#ballot creator

First, my apologies for not answering this sooner—I meant to check, then got caught up on completing the reviews and had not looked up options until yesterday afternoon when completing my index of reviews.

I am happy to say that Cluey Voter now includes the 2025 federal election and it is the only ballot creator that I have found for this election that enables you to create a personal how-to-vote card for a below-the-line vote.

Even if you are voting above the line, though, there are a lot of parties and planning your vote ahead of time will save you hassle at the polling place. Sure, you could just make a list from most to least preferred in your word processor or notes app of choice, but having the candidates numbered in ballot order makes voting a lot quicker when you get to the booth and are trying to wrangle the big Senate ballot. You can copy column by column, left to right, rather than searching back and forth for each party or person.

So, here is a quick overview of options for anyone voting tomorrow who wants something in ballot order that they can have on their phone or print and take with them into the booth to transcribe onto the ballot. You must transcribe it onto the official ballot—you can't just stick the printout in the ballot box!

Personal how-to-vote card creators if you are voting above the line in the Senate

Donkey Votie and Build a Ballot both enable you to create a personal how-to-vote card if you are voting above the line. Donkey Votie is simpler, so it is the one I recommend; plus you can enjoy their humorous brief summaries of each party. Build a Ballot also enables you to make a personal how-to-vote card for your lower house electorate—but you have to go through a somewhat tedious quiz first (which to me seems to have been designed to suggest to soft Labor voters that the Greens align more with their views).

Personal how-to-vote card creator if you are voting below the line in the Senate

As noted above, Cluey Voter is the only one I've found. Us BTL voters are more poorly served this election than any I've voted in before when it comes to custom vote creators. I honestly find Cluey Voter a bit cumbersome: you rank parties by 5 general levels of support, then it generates a card and you can manually edit the numbers. This is fiddly, especially if you change your mind on even one candidate's position mid-ranking, but there is at least a feature to check if you have made any mistakes in the count.

If you have a complex vote like I do (reordering candidates within and across numerous tickets), here's my strategy to save time with Cluey Voter. First, list the parties/candidates from most to least preferred in your word processor or notes app of choice. Then go to Cluey Voter, select your state, ignore step 1 entirely, and click "go to step 2: rank candidates". Now, click "minimise preferences", which reduces what's there to just 12 digits. Delete all those. Now, use your ranked list to find each party/candidate, start numbering from 1, and get them into ballot order. Make sure you click "check" to see if there are any errors in your numbering. This is basically what you'd be doing if you took your notes app list into the ballot booth, but you can do it in the privacy of your own home before you go, with the added assurance that you haven't made any mistakes that would invalidate your vote.

(Be confident in your ranking from most to least preferred before you begin, because if you make an adjustment that throws off a large chunk of the ranking, even by one, you'll have to edit the lot manually.)

Once you're done, if you want a paper copy click "printer friendly" and then "print". I found, though, that even when I selected the options in the printer dialog box to try to force it to one page, this worked poorly. I had to shrink it to 70% size to fit on one side of A4 paper, which for me was too small to read comfortably. But then I blew it up to 135%, and for WA that put groups A-J on one side and K-UG on the other of a single sheet of A4. Perfect!