group voting tickets

How GVTs Have Distorted Victorian Legislative Council Elections

Summary: Change is coming to the Victorian Legislative Council’s electoral system for November’s state election. Victoria becomes the last jurisdiction to abolish group voting tickets, a system that allowed parties to control preference flows and distort election results. Voters will now control between-party preferences and the method of voting mimics the Senate system in use since 2016. The change favours parties that campaign for votes over parties that rely on preferences. Based on past results, the big losers will be minor parties whose election from low votes has been achieved by “preference harvesting” tactics, something that is impossible with group voting tickets abolished.

The Victorian Labor government’s bill to abolish group voting tickets (GVTs) for Legislative Council elections was introduced on Tuesday 28 July, passed the lower house the next day with no opposition, and will be debated in the the upper house on Tuesday 11 August.

The bill is supported by the government, opposition and Greens and will pass by week’s end. The new voting rules will be in place for November’s state election.

(Update 9:30pm 11 August: the bill passed the upper house without amendment. The next step is royal assent by the Governor at which point the amendments in the bill are incorporated into the Electoral Act.)

Inside this post I look back at the five Victorian elections that have used GVTs and estimate how the results might have looked without GVTs. In summary –

  • The new system will favour parties that attract significant first preference support and disadvantage parties that rely heavily on preferences. Based on my analysis of post-GVT Senate results, (see this post), weaker preference flows will make it very difficult for a party to be elected with less than 6% in a region.
  • Across the 2014, 2018 and 2022 elections, 24 leading candidates who began the preference distribution with more than 6% of the vote were defeated by lower polling candidates. Three of the defeated candidates polled above 12% or 0.7 quotas.
  • At the same elections there were 20 candidates elected from under 6%, including nine that polled below 3%.
  • Without GVTs, the 2014 election would have seen five fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, two Coalition and two Greens.
  • Without GVTs, the 2018 election would have seen seven fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, three Coalition and three Greens.
  • Without GVTs, the 2022 result would have seen six fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, one Coalition and four Greens.
  • Over the last three elections, the number of non-Green minor party members would have fallen from 22 to 4. The number of Greens elected would have risen from 10 to 19, Labor from 47 to 50, and the Coalition from 41 to 47.

Table 1 below shows a four party breakdown of seats won at elections since 2006, along with my estimated results had there been no GVTs. My estimates assume the same parties contested election and the same party vote shares were recorded. I explain my method for estimating results inside the post.

Table 1 – Legislative Council Seats 2006-2022 – With and Without GVTs
Election Alternatives ALP L/NP GRN OTH
2006 Actual result 19 17 3 1
Estimate without GVTs 20 17 3 ..
2010 Actual result 16 21 3 ..
Estimate without GVTs 16 21 3 ..
2014 Actual result 14 16 5 5
Estimate without GVTs 15 18 7 ..
2018 Actual result 18 11 1 10
Estimate without GVTs 19 14 4 3
2022 Actual result 15 14 4 7
Estimate without GVTs 16 15 8 1

Source: Estimated results without GVTs calculated by Antony Green as set out in the post.

The changed results are due to weaker preference flows with the abolition of GVTs. Preference ‘deals’ implemented by GVTs were previously used to engineer results. Even the smallest parties could deliver preference flows above 90%. GVT deals could deliver victory to parties with little electoral support at the expense parties with up to 14 times the vote. These remarkable come from behind victories were created by GVT preference deals, not by the actions of voters.

Three of the more remarkable results occurred in 2018. In Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Transport Matters Party was elected from 0.62%, defeating a Greens candidate who began the count with 9.0%. In Southern-Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Liberal Democrats polled just 0.84% but defeated the second Liberal candidate who began the count with 12.3%. In Southern Metropolitan Region, the Sustainable Australia Party polled 1.32% but defeated the Greens on 13.5%. (Data in this paragraph has been corrected.)

Results such as these could only happen under an electoral system where voters are herded into voting for above-the-line for tickets with preferences controlled by parties.

A decade of experience with Senate elections since GVTs were abolished, and evidence from Legislative Council elections in other states, shows that preference flows are much weaker without GVTs. Larger parties that campaign actively can still influence preference decisions and create stronger preference flows, but the flows of smaller parties become almost random. This decreases the ability of parties to win from trailing positions.

When voters control preferences rather than parties, the system rewards parties that attract first preference votes over parties that rely on opaque and labyrinthine preference deals. The days of preference ‘whisperers’, preference ‘harvesting’ and ‘corralling’ preferences disappear when GVTs are abolished. Voters first preference party choices play a greater role in determining which parties elect members.

But I need to stress that the analysis in this post is about the parties that have contested the last five Victorian Legislative Council elections, not the parties contested the 2026 election.

It is clear from polls that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will poll strongly, will elect MLCs, and probably outpoll the Greens. I make no comment on whether abolishing GVTs increases or decreases the number of MLCs that One Nation might elect.

What is certain is that abolishing GVTs will see the number of MLCs elected by party more accurately reflect vote share by party. The new system will better translate the will of the electorate into representation than any election conducted with GVTs.

Read More »How GVTs Have Distorted Victorian Legislative Council Elections

The Impact on Senate Election Results of Abolishing GVTs – the Lessons for Victoria

Over the next week I will publish several posts looking at the abolition of Group Voting Tickets (GVTs) in Victoria and the implications this has for the state’s Legislative Council election in November.

Work I’ve undertaken in the past, about Senate elections both before and after the abolition of GVTs, produces clear conclusions.

Abolishing GVTs will increase the importance of first preference votes and diminish the value of preference transfers. Abolishing GVTs advantages parties that campaign for votes and disadvantages those that rely on deals and transfers to be elected.

Abolishing GVTs also ends the ability of parties to conspire and use GVTs to block the election of high polling parties. It also stops parties using GVTs to elect low-polling parties that few voters have heard of into important upper house balance of power seats.

The key aim of abolishing GVTs is to end party control over between-party preferences and leave it to voters to make the decision. With 95% of votes tied up in party tickets, too many elections had been decided by opaque preferences deals that voters had little knowledge of. A new form of above-the-line (ATL) voting was created allowing voters to show preferences for parties rather than candidates. Voters still had the option to vote below-the-line (BTL) for individual candidates of any party.

In other states this has been implemented with full optional preferential voting. A voter must indicate a first preference for a formal vote, but further preferences were optional. At elections conducted under the new rules, only a third of ATL ballot papers have preferences beyond ‘1’ and exhausted preferences have come to play a part in deciding who wins the final seats. (See my previous post that covered experience with the change in NSW.)

By contrast, the Senate instructions after the abolition of GVTs has been to mark at least six preferences, though a savings provision allows any first preference vote to remain formal. Under these instructions, around 95% of ballot papers are completed above the line (ATL) with between-party preferences. Given the exhaustion rate of preferences for minor party votes, there hasn’t been much difference between the role of preferences in the two ballot marking systems.

Abolishing GVTs makes it nearly impossible to win from a low vote AND from behind on preferences. Abolishing GVTs does not prevent a party winning from a low vote, nor prevent a trailing candidate from winning on preferences, though it does make it harder. But is becomes extremely difficult to do both at the same time.

A party winning from a low vote is possible without GVTs if there is an even split of vote between remaining parties. The United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet won a Victorian Senate seat in 2022 from only 0.28 quotas (4.0%). This was because there were five parties between 0.20 and 0.28 quotas competing for one seat. Without GVTs, preference flows were relatively weak and Babet maintained his lead to win the final seat. Preferences were not responsible for his victory.

And coming from behind is possible. In NSW at the 2025 Federal election, strong preference flows from the Coalition and small right-wing parties allowed One Nation on 0.42 quotas (6.1%) to pass Labor’s third candidate on 0.63 quotas (9.1%).

Without GVTs, the classic 2013 Victorian Senate case of Ricky Muir (Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party) on 0.5% defeating Helen Kroger (Liberal) on 11.6% would be impossible. Muir’s election was the equivalent of a lower house candidate on 1.7% defeating a candidate with 40%.

As One Nation showed in 2025, is is possible for a candidate with two-thirds of another candidate’s vote to come from behind and win on preference transfers. Voters still have their say on preferences, but without GVTs, results can’t be engineered. Muir’s case of winning from behind with only one-23rd of the winning candidate’s vote is absolutely impossible without GVTs.

And to date, every jurisdiction except except Victoria has understood this inherent problem with GVTs and abolished them. Next week it appears Victoria will be the last to join the club.

Based on One Nation’s two come from behind Senate victories in 2025, I think around 0.4 quotas is the minimum a party needs for victory, 6.5% translated into Victorian Legislative Council numbers. That’s unless you get a case like Ralph Babet’s where a seat remains to be filled and all remaining parties have a low vote.

Looking at how many parties have been elected from trailing positions, the difference produced by the abolition of GVTs for Senate elections is clear.

At the 2013 half-Senate election, the last to use GVTs, 9 of the 36 state Senate positions were won by trailing candidates. At three half-Senate elections since the abolition of GVTs, only 2 of 108 state Senate seats have been won by trailing candidates.

And both of those trailing wins were aided by Senate instructions to mark 6 preferences. Trailing wins may be even harder under instructions for ‘1’ with further preferences optional.
Read More »The Impact on Senate Election Results of Abolishing GVTs – the Lessons for Victoria

Reports that Victoria is set to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

(Update Wednesday 29 July: – Legislation has been introduced today and will be debated and passed by the Assembly this afternoon. The legislation abolishes group voting tickets and adopts a similar method of ATL voting to the Senate. Voters are required to mark 5 ATL preferences and there is a savings provision so that any vote with at least a valid first preference vote remains formal. There is no change to the Victorian method of BTL voting where voters are required to complete preferences for five candidates.)

Two weeks ago I published a post highlighting that if Victoria wanted to abolish group voting tickets (GVTs) for the 2026 Legislative Council election, legislation had to be passed at the next sitting of parliament in the last week of July.

As I outlined in the post (you can find it at this link), abolishing GVTs would bring Victoria in line with the Commonwealth, New South Wales, South Australian and Western Australian parliaments. It would also implement a recommendation made twice in the last four years by the Victorian parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee.

Both The Age and Herald-Sun reported over the weekend that GVTs will be abolished and voters allowed to indicate their own preferences with an above-the-line (ATL) vote. What the reports don’t make clear is whether Victoria will adopt fully optional preferential voting as used in NSW, SA and WA. The alternative would be to copy the Senate model where ballot paper instructions are to complete a minimum number of ATL preferences. The Senate model still allows any vote with a valid ATL first preference to remain formal in line with ballot paper instructions for the GVT system.

The number of members to be elected per region may lean the Victorian decision in favour of the Senate system.

NSW, SA and WA elect their Legislative Councils using a state-wide electorate. NSW elects 21 members, South Australia 11, and Western Australia 37. A single ‘1’ vote in these systems is enough to produce a very proportional result. Over six elections since the NSW system was reformed, only twice have preferences altered the party elected as the 21st member. Two SA elections elections have seen preferences play no part in the result, while the first WA election after reform saw preferences change only one of the 37 members elected.

The complication in Victoria is members are not elected state-wide. The Legislative Council consists of five members elected from each of eight regions. The quota for election is a high 16.7%. A high quota makes it much harder to match the number of members elected by party in each region to the proportion of votes by party.

As with the Senate, where six members are elected per state, there may be an argument to encourage more ATL preferences to ensure the members elected reflect first preference votes and the preference intent of voters for excluded parties.

The Senate rule to mark at least six preferences encourages voters to complete preferences. At the 2025 Victorian Senate election, 83.4% of voters marked six preferences. Only 1.9% of voters marked a single first preference, a vote that remains formal under Senate voting rules.

Contrast this with lower preferencing rates at interstate Legislative Council experience where only a third of ballot papers have preferences. If fully optional preferential voting were adopted, then clearly there would be fewer preferences playing a part in determining the final seats in each region. It is a matter of opinion whether this is a good or bad outcome.

Fully optional preferences would work without difficulty if Victoria were electing 40 MLCs from a state-wide electorate. But Victoria can’t switch to state-wide election without a referendum, so the five members by eight regions model will be used in 2026.

In this post I’ll first summarise why the GVT system is so wrong using past election results. I’ll also look at evidence from NSW elections about how the Senate’s minimum preference numbers rule has caused more voters to complete further preferences at Legislative Council elections.Read More »Reports that Victoria is set to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

Time Running Out for the Victorian Government to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

10 August – party lists updated

The long-term decline in support for Australia’s traditional parties, combined with surging support for One Nation, is creating uncertainty over who will form government after November’s Victorian state election.

Opinion polls show Labor, the Coalition and One Nation all under a third of the vote. It is difficult to translate this three-way split of votes into a seat prediction, but it points to defeat for Labor if the Liberal and National parties co-operate with One Nation on preferences.

Seats not votes determine who forms government and whether it is a majority or minority government. Turning votes into seats will come down to order of exclusion and preference flows between three or four competing candidates in each seat.

The outcome in the Legislative Council, the upper house elected by proportional representation, would be easy to pick if it was elected from a state-wide electorate like other mainland states.

But Victoria’s Legislative Council is divided into eight regions electing five members each. Five regions cover most of metropolitan Melbourne. Three others extend like spokes to the corners of the state, covering rural and regional Victoria but including some outer Melbourne suburbs.

Having only five members per region makes it very difficult to match members elected to party vote share. The high 16.7% quota makes preferences critical for turning surplus to quota votes into extra seats.

And there is another problem. Despite numerous warnings and recommendations, electoral law in Victoria still mandates that the discredited Group Voting Ticket (GVT) system will be used for November’s upper house election.

Unless the law is changed, as recommended by committee and as already changed elsewhere, the ‘preference whisperers’ will be back in business.

We have had four Federal elections since GVTs were abolished for the Senate. Since 2016 voters have grown used to numbering their own party preferences when voting above-the-line (ATL). But as it stands today, and as I explained before the last Victorian election in 2022, any ATL preferences will be discarded and replaced by the GVT of the voter’s first choice party.

Twice this term the Electoral Matters Committee has recommended that group voting tickets to be abolished. Despite support for the move from the Opposition and Greens, nothing has happened. The Electoral Act retains group voting tickets as the method by which above-the-line votes are handled in the count.

If something isn’t done in the next month, shady backroom deals will determine the composition of the Legislative Council. And if the past is anything to go by, there could be half a dozen crossbench members elected from unknown parties recording only a tiny first preference vote.

If no one party wins a majority in the lower house, the prospects of an upper house occupied by political unknowns can only complicate the task of trying to govern Victoria for the next four years.

The Legislative Council is meant to be elected by proportional representation. But with more than 90% of votes locked into pre-arranged group voting tickets, proportionality is distorted and political power is delivered into the hands of the small cabal of party negotiators who arrange the GVT preference deals.

To avoid the upper house election descending into farce, it’s time for the Allan government to act and abolish group voting tickets.

As I explain in this post, the Electoral Commission has set a deadline for changing the law ahead of the election. And as I also explain, the last minute rush of party registrations and proposed party name changes show that the preference harvesting game will kick off if GVTs are not abolished. Read More »Time Running Out for the Victorian Government to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

Group Voting Tickets Published for the Victorian Legislative Council Election

Group voting tickets for the Legislative Council have been published this evening on the Victorian Electoral Commission’s (VEC’s) website.

The double deck ballot papers being used for the 2022 election are bad enough, but their use has thrown out the ticket layout of the VEC’s published tickets. You can find them at this link but they are very difficult to read or understand.

Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of the work for you. I have managed to reformat the GVT data to produce much more readable versions of the tickets for each region.

Processing the tickets to prepare my Legislative Council Calculators has taken all afternoon. As a by-product I’ve produced these easier to use versions of the tickets.

The work setting up the calculators, and preparing the data set-up for the ABC election computer, means I haven’t had time to analyse the tickets and won’t have time tomorrow either.

But I have decided to make the tickets available for others to use. Feel free to make use of the linked documents below. All I request is a credit if you make use of the documents. It’s taken quite an effort to prepare them.

Calculators will hopefully be published by mid-week and there will be html versions of the tickets on the Victorian Election site on Monday morning.

Links for each region are contained inside the post.Read More »Group Voting Tickets Published for the Victorian Legislative Council Election

The Victorian Legislative Council’s Rotten Electoral System – part 1

Victoria is the only Australian jurisdiction that continues to elect its upper house using the discredited Group Voting Ticket (GVT) system.

GVTs in Victoria give parties almost total control over the distribution of preferences, which flows through to controlling who wins the balance of power in the Legislative Council.

GVTs have been abolished in every state and for the Senate because they can be manipulated to elect parties with only a tiny percentage of the vote, a result that distorts the intended proportionality of the chamber’s electoral system.

In the lower house voters control preferences. Parties and candidates can only try to influence voters in how they complete their preferences. It is the same for the reformed Senate electoral system where voters now control the flow of between-party preferences, not parties.

As I explain in this post, the rottenness of GVTs is revealed when you examine the proportion of ‘above-the-line’ (ATL) votes that are under party control at Victorian Legislative Council elections compared to the related data for non-GVT Senate elections.

In Victoria, 100% of every ATL vote for every party, whether big or small, flows according to the party ticket.

In contrast, the 2022 Senate election saw major parties lucky to influence even the second preference of 50% of ATL votes, and the rate dropped precipitously for smaller parties.

It is without doubt that the reformed Senate system delivers an outcome that reflects the preferences of voters, where in Victoria the use of GVTs means the result reflects the decisions made by the tiny cabal of officials who negotiate the preference deals.Read More »The Victorian Legislative Council’s Rotten Electoral System – part 1

Voter Preferences set be Ignored at the 2022 Victorian Legislative Council Election

After three successful Senate elections where results were determined by voters controlling their own preferences, November’s Victorian Legislative Council election will return to the dark ages with upper house results determined by ‘preferences whisperers’ and backroom show-and-tell preference deals.

Even worse, hundreds of thousands of Victorian voters, maybe even millions, will have their Legislative Council preferences ignored and replaced by party tickets.

This is because Victoria is the only Australian jurisdiction that still uses Group Voting Tickets (GVTs), a form of party determined preferences.

The problem for November’s state election is that Victorian voters have used the reformed Senate electoral system at the last three Federal elections.

The reformed Senate system allows voters to determine their own between-party preferences above the line on the ballot paper.

In Victoria voters can’t.

Why this matters is clear when you look at how Victorians completed their ballot papers at May’s Senate election.

Overall 92.7% of Victorian voters completed their ballot papers by numbering preferences for parties ‘above the line’. That’s more than 3.5 million voters marking how they wanted their ballot paper preferences distributed.

If that figure were repeated at the Victorian election, that would be 92.7% of votes going by the party ticket with all other voter preferences ignored.Read More »Voter Preferences set be Ignored at the 2022 Victorian Legislative Council Election

How the Liberals stopped No Mandatory Vaccination Winning a Seat in the WA Legislative Council

The victory of the Daylight Saving Party’s Wilson Tucker from only 98 votes at March’s WA Legislative Council election has attracted much attention and derision. It has also become the justification for the McGowan government’s plans to reform the Legislative Council’s electoral system.

But Tucker’s victory was not the only example in March of group voting tickets being used to engineer results. In South Metropolitan Region, a well co-ordinated preference “harvesting” operation almost delivered the final seat in the region to Cam Tinley of the No Mandatory Vaccination Party.

These examples highlight how the manipulation of group voting tickets (GVTs) by the tactic of preference harvesting can distort the intent of voters. Voters for 19 of the 26 party and independent groups on the ballot paper had their votes delivered by GVTs to Cam Tinley.

That’s more than 40,000 voters with no idea their above-the-line vote for a chosen party or independent would be sent off to try an elect a representative from the No Mandatory Vaccination Party.

The only thing that prevented Cam Tinley beating the Green’s Brad Pettitt was a decision announced early in the campaign by the Liberal Party that it would put No Mandatory Vaccination behind Labor and the Greens on how-to-votes and upper house GVTs.

At the very end of the South Metropolitan Region count, that decision sent around 12,200 Liberal GVT preferences Pettitt’s way, delivering the Greens a seat that could otherwise would have gone to No Mandatory Vaccination. None of the 20 parties that contributed to Tinley’s final tally polled more than 1.9% of the vote, and 11 polled less than half a percent.

Despite these parties attracting few votes, GVTs delivered their preference negotiators total control over how ballot papers would have their preferences transferred. It allowed party votes to be stacked in a way that would have been impossible if voters controlled how preference were distributed.Read More »How the Liberals stopped No Mandatory Vaccination Winning a Seat in the WA Legislative Council

2021 WA Election – How the Daylight Saving Party turned 98 votes into a seat in the Legislative Council

The election of Wilson Tucker from the Daylight Saving Party at March’s Western Australian election has become the catalyst for abolishing group voting tickets in Western Australia.

Mr Tucker polled 98 votes or just 0.2% of the vote in the vast Mining and Pastoral Region. His low vote is not surprising as four referendums over five decades have shown little support for daylight saving in this vast region covering the state’s most remote areas.

Anyone familiar with how to engineer results using group voting tickets knows the system can elect parties with little support. But even I, with two decades of covering the perversity of elections using group voting tickets, find myself startled that such an egregious distortion of the electorate’s will could be constructed.

It is the most magnificent example of preference harvesting yet achieved by well-known preference ‘whisperer’ Glenn Druery. It is the crowning glory of his art, but will also be the death knell of the group voting ticket system he used to achieve it.

The back-story to Mr Tucker’s election gets even weirder. Tucker left Western Australia three years ago and has been working as a software engineer for Amazon on the other side of the Pacific Ocean in Seattle. It is a better paid job than his new four year position in the WA Legislative Council. That is assuming, in this period of pandemic, he can get a flight back, is allowed entry to Australia and can cross the Western Australian border. (Update: I’m informed Mr Tucker has arrived back ready to take his seat.) Tucker’s term is due to begin on 22 May. If he is unable to return and vacates the seat, a re-count would create the farcical situation where his his running mate, Janet Wilson, would take his seat despite receiving zero votes at the state election.Read More »2021 WA Election – How the Daylight Saving Party turned 98 votes into a seat in the Legislative Council

How to Vote in the Western Australian Upper House

It is VERY important that voters understand that the rules for voting in the WA upper house, the Legislative Council, are not the same as those used at the last two federal Senate elections.

Ahead of the 2016 Federal election, the rules for Senate voting were changed. Party control over preferences was ended by the abolition of group voting tickets (GVTs), previously used by parties to control preferences. The new system put control over between-party preference entirely in the hands of voters, the same as applies at lower house elections.

But these changes do not apply for WA Legislative Council elections.

This post is a Q&A explaining the differences and giving some hints on how to complete your Legislative Council ballot paper.Read More »How to Vote in the Western Australian Upper House