December 6, 2023
How-To-Vote cards are an integral part of Australian elections.
They exist because of the preferential voting system which requires voters to number the candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference.
By issuing how-to-vote cards, candidates and political parties aim to maximise their vote and disadvantage their opponents.
A visitor to this website recently asked about the importance of how-to-vote cards:
I do not fully understand the allocation of preferences, particularly how party A can guarantee that its preferences will be allocated to party B. We are talking about a more concrete arrangement than the publication of “how to vote cards” aren’t we?
The answer to this question is “no”. How-to-vote cards are the beginning and the end of the matter.
Political parties can advise voters how to allocate their preferences. They do this by issuing how-to-vote cards during an election. They cannot compel voters to follow them.
This is the official set of ALP how-to-vote-cards for the 1998 Federal Election.
The embedded PDF can be expanded and downloaded.