Recent Articles

Preference voting

For more information on this topic visit Glossary.com

Term preferential voting (also known as the preference voting) has several different meanings:

(1) A ranked ballot or preferential voting system is a type of voting system in which each voter casts their vote by ranking candidates in order of preference.

Voting systems which use a ranked ballot include:

• Borda count
• Bucklin voting
• Condorcet methods (including Copeland's method)
• Coombs' method
• Instant-runoff voting
• Single Transferable Vote

(2) Preferential voting is a synonym for instant-runoff voting, especially in Australia, where such ballots are actually in use in elections. See The Australian electoral system.

(3) In Europe, preferential voting denotes what is in Unites States known as the Open List Proportional Representation (Open list PR). It is a voting system giving a voter an option to vote for one of the party lists and then also express a preference for one of the candidates of this list.

(4) Often term preferential voting is used for any kind of intraparty preference.

Ballot design or voting machine instructions are particularly important in such systems, as each voter is expected to express a rather complex set of tolerances or preferences in each vote.

Ballot variations

• Column marks: Optical scanner ballots use the ballot with column voting with ovals.
  • Column rank ballots have limits rankings due primarily to available paper space. For example the image below is limited to three rankings.
• Write numbers: Hand-written numeric rankings are more compact to vote and easier to hand count.
• Write names: Hand-written names as a list from first to last preference.
• Touch screen: A slightly different category of voting is a computer Touch screen could also be used, asking voters their first, second, etc preferences, and showing the selections so far and remaining choices, allowing selections to be removed if the voter makes a mistake or changes her mind during voting. Some people want touch screen voting to print a paper ballot at the end as a hardcopy backup.

Further reading

Works of Richard S. Katz, David Farrell, Michael Marsh, Arend Lijphart, Democracy, elections and parties overview

|-

|}