Liberal Party candidates got top place in two of the three ballot papers for ACT federal electorates. Photo: AEC.
Canberra Liberals have fared well in ballot paper positions for the 3 May election, drawing top spot for two of the three House of Representatives seats for the ACT.
Candidates are always pleased to get the poll position on ballot papers as it can give a slight advantage when it comes to ‘donkey’ voters.
A donkey vote is cast when a voter ranks the candidates based on the order they appear on the ballot paper – that is, number 1 for the top box, number 2 for the second and so on down the paper.
People who vote this way are referred to as donkey voters for obvious reasons.
Ballot papers marked that way are valid, and it is estimated that donkey votes can account for up to 2 per cent of the count, which can be crucial in marginal seats.
Donkey votes are cast for various reasons, including laziness, voter apathy, a protest against the quality of candidates, a protest against compulsory voting, voter ignorance, or for simple ease and time-saving.
In some cases, however, the order in which the candidates are listed on a ballot paper may well be in the order of the actual preferences of a voter.
Ballot papers for the imminent federal election were drawn on Friday (11 April) for all 150 House of Representatives seats across Australia.
For the ACT electorates, the Liberal Party scored the top spot for Bean (David Lamerton) and Fenner (Bola Olatunbosun).
The Greens’ Isobel Mudford got the number one position for the Canberra electorate ballot paper.
Independent Jessie Price scored number 2 on the Bean ballot, while independent Claire Miles got number 3 for Canberra and is followed by the Libs’ Will Roche at number 4 and Labor’s Alcia Payne at 5 (just ahead of Teresa McTaggart for the Animal Justice Party).
Labor didn’t get any higher than number 3 on any of the electorates’ ballots, with Andrew Leigh scoring third ranking for Fenner.
Labor can take a small comfort from the Bean ballot paper where its candidate David Smith placed last. Last-placed candidates can sometimes benefit from almost as much of an advantage from donkey voters, as a decent percentage of them cast their doney votes in reverse order bottom to top.
Senate candidates were also declared on Friday, with the ACT’s two seats up for grabs being contested by the Sustainable Australia Party, David Pocock independents, the Animal Justice Party, Labor, Liberal, Heart, Libertarian, and Greens.
A total of 1456 candidates have nominated to contest the 2025 federal election, after nominations were officially declared at public events held across Australia.
Ballot paper positions were drawn immediately after the nominations were declared.
The national figures include 330 candidates contesting 40 Senate vacancies and 1126 candidates for the 150 House of Representatives seats across the nation.
There are 898 male candidates across Australia, 547 female and 11 unspecified.
Acting Australian Electoral Commissioner Jeff Pope said that declarations of nominations are always a “very important milestone in the enormous logistical operation” of a federal election.
“We can now concentrate on securely printing 60 million ballot papers and get everything ready for early voting to commence on Tuesday, 22 April 2025,” he said.
“A record 18 million Australians are enrolled and able to cast their votes between Tuesday, 22 April, and 6 pm on election day (Saturday, 3 May), at approximately 8000 polling locations available across Australia”.
In the ACT, there are 322,356 registered voters; with 5,694,989 in NSW; 4,580,348 in Victoria; 3,738,087 for Queensland; 1,888,877 in WA; 1,306,900 South Australia; 411,681 in Tasmania; and 155,559 in the Northern Territory.
