Monday night. A spectacular day at the office for Labor’s Cathy O’Toole, who now leads by 73 votes after gaining 39 votes, while LNP member Ewen Jones lost 36. Furthermore, it has been reported that the AEC expects the count to be finalised tomorrow (Tuesday), so there presumably isn’t much prospect of that being chased down. The biggest contributor to the change was the Vincent booth, where, AAP reports, One Nation preferences “were mistakenly put in the LNP candidate’s column rather than Labor’s”. As Kevin Bonham points out in comments, this recount process is picking up a considerable number of errors in counting of preferences because, as I explained in Crikey last week, the AEC skipped with the full distribution of preferences that normally precedes the initiation of a recount, and such votes have been checked one time less than they would normally have been. There was also a significant change at the Northern Beaches booth, where Labor gained 10 and the LNP lost 13. Together with tiny adjustments to the pre-poll and postal totals, changes were made to the results of 12 ordinary polling booths yesterday, bringing the total up to 23 out of 43, although that doesn’t include booths that may have been checked but required no change. Comments thread denizens have ascertained there are 11 yet to be examined, based on time stamps for the booths on the AEC results pages. That will be followed by a full redistribution of preferences, with each last-placed candidate excluded and their preferences distributed in turn, which could yet turn up further anomalies. An AAP report in The Australian indicates the Coalition is preparing two grounds for a legal challenge:
One was the possibility that soldiers based in Townsville were among 628 ADF personnel who were on Exercise Hamel in South Australia during the election campaign and did not cast their votes. The other is whether 39 patients at the Townsville hospital were denied a vote in the late afternoon of election day. Senator (Ian) Macdonald said he understood complaints were made to Townsville hospital staff that patients could not cast their ballots between 5pm and 6pm.
Sunday night. It’s been an action packed first three days of recounting in Herbert, with Labor’s lead mounting from its starting point of eight to 13 on Friday and then to 16 on Saturday, before a reversal of fortune yesterday gave the LNP it’s present lead of one solitary vote. Adjustments have been made over the three days to absent votes (LNP up five, Labor up three) and pre-polls (Labor up 16, LNP up eight) and 11 of the 43 ordinary polling booths (Labor down 20, LNP down five). The two most substantial movements were at Railway Estate (LNP up 14, Labor down 16) and Belgian Gardens (LNP down eight, Labor down one). The Townsville and Kirwan pre-poll voting centres, which were revised heavily in Labor’s favour during the rechecking process, have respectively been changed to have the LNP down six and Labor up five, and the LNP up three and Labor down two.
Friday 4pm. The Herbert recount, which the AEC says could take up to a fortnight, has begun with revision to the absent and pre-poll totals. I’m slightly puzzled by because it seems to involve admission of the last handful of unprocessed votes that have been listed as such for the past few days, or which four are now listed as outstanding. I’m seeking clarification on this from the AEC. The changes have been slightly to Labor’s net advantage, with pre-polls going 16-8 their way, although absents went 5-2 to the LNP.
Wow, the ALP has added to its 8 vote total! The landslide has become an avalanche!
The number of envelopes awaiting processing is now (finally) zero.
Cathy O’Toole still leading by 13.
William,
You’ll find the outstanding ballots are declaration votes that have been returned for Herbert, but rejected from being included in the count because the person wasn’t on the roll in Herbert. However, if the person was on the roll in another electorate, their senate ballot paper is included, which is what the phantom Herbert declaration votes are even though all votes have been counted for Herbert.
If the AEC had electronic state rolls in every polling place, people would not be given absent votes for the wrong electorate, which would improve the speed of processing declaration votes.
Thanks Antony. Does that mean the extra absent and pre-poll votes now in the tally aren’t related to the processing of the final declaration envelopes?
Ah! So that’s what the residual numbers were all about! Many thanks for the update, Antony! Do you know if they have actually started the second count yet, or were they just finishing off the necessary housekeeping, etc.?
From the previous thread
Not really. In that case votes that were actually issued were not delivered in time to go into the count. The electors had done everything right but through no fault of their own their votes were excluded.
In this case no votes were even issued. In the eight week campaign the electors apparently did not utilise the methods available to them to obtain their ballot papers and vote. It’s a big difference.
William, for what it is worth, the increase in the posted lead to 13 votes had occurred by the first “update” this morning, before 9AM, when there were still a handful seemingly left to count. The subsequent votes seem to have made no further difference to the formal vote totals, though at least one is included in the “Ballot papers rejected on inspection” tally (which I remember sitting at 525 earlier in the day).
Whoops! Make that the “Ballot papers disallowed” column, not ““Ballot papers rejected on inspection”.
Thanks Rod – sounds like the answer to my question to Antony is “yes”.
Yes. That is the way it looks to me too, William.
“In the eight week campaign the electors apparently did not utilise the methods available to them to obtain their ballot papers and vote. It’s a big difference.”
That’s interesting Darn. Where did you get the that info? If that were the case why would these individuals have been identified and seemingly counted, and why would they be now complaining?
I have added a Not-A-Poll to the sidebar at https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/ asking people to predict the eventual outcome. I am also posting updates at http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/2016-late-postcount-and-expected.html
I chose an Ewen Jones win, just so I wouldn’t jinx an ALP victory. 🙂
Kevin etal
Why has the count progress disappeared from Melbourne Ports? it is there for every other seat.
They cannot have finished it (unless the previous posts were all wrong) because there were still quite a lot of absentees to count.
Cathy O’Toole’s margin is now 18 after the latest update.
well the trend, if you can call it that, appears to be going in Cathy’s margin.
That may be one less member for the Qld LNP member partyroom split.
Margin back to 13 again with the 5:34 update :-/
@daretotread
It has been taken down for a number of seats, but I haven’t been keeping track of which ones (and whether it goes back up).
Other seats where it is currently down include Calwell and Isaacs.
I’m not sure why they get taken down. My guess is that the figures aren’t accurate, so no point having it up there. It does show in some divisions where they have finished, with zeroes.
Margin now 14 with the 5:53 update.
I think 1 of Evan Jones’ vote has been declared informal.
9 votes now. 🙁
I’m unclear what we are seeing with these occasional slight changes. Are they new votes, or existing votes reviewed and re-assigned, or something else?
They’ve got Labor up by 21 votes now.
…and make that Labor by 28 after a refresh. Are the updates a reflection of the recount, or something else?
Updates are being put up regularly as groups of votes are counted. Basically errors being corrected. Valid votes being made invalid and probably vice versa. Votes in wrong pile etc.
AEC update at 10:38am today
Cathy O’Toole 44,183
Ewen Jones 44,184
Libs ahead by one vote.
You could not make this stuff up.
Further to above.
Add the votes together.
44,183+ 44,184 = 88,367.
This is equal to total of formal votes cast, so count must be complete.
Good luck with the recount.
So what now?
Ooooppppsss
I think this was the recount.
What next?
Accept result or go to Court of Disputed Returns?
Libs will say they got a one vote mandate.
Surely if that 1 vote lead holds, that means a by-election?
That is, a by-election requested by the AEC.
Why does everyone assume the vote is concluded – the two lots of votes always add up to the total? During the recount on Friday the total added up to 88,391, now it adds up to 88,367. Go figure.
No, DYTony, the recount is stiill under way. You can see what has been counted and what relies on the old count by looking at “Polling places for Herbert (QLD)” and sorting them by date, using the “Two candidate preferred (TCP) returned” column. The “old” count is still showing for booths that have not been recounted, while the “recounted” booths have dates of return of the 21st of July or later. At the 10.38 AM report , with the one vote lead to the Libs, only 20 of 43 booths had been recounted. Still a way to go yet!
That’s a relief, Rod (at least for a while), otherwise it was rather cruel of the AEC the way the last few updates went only to suddenly be at -1.
“During the recount on Friday the total added up to 88,391, now it adds up to 88,367. Go figure”
Spot on , Sohar. The recount is far from over. My bet is that scutineers are playing “hard ball” on the admissibility of votes during the recount. It may even be that some of them actually find their way back into the count after decisions from the AEC returning officer. Way too early to call the result yet.
Can any one tell me if there will only be one careful recount?
If the recount gives a result by only a handful of votes, does that recount stand, or is another recount triggered?
Just one recount, D&M. After that it is up to the Court of Disputed Returns.
rod hagen @ #36 Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 1:32 pm
That makes sense. Counting and scrutineering, especially on election night, is fairly rough and ready. But it doesn’t matter usually because the final outcome (i.e., who won) is fairly clear cut. In this case, it is critical to review each vote because the result is so close. However, any further recount will not add any further scrutiny or clarity because the full recount is as good as it gets in terms of scrutiny.
Thanks guys!
So the scrutineers are VERY important in this recount.
Hi
Just a comment on Antony’s remarks about a nation wide lookup at each polling place. The AEC more or less had it in pre-polls as they had their expensive electronic mark-off computers but did not have what the states have in polling places which is a tablet that allows national elector lookup. I have in the past shown that NSW has less than half the rejected absent votes simply because NSW (like Qld and Vic) use a tablet with a state wide roll in every polling place. This is a not insignificant number of electors who have at the very least their HOR rejected and maybe their senate accepted. Note NSW has done this since 2007 with iRoll. I understand the reason the AEC will not use them is because of security concerns? Not sure this makes sense to me.
ian brightwell @ #39 Sunday, July 24, 2016 at 3:27 pm
I agree, it is difficult to follow the logic. The person who marks you off on the paper roll for your electorate obviously has access to the local electoral roll at least.
If some states have the state wide roll on a tablet available in state elections, it would seem silly for it not to also be the case for federal elections.
It is my understanding that it is difficult for the ordinary citizen to get access to the rolls, they don’t seem to be available online, but you would think that the officer at the polling booth would be trusted to use the electronic roll – there is no reason why it could not be organised so that just the name of the voter concerned could be entered, the officer does not have to see or have access to the entire roll.
Ian and Don,
It rather intrigues me that it is quite simple to check your own voter registration on the AEC website on ANY computer , tablet or mobile phone, using nothing more than your given name(s), family name, postcode, suburb or locality and street name. Anyone (AEC official, political party hack, financial collection agency, passing journo, Newspaper subscription service, ISP, or anyone else with the internet) with access to this very basic information can check the vast majority of registrations. Presumably if the voter wishes, and provides the same info, the AEC officials can do exactly the same. Sure there may be problems with “new registrations” etc, but are these what really cause the difficulties at voting time?
My own major concern with the current universally available simple AEC “on line access” process, is that it makes it way, way, too easy for someone to “steal” your vote. All they really need to do to use your details is have access to a substantial data base of people containing the above information ( ie a host of employees of govt agencies, private companies, nursing home operators, political parties etc etc) and get in early at a polling booth, pre-poll or postal!
What happens, in this electronic age, if a real voter rocks up and finds that their vote has already been “cast”?
I reckon a strong case can be made we need much more control over voter registration info, not less!
I’m rather intrigued that the ONLY booth recount reported in Herbert in the 4.05 PM update of the earlier 10:38 AM figures is that from the BLV Herbert, Commonwealth Centre, Townsville booth, where the vote consists of a mere 5 formal votes , 2 for labor, & one each for Katter, Greens & Libs. Clearly the Green & Katter voters both preffed, the Lib, and it doesn’t change the 1 vote Lib lead at all, but why has it taken six hours to get to this point of no change?
Are there, perhaps, still ongoing arguments about the status of votes in either this tiny booth or others already re-counted? Or are the AEC just doing lots of housekeeping again this Sunday? (psst, don’t tell Corey B. they are working on Sunday!)
Sohar
These are figures from the recount – snapshots of updates on Twitter – during recount: Friday 4.30pm Labor +13 with from 88,391 votes; yesterday (18 hours ago), Labor +9 from 88,381; today LNP +1 after 88,367. Totals declining as vote recounted.
—-
That’s weird – the total of formal votes after the first count in Herbert was 88,391, not 88,367. Looks like 24 votes were made ‘informal’ in the second count because informal jumped from 6,444 in the first count to 6,469 in the second count. Labor dropped 19 2PP votes in the second count [44,202 – 44,183] and the Liberal dropped 5 2PP votes [44,189-44,184] , so that adds up. 19 + 5 = 24. The problem is we have 25 more informal votes recorded in the second count, not 24. So where did that extra informal vote come from and why wasn’t it subtracted from either the Liberal or pile ? This second count added one ghost informal vote to the total, 94,835 to 94,836.
Any ideas ROD, William, Kevin ?
read Liberal or Labor pile –
I just saw your explanatory post above Rod- thanx
Interesting report
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/24/herbert-nailbiter-labor-ahead-by-nine-votes-but-parties-may-push-for-fresh-vote
Brandis is technically entitled to be a scrutineer but he is also the current Attorney General of Australia – this could be perceived as exploiting his position to put undue pressure on AEC staff – He should butt out and let them get on with it without the AG breathing down their necks, but he won’t.
I would expect a Labor scrutineer to be sticking to Brandis like a leech. Any contentious decisions by AEC staff on certain votes under pressure would be duly noted and a judge will end up deciding.
Triton,
I think the expression you’re looking for is “like sh*t to a blanket”.
Seems a strange s”stall” in the AEC website Herbert updates. No changes since 10.38 AM yesterday.
Any “insiders” know if it is a hold up in counting or just a hold up in updating?