Donkey vote
There are different versions of the phenomenon applicable in the Parliament of Australia and in the Australian jurisdictions that use the Hare–Clark electoral system.
A variant was used for the South Australian Legislative Council before 1973, with two seats per "province" (electoral district) being filled at each election, but by majority-preferential voting, not by proportional representation.
[1] In a 2010 review, the Victorian Election Commission noted that:[2] Candidates are pleased if they get the top spot on the ballot paper when the draw for position takes place, because they will have the advantage of the donkey vote.In 1983, reforms were made to Federal electoral legislation to reduce the impact of donkey voting including: These reforms as well as an increase in electoral education funding have reduced the impact of donkey voting in Federal elections in recent years.
This prompted the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1940, which replaced that ballot paper layout with one closer to the present layout where the order of candidates' names within each group was determined by those candidates' mutual consent, which in practice means it is determined by the party organization.
However, this system has led to a great increase of horse trading by parties in the development of the distribution of preferences as it makes the difference in deciding who fills the final few positions in the Senate representing that State.
States that use proportional representation to elect their upper houses such as New South Wales use a similar system to the Senate.
The VEC after every election reports to the Victorian Parliament[5] but does not canvas the issues related to bias from donkey vote variations.
Page, G notes that while these effects are more pronounced in Local Government elections due to their propensity for large fields of candidates, commonly 2 to 18 up to a maximum of 41 candidates, Donkey voting has the potential to influence votes in all Australian elections that do not implement mitigations.
In Tasmania, candidates used to be listed in alphabetical order within a party column, leading to a donkey vote effect.
A similar phenomenon has been observed in Ireland and Malta, which also use single transferable vote (with candidates ranked alphabetically).
In many US elections, a voter may well be intensely interested in (e.g.) the Presidential contest but not in other, less prominent races on the same "long ballot".
In his book The Rise of Guardian Democracy: The Supreme Court's Role in Voting Rights, 1845–1969 (Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1974), Ward E.Y.
[11][12] In the 2018 North Carolina Supreme Court election, a rule change resulted in the order of the names on the ballot differing from previous years.
The Charlotte Observer claimed that "Studies have shown ballot order favors the candidate listed first, and could make a difference in a close race", even though the State has first-past-the-post voting with voluntary turnout.
[13] British pro-STV campaigner Enid Lakeman noted the same effect in UK local elections, where significant numbers of voters invited to X (say) three candidates for three council seats would simply mark an X against the three highest on the ballot-paper, even if they belonged to different parties.
[14] In O'Reilly v Minister for Environment,[15] the Irish High Court upheld the constitutional validity of alphabetical listing against an equality-rights challenge, noting that despite its faults, A to Z does have the advantage of making it easy to find candidates on the ballot-paper.
