Australia

(only addressing this part, as the other comments have the important part covered)

I feel like this should be a legal obligation, that we are all given this kind of information in a flowchart. But I can’t find it. Can anybody help?

I'd say the Australian Electoral Commission is the most authentic resource for getting facts about our election (seeing as they run it). I wish some of this information was shoved in our faces more.

The information sheets PDFs linked on this page summarise how the vote count works: https://www.aec.gov.au/learn/preferential-voting.htm

Further reading: The preferential voting system we use in Australia is Single Transferable Vote (with the House of Reps using Instant-Runoff Voting ~~with optional preferences~~. IRV is just a single-winner version of STV), but you'll often hear it just called 'preferential voting' here (other preferential voting systems exist, e.g. Borda count).

Your vote goes where you want it. Preferences do not ever get fed anywhere in Australian federal elections anymore. There was a thing called "group voting tickets" prior to 2016, where you would vote 1 in the Senate "above the line", and the party could send your vote where they wanted. But these were abolished. They no longer exist. And they never existed in the House of Representatives, anyway. I'll address both houses separately, and pretend you live in Adelaide and it's the 2022 election (just because Adelaide is first alphabetically).

House of Representatives

You'll get a green ballot paper with a number of candidates on it. They are in an order that is randomly chosen by the AEC (but is the same for everyone in an electorate). In your case, 7 candidates, in order: Liberal, Labor, United Australia, FUSION, Greens, Australian Federation, One Nation.

All you have to do is number them in order, with 1 on your favourite, 7 on your least favourite. If your favourite does not achieve 50%, it'll go to your second favourite. If they don't get 50%, it goes to your 3rd, etc. In all likelihood, eventually your vote will be given to either the Liberal or Labor, unless you live in one of a small number of electorates where the last two candidates are different (e.g. Greens or an independent).

If you don't number every box, your ballot will be discarded and won't count for anything.

Senate

You'll get a large white ballot paper with a number of columns on it, each column containing up to 6 candidates. There is an "above the line" section and a "below the line" section. Above the line is parties, below the line is individual candidates within those parties.

As you're (in my hypothetical) from South Australia, your ballot contains 23 columns, labelled A–V, plus the "ungrouped" column. Independents can run entirely ungrouped, or they can form a small group together to get their own column. Like the House of Representatives, everyone in your state gets the same ballot paper, but it's chosen randomly.

In South Australia in 2022, Liberals are column C. Labor are D. Nationals are G. Greens are P. One Nation is S. You can choose to do research on the others if you like, but to keep it simple I'll stick with these.

If you vote above the line, you number at least 1 to 6, with 1 on your favourite party. For most people, this is probably what you want to do. If you vote below the line, you number at least 1 to 12, with 1 on your favourite individual candidate. The process is similar to the Reps, but instead of reaching 50%, they need to reach 14.3% (instead of 100%/2, it's 100%/7, because each state elects 6 senators). And, if a candidate gets more than precisely 14.3%, your vote actually goes to the next candidate on your ballot, proportional to how much more than 14.3% they got.

Voting above-the-line is the same as voting below-the-line for those parties in the order that party wanted. But only in the order that party wanted for their own candidates. So, if you vote 1 Greens, 2 Labor, 3 Nationals, that's the same as voting

1. Barbara Pocock (Greens)
2. Major Moogy Sumner (Greens)
3. Melanie Selwood (Greens)
4. Penny Wong (Labor)
5. Don Farrell (Labor)
6. Trimann Gill (Labor)
7. Joanne Sutton (Labor)
8. Belinda Owens (Labor)
9. Lisa Blandford (National)
10. Damien Buijs (National)

The only reason to vote below-the-line is if you don't like the order a party puts their own candidates, or if you want to avoid some of a party's candidates entirely. For example, if you kinda like Barbara Pocock, but you really love Melanie Selwood, and you're ok with Labor in general, but really love Penny Wong and really hate Don Farrell, you could vote below the line to do this:

1. Penny Wong (Labor)
2. Melanie Selwood (Greens)
3. Barbara Pocock (Greens)
4. Major Moogy Sumner (Greens)
5. Trimann Gill (Labor)
6. Joanne Sutton (Labor)
7. Belinda Owens (Labor)
8. Lisa Blandford (National)
9. Damien Buijs (National)

The other reason to vote below-the-line is if you want to vote for some of the candidates in that "ungrouped" section.

For the vast majority of people, there's very little reason to do this, just vote above the line. Your vote for the Greens can never go to any other party without you choosing to number that party.

Because you only have to number up to 6 in the Senate, it is possible for your vote to be "exhausted". In this case, it is as though you never voted at all. It does not make your vote for the candidates you did vote for any stronger than it otherwise would be. All it does is make it easier for the parties you disagree with the most to win. Because of this, I would strongly encourage you to keep numbering all the way until you have numbered every party with any reasonable chance of winning a seat. That means make sure your numbers include: Greens, Labor, LNP (or Liberals and Nationals), One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots, Nick Xenophon, any independents who are particularly strong, like David Pocock in the ACT.

You don't have to do this, but I recommend you do, because not doing it increases the chance that the party you like the least will win. For example, you might dislike Labor 90% but dislike the LNP 99% and dislike One Nation 99.9%. If you don't number all three of those parties somewhere in your list, it is more likely that One Nation will end up winning the seat, or the LNP will, rather than Labor. But it won't increase the chance a party you like wins, such as the Greens or Animal Justice Party. If you think Labor winning would be better than the LNP, or the LNP would be better than One Nation...even by a miniscule amount, you should number them all.

At the last election, I made the mistake of not doing this. I stopped once I got to Labor, I think, or maybe a few smaller parties after Labor. But I didn't number LNP and One Nation. And unfortunately, One Nation ended up winning the last seat in Queensland, by a small margin, over the LNP. I don't like either party, but, well...one is clearly worse than the other. I won't be making that mistake again.

Timing

Close of Rolls is 7th April. If you haven't already, make sure you're enrolled and have your address updated with the AEC by this date.

Declaration of nominations is 11th April. After this date you'll know 100% everyone who is running in your seat for the House of Representatives and in your state for the Senate, and can do research. In the meantime, this Wikipedia page lists most of the major candidates from most parties.

I hope that helps!

I'm adamant that they need to feel some pain

Of course you can develop your own decision on how to vote but this sounds frustratingly similar to the protest voters from the US election. Picking a team or punishing a team is a very American notion.

The basic idea is to consider the representatives in your electoral division, consider their policies, their character, and select the one you feel will best represent your own interests and the interests of the people you care about.

For example, if you review the local candidates and determine that the Nationals candidate will best represent your interests then it doesn't make any sense to vote for an independent just because a National candidate would ultimately support Dutton to form government.

Okay, firstly GOOD ON YOU for recognising that #LibLab are both corrupt and don't represent average Australians. It's great to see demographics have been shifting ever away from the Two Party System.

It is confusing. As noted by previous comment, voting below the line ensures that your absolute preferences are counted.

Where a flowchart would be helpful is with GVTs (that have been abolished almost everywhere see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_voting_ticket) but unfortunately with the lack of knowing for sure in advance the levels of support for each candidate, especially minor & Indies, there's no real way of knowing for sure who will end up winning from preferences exactly. Best you can do is read up on all the candidates, put #LibLab last (but honestly possibly openly Nazi Nazis dead last, then Libs, then Lab) and everyone else in order of how much you agree with their policy platform.

And talk to people about it. Point out that both major parties only benefit billionaires, in the end.

When it comes to preferences they go to the parties/candidates in the order that you number them. Others can suggest where you send your preferences (how to vote cards being the typical method) but ultimately it's up to you.

For the house of reps if a third party doesn't win the seat you will ultimately end up voting for Labour or Liberals, because you have to number all the boxes. You'll have to decide which you like more (or least) and number accordingly. In the senate you can potentially exhaust your vote before reaching the majors (assuming you reach the minimum numbering before getting to them) but unless you truly believe both majors are the same I'd advise including them.

If you vote above the line in the senate your preferences follow party lines as you have numbered them (i.e. preferences will count towards the candidates for the first party you number, then the second and so forth). You still control what parties you're voting for and what order.

Is there any resource out there that can show me where the preferences get fed to, so I can make an informed choice.

You choose your own preferences.

On the House of Representative ballot, this has always been the case. You must number all the boxes.

On the Senate ballot it used to be the case that if you voted 'above the line', you could only vote '1', and nothing more, and the parties decided the preference flow. That is not the case anymore. Now, the Senate ballot has partially-optional preferencing 'above the line'. You must number at least 6 boxes if you vote above the line, but you can number all the boxes above the line if you choose. I would encourage numbering as many preferences as you can with the knowledge you have. (You can also number below the line if you want to pick your own ordering of the candidates for each party/group.)

See: https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_Senate.htm

Or: https://www.chickennation.com/voting/senate/ (and the one about House of Representatives voting: https://www.chickennation.com/voting/).

I'm happy to answer any further questions if you have them, don't hesitate to ask 🙂

Vote below the line, take your time and get it right then you dictate the preferences.