'above-the-line' voting for the Australian Senate (2)

[IH Farrow]

Gary Swing [SMTP:gwswing at ouray.cudenver.edu] wrote (in relation to 'above-the-line' voting in elections for Australian Senate):

>I find it very interesting that most voters would choose to cast a single
> vote for their party, rather than choosing individual candidates. Is this
> true in all party list systems where voters have an option of voting
> either for a pre-ordered list or selecting individual candidates of their
> own choice?

Further to my previous comments, I am not aware of any party list systems that enable voters to individually rank the order of candidates.  The typical party list systems extant in much of Europe and in the New Zealand MMP (mixed member proportional) system are not ordinal and do not facilitate voting for candidates in order of preference.  

I understand that there are only three countries that use ordinal voting - Australia, Ireland and Malta.  Properly applied in a STV proportional representation system, ordinal voting enables voters to choose particular candidates from within party groupings, in addition to making choices between parties.  Non-ordinal systems, which appear to be the international norm, do not afford the possibility of this choice.  


Ian Farrow	
e-mail: 	ifarrow at aip.com.au
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