A Langer vote was a style of voting in the Australian electoral system designed to avoid the requirement to express preferences for all candidates without the vote being rejected as informal. The title is a tribute to Albert Langer,[1] an Australian political activist, who advocated for the use of this style as a de facto method of optional preferential voting for making a valid vote for the voter's preferred candidates while the deliberate "error" avoided the vote being counted for one of the major political parties.[2]
Voters were advised to mark 1, 2, . .n, for favoured candidates, but to mark a repetition of the next digit against each of the remaining candidates. For example, a vote would be marked 1, 2, 3, 3, 3. The votes for the first and second candidates would be counted but the remaining candidates would then not receive preferences. From 1983 this was a valid vote, however since 1998 the Electoral Act requires that there be no repeated numbers.[1]
- ^ a b Bryant v Commonwealth of Australia [1998] FCA 1242 (30 September 1998).
- ^ Twomey, Anne. "Free to Choose or Compelled to Lie? - The Rights of Voters after Langer v The Commonwealth" (PDF).
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) (1996) 24 Federal Law Review 201.