donkey vote

• donkey-vote

From donkey (“fool”) +‎ vote, from donkeys often being depicted as clumsy and lacking intelligence (see ass). First attested in 1962.

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donkey vote (plural donkey votes)

1. (chiefly Australia) The act of casting a vote in an election using a preferential voting system, by specifying the candidates in the order in which they are listed on the ballot paper (i.e., by numbering the choices sequentially from top to bottom, ignoring what they represent).

   Hypernym: vote

   • 1993, John Craig, Australian Politics: A Source Book‎^[1], page 178:

     Examination of the 1984 and 1987 federal elections showed the donkey vote to be worth about 0.65% of the formal vote (Peetz 1989:469).

   • 2000, Shaun Bowler, Elections in Australia, Ireland, and Malta Under the Single Transferable Vote‎^[2], page 56:

     This needs to be tempered somewhat: Voting systems that require electors to express preferences they may not in fact possess are susceptible to random effects such as the so-called donkey-vote phenomenon observed for federal elections in Australia, in which some electors simply number sequentially from 1 onward down the ballot paper.

   1. A vote so cast.

      Hypernym: vote

      • 1979, Howard Rae Penniman, editor, The Australian National Elections of 1977‎^[3], page 325:

        The share of preferences going from the Progress Party to the Democrats was swollen, if not almost wholly accounted for, by donkey votes.

Donkey votes are counted as formal votes (i.e., valid votes) in Australia. It should not be confused with an informal vote, which is nullified.

• donkey voter