elections, elections to company boards and elections in voluntary bodies such as football clubs. Negotiations for disposition of preference recommendations to voters are taken very seriously by candidates because transferred preferences carry the same weight as primary votes. (A vote is only transferred if use of the earlier preference means the ballot cannot be used effectively.) Political parties usually produce how-to-vote cards to assist and guide voters in the ranking of candidates. When parties declare how they are preferencing other parties, typically in the lead-up to an election, they are declaring how they will instruct their supporters via these cards: there is no mechanism in the electoral system for inter-party preferences. Secret balloting Secret balloting was implemented by Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia in 1856, followed by other Australian colonies: New South Wales (1858), Queensland (1859), and Western Australia (1877). Colonial (soon to become States) electoral laws, including the secret ballot, applied for the first election of the Australian Parliament in 1901, and the system has continued to be a feature of all elections in Australia and also applies to referendums. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 does not explicitly set out the secret ballot but a reading of sections 206, 207, 325 and 327 of the Act would imply its assumption. Sections 323 and 226(4) do however, apply the principle of a secret ballot to polling staff and would also support the assumption. Proxy voting is not permitted at federal and state elections. Alternative voting methods Most voting takes place with registered voters attending a polling station on election day, where they are given a ballot paper which they mark in a prescribed manner and then place it into a ballot box. However, alternative voting methods are available. For example, a person may vote by an absentee ballot whereby a voter attends a voting place which is not in the electoral district in which they are registered to vote. Instead of marking the ballot paper and putting it in the ballot box, the voter's ballot paper is placed in an envelope and then it is sent by the voting official to the voter's home district to be counted there. Other alternatives are postal voting and early voting, known as "pre-poll voting", which are also available to voters who would not be in their registered electoral districts on an election day. A form of postal voting was introduced in Western Australia