donkey vote

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word donkey vote. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word donkey vote, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say donkey vote in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word donkey vote you have here. The definition of the word donkey vote will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofdonkey vote, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

From donkey (fool) + vote.

Pronunciation

  • (file)

Noun

donkey vote (plural donkey votes)

  1. (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); a vote so cast.
    • 1979, Howard Rae Penniman, editor, The Australian National Elections of 1977, 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.
    • 1993, John Craig, Australian Politics: A Source Book, 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, 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.

Hypernyms

Related terms