Optional preferential voting is required for Australia

Example Australian Senate ticket: Source AEC

The Abbott government has been sworn, but the buzz from the 2013 Election campaign is far from over. The almost universal outrage at the way in which minor and micro parties have been able to sneak into Senate poses an ongoing problem; does Australia require electoral reform. In short, Yes.
There is nothing inherently wrong with minor or micro parties holding power within the Senate. This blog is an advocate for more representation from independents and minor parties in Parliament. Though what is highly objectionable, is the idea that unwanted and (mostly) disliked parties and politicians getting into power where there was clearly no preference for them.

Optional preferential voting needs to be the new solution for Australia, for all State and Federal elections. With compulsory voting required in Australia (or at least attendance at a polling booth), the ability for citizens to fully utilise their political right to participate in an election needs to occur. When someone goes to vote, before they even mark their ballot papers, they have two options. To vote or not to vote/cast an informal vote that will not count. Seems simple, but it gets a little more complicated later on. Many people cast informal ballots at the election such as voting for only one candidate or writing obscenities for the electoral officials to laugh over later. They validly decide that they don't want to place any candidate in power. This is a legitimate political choice. For voters who vote this way, they reject the current offer of political candidates. But what about citizens who want to only vote for 1 or just a few candidates, but not others? In a two candidate election it is simple, they preference one candidate above another. Throw in more candidates and the voter will probably find other candidates they would preference above their least preferred candidate. But an elections and voting shouldn't come down to ordering your least preferred candidates. You should be able to reject candidates outright if you have no preference at all for them to be in Parliament.

Many senate tickets run over 50 candidates, so if you're voting below the line, you can sometimes have a difficult time working out who your least preferred candidate is. In the House of Representatives, there is a different problem. In an electorate where it is unlikely that no minor party or independent will get a majority, as is the case with most electorates in Australia, you still have to choose between either of the Liberal or Labor candidates to vote for. If you wish to protest vote so they do not receive your vote, you forgo the opportunity to vote for your most preferred candidate.

What happens if no party manages to get a majority?
Then you re-hold the election. This may seem like an unfortunate consequence and an inconvenience, but when the inconvenience is having a minor party is only 0.02% of the primary vote having the balance of power, sending a state or an electorate back to the polls is nothing too sinister.

So where should this rule apply? It should apply to all House of Representatives and Senate ballots. House of Representative ballots are typically small. We could safely assume that people would give some preference options, especially if they want their vote to fully count (and not have to go back to the polls). But it prevents them from having to give a preference to a candidate they have no desire to elect to Parliament. As for the Senate ticket, you may still have above and below the line optional voting. If parties want to engage in preference deals they may. Though it also allows them to decide which parties they would not want to be in power with. This way, parties won't have to choose between the Motoring Enthusiast Party and Sports party. It also enables more below the line votes to occur. The main reason people don't vote below the line is not because they don't know how to count (even up into the hundreds), but because they can't be bothered distributing their preferences across so many parties they don't care about. 

Electoral reform in Australia needs to occur. Or the issues we identified as problems within the 2013 election, will just reoccur again and again.