[BlackAura]

> If I'm understanding this right, the Australians have the privilege of instant run-off preferential voting, and still prefer to just vote party line? Could an Aussie please explain this phenomenon to me?

We have two separate elections - one for the house of representatives, and one for the senate. In both cases, we do preferential voting.

For the house of representatives, you have maybe five or six parties running in your electorate, each with one candidate. Filling out preferences for this is feisable, and plenty of people do. It takes about ten seconds.

For the senate... not so much.

This year, the senate election in New South Wales has 110 candidates. You can either provide a single vote for one party (your preferences will be distributed according to whatever deals that part has made), or you can individually rank all 110 senate candidates. The ballot paper is a meter wide. Oh, and the desks you use are typically wide enough to fit an A4 sheet of paper.

Nobody bothers. It's just way too much hassle.

[coffeecheque]

There are interesting projects out there to help you organise your Senate papers before you go to the booth. Check out http://belowtheline.org.au or http://senate.io