Formality again

2 August 2010

It was pointed out to me that it is probably not a good idea to have so prominent a message indicating whether your vote is formal or not based on how many candidates you have currently preferenced. This could only encourage people not to fill in all of the boxes below the line, and thus increase the risk of someone voting informally. So I have reversed the change I mentioned here and instead show the warning message if there are any candidates left unpreferenced.

As mentioned in the previous post, the tool on this site does not allow misnumbering — it is not possible to duplicate or skip numbers. This simplifies the saving provisions that can be applied when your vote is counted to just be based on how many candidates were not numbered. For this year’s election, if you are voting with the help of this tool, you can technically preference only the number of candidates according to the following table and leave the rest unpreferenced:

Don’t rely on this, however! Number every box below the line (if you are going to vote below the line!) if you want to ensure that your vote counts.