I have a proposal for a new electoral system

[Smid]

In Queensland and NSW in Australia, Optional Preferential Voting is used, similar to this. A person may number as many preferences as they wish and the vote remains formal as long as a formal preference exists. It's IRV, but allows people to "Just Vote 1" if they wish (I put that in inverted commas because frequently people are urged to do that by the major parties). It means that people who wish to cast a preference may do so, but people who don't wish to don't have to.

[Smid]

How does your preference get distributed if you equally rank two candidates?

Generally speaking, I trust voters to be able to make their own decisions in relation to where their preferences lie. Parties do hand out How-To-Vote (HTV) cards, giving their party's suggestions as to how to preference, but I think we can trust individual voters to make their own decisions in relation to who to preference, or indeed how many preferences to allocate.