Group voting ticket

Part of the Politics series
Voting
Balloting Ballots Absentee ballot Provisional ballot Sample ballot Candidates and Ballot measures Write-in candidate Electorate Slate Ticket Collection Ballot box Compulsory voting Early voting Electronic voting Open ballot Polling place Postal voting Precinct Vote center Voting booth Counting Popular vote Tally Voting machine
Electoral systems Plurality and majoritarian systems First-past-the-post voting Two-round system Instant-runoff voting Plurality-at-large voting General ticket Usual judgment Proportional and semi-proportional systems Single non-transferable vote Cumulative voting Binomial system Party-list Single transferable voting Spare vote Mixed-member systems Mixed-member proportional Additional member system Mixed single vote (positive vote transfer) Scorporo (negative vote transfer) Mixed ballot transferable vote Alternative Vote Plus Dual-member proportional Rural–urban proportional Majority bonus system Parallel voting (Mixed member majoritarian)
Voting strategies Issue voting Fusion voting Split-ticket voting Straight-ticket voting Tactical voting Vote pairing Protest votes Abstention Donkey vote Election boycott None of the above Refused ballot Spoilt vote
Voting patterns and effects Coattail effect Voting advice application Likely voter Paradox of voting Passive electioneering Vote splitting Political apathy Voter fatigue Voter turnout Protest votes
Electoral fraud and prevention Ballot harvesting Ballot stuffing Voter intimidation Vote buying Voter suppression Voter caging Prevention Election ink Secret ballot Voter registration End-to-end verifiable voting
Politics portal
v t e

A group voting ticket (GVT) is a shortcut for voters in a preferential voting system, where a voter can indicate support for a list of candidates instead of marking preferences for individual candidates. For multi-member electoral divisions with single transferable voting, a group or party registers a GVT before an election with the electoral commission. When a voter selects a group or party above the line on a ballot paper, their vote is distributed according to the registered GVT for that group.

In Australia it is known as group ticket vote or ticket voting.^[1] As of 2022, group voting tickets are still used for elections in only two jurisdictions in the country: the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house of the legislature in the Australian state of Victoria, and the Councillor ballot for City of Melbourne local government elections.^[2] In South Australia House of Assembly elections, parties can submit preference tickets which are used to save a vote that would otherwise be informal. GVTs have been abolished by New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia.^[3] They were used in the Australian Senate from the 1984 federal election^[4][5] until the 2013 federal election. Tasmania has never used ticket voting.^[6]

A form of GVT is used for some elections in Fiji.

The introduction of GVTs in Australia led to the proliferation of microparties and the creation of preference deals between them, enabling one or more candidates within the network of parties to receive sufficient preferences to achieve the quota for election, especially in multi-member electoral divisions. Such preference deals were first arranged for the 1999 NSW election, where three members of the Minor Party Alliance were elected.