Queensland citizens draws to the attention of the House that the current preferential voting system has a strong tendency to unfairly entrench the dominance of two major parties in the parliament.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to introduce a referendum, to be held at the next available state-wide election, to amend the preferential voting system to one whereby all preference numbers are given a value equal to 1 for first-preference votes, 0.5 for second-preference votes, 1/3 for third-preference votes, 0.25 for fourth-preference votes etc, down to the last preference, which is given a value of 0, and total votes received for each candidate be based on totalling the score from each voter on the above basis.

As an example, if Candidate A received 35% of the first preference votes and all these voters gave their second preference to Candidate C, Candidate B had a similar outcome, receiving 33% of first preference votes and Candidate C received 32% of first preferences with second preferences being allocated 14% to Candidate A and 18% to Candidate B this would lead to the following results under each system:

Current:
Candidate A: 49% TCP, Candidate B: 51% TCP (= winner)

Proposed:
Candidate A: 35 + 14 x 0.5 = 42
Candidate B: 33 + 18 x 0.5 = 42
Candidate C: 32 + (35 + 33) x 0.5 = 66 (= winner)

This is considered by your petitioners to be a much fairer voting system.