequencing multiple candidates. It may also allow voters to deliberately negate preferences “2..2..2” but frankly who cares. The number of exhausted votes, even though excluding the votes of the two finishing candidates, is very small.

I noticed that a lot of postal votes (1500 or more in some seats) were not returned to the AEC by the deadline. Is this a growing problem? What might be driving this?

@Warren,

That is not a problem. Not every postal vote application turns into an actual vote. Those voters may have voted in person. It is perfectly normal for the number of applications submitted to exceed the number of votes returned.

@redistributed – I would suggest in the 70s people may have been far more likely to just take a how to vote card and follow it.

@ben – the fact that NSW still has over 3% informal with OPV still raises the question of how many votes are really being thrown out by CPV which wouldn’t be thrown out by OPV, especially if we didn’t have the NSW confusion issue inflating the numbers. If we had some better savings provisions, it might be a vanishingly small problem that doesn’t require the entire country to change to OPV to solve.

My problem with OPV is it encourages a just vote 1 mentality with no preferences which is effectively a migration back towards FPTP. It might be hard for anyone to vote informal in FPTP that doesn’t mean to but that doesn’t make it a better system.

It’s on the basis of the AEC’s historic data that informality in special hospital team booths at least appears to have tripled. Look at the informal swings recorded for SHTs on the AEC site, particularly in NSW, and you’ll soon see what I mean. Presumably the issue here is how the AEC determined its historic informal data, which in turn presumably has something to do with the fact that they serviced fewer hospitals in 2022 because of the pandemic (though beyond that I can only speculate).

CPV is the only way to get voters to pay attention. In a democracy, the ability to vote is a right, but it is also a responsibility. In the old days, when the two parties collected 80-90% of the primary vote, you could be a bit lazy about things because it was mostly one or the other. These days, some seats, such as Calwell, where the two-party primary vote was 46%, are like this, where it takes some time into counting before we know the top two candidates. As such, it is doubly essential for candidates (and their parties, if they have one) to issue an HTV card and for voters to follow it. At the very least, to fill out the ballot paper correctly. It is not as though this is a new concept unless you are a first-time voter. There may be a tendency for an enthusiastic teal or Greens supporter (to use two examples) to single-shot vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_voting without preferences, thinking that by doing so, they will maximize their effect, but to no avail. Preferences will likely only continue to grow in importance in the future, as the first preference curve continues to flatten.

In Bradfield, I would love to review the informal votes that preferred the teal candidate as #1 but were discarded because they were incomplete.

While I support every available means to ensure access to the vote, ultimately, it is the voter’s responsibility to do their due diligence.

@Arky, an informal rate of 3.3% in NSW is still substantially less than we are getting at federal elections, and is consistent with past AEC research that about half of informal voting is deliberate informal voting (driven by compulsory voting) and half is accidental (driven by CPV). So no, OPV wouldn’t eliminate all informal votes.

I am not advocating for OPV. I think both systems are severely flawed. I think we should try to adopt something like what we do for the Senate where we strongly encourage preferencing without such a severe punishment for errors. But ultimatey the solution is a proportional system so not so much hinges on second and subsequent preferences.

Craig, my point is that the “due diligence” is not a reasonable expectation to ask of voters at this point. It is not reasonable to need a HTV to be able to cast a formal vote. Small parties and independents will always struggle to get a HTV into every voter’s hand.

I don’t know the reasons why people vote just 1. There are lots of potential explanations. But the intention of the voter is clear and it should be counted.

Unsurprisingly it appears that the seats with the most people who speak a language other than English at home have the highest informal voting rates. But wow they’re exceptionally high this time.

In Lingiari’s Aboriginal communities the informal rate has dropped off a lot, down by –5% in some RMT booths but still above average (still over 8% in many).

In Leichhardt’s Indigenous communities however the informal vote is stable, and still over 10% in some.

Craig if a voter (for example) thinks both major parties will be complicit in genocide in Gaza, and doesn’t want to vote for either of them, or one over the other, I think that’s fair enough, and CPV basically forces them to either do that or not have their vote counted.

Informal vote in RMTs in different seats:

* Durack: 8.1% (13 RMTs)
* Grey: 9.7% (5 RMTs)
* Kennedy: 6.5% (3 RMTs)
* Leichhardt: 13.9% (7 RMTs)
* Lingiari: 6.5% (31 RMTs)
* Maranoa: 7.4% (3 RMTs)
* O’Connor: 11.1% (5 RMTs)
* Parkes: 10.1% (5 RMTs)

@ben , I agree. A semi-logical compromise would be (i) for the ballot instructions to instruct voters to number at least 1 to 9 [where there are 10 or more candidates] so nobody thinks it’s a requirement to go into double digits [the area where the biggest room for error occurs] and reintroduce the Albert-Langer-utilised savings provision that left a vote formal even if 2s, 3s, etc were duplicated (as allowed in the old section 270(2) of the CEA).
https://magnacarta.moadoph.gov.au/story/albert-langer/
https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FCA/1998/1242.html

… and (ii) reintroduce …

@Ben

“I think we should try to adopt something like what we do for the Senate where we strongly encourage preferencing without such a severe punishment for errors.”

That is CPV with a savings mechanism. Both our federal and NSW systems would be improved if they had that.

And on the topic of voter information, one vital improvement to elections in Australia would be for all AEC candidate application forms to include a short questionnaire containing basic and succinct information about their position: such as a brief bio, reason for running, top policy priorities, and website link (if available).

The AEC could then publish all this questionnaire information in a table for each electorate, so that voters can look up basic information on all their candidates.

For all the commentary about the OPV and CPV, the informal vote in the Senate seems to reasonably correlate to the House and NSW’s informal house/senate rate (1.8x) is only marginally higher than South Australia’s (1.71x). The same outlier divisions exist both (Werriwa, Watson, Fowler, Blaxland, Chifley, Lindsay, McMahon) with Calwell again the highest outside Western Sydney.

This would suggest disengagement in NSW in general (NSW Senate informal vote averaged 4.5% informal vs about 3.5% across the country) and these Western Sydney divisions in particular (7.5% informal) is a much more consequential cause of informal voting than voter education/differences in voting system.

@ Ben re Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre I was wrong – it was 91 candidates that ran against him.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canada-federal-election-2025-carleton-pierre-poilievre-results-1.7515695?cmp=rss

@Ben Raue Thank you Ben. I was surprised at Nicolette Boele’s HTV and wondered why no-one picked it up. Do you know if that was the same one distributed on the day?

In 2024 two by-elections were held for the state electorates of Inala and Ipswich West at the same time as the local government elections. Because the voting processes are different (CPV at State as opposed to OPV at Local Government, plus the unique weirdness of the Ipswich Council voting system) the informal vote was 8.74% at Inala and 6.48% at Ipswich West. The corresponding vote six months later at the state election was 4.81% at Inala and 5.11% at Ipswich West.

@Ben Raue @Warren Gardiner I often find that people may apply for postal votes and then vote in person (either prepolling or declared institutions) anyway. It’s also not unknown for family members of older voters to complete a ballot paper that turns up at a previous address because “we don’t want grandpa to get a fine”.
However, there’s a structural problem with regional and remote areas that isn’t an AEC fault, it’s the fact that Australia Post can no longer guarantee delivery of mail to or from the voter to meet the statutory timeframe. That’s something that the AEC has acknowledged but it’s not under their control – https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2025/04-28.htm There have been numerous complaints of voters not even receiving their ballot papers until days after the election. Unfortunately the AEC doesn’t record the number of ballot papers that come back after the 10 day cutoff.

The issue with late-arriving postal votes was part of the original justification for iVote in NSW – for people living overseas and in remote locations, along with those who are blind or have low vision. If it had stayed limited to those use cases I think it would still be around.