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.
Kevjohnno
I am neither Willian nor Kevin but I would answer your question as follows (Apologies if this is obvious and you were seeking for the answer to my final question.):
1) Define True preference count to be one in which lowest vote winning candidate is eliminated recursively until one candidate has more than 50% of the remaining formal votes.
2) Define Quick preference count as one in which each ballot paper is assigned to one of two candidates depending on the preference flow on that ballot paper alone.
3) Theorem – If the second ranked candidate (on first preferences) has more than the sum of all votes not cast for the first and second ranked candidates, then the True and Quick preference counts will be identical.
4) Corollary – This is also true if it occurs at any stage during the True Preference Count.
5) In this case the leading candidates seem to have 36% and 30% of first preferences Leaving 34% between all other. So the AEC can’t know for certain that the two preference counts are identical. However, they don’t need to look at all papers to make sure that they are. They only need to run the True Count until they get to the point where the Corollary above obtains. I presume they must do this at some point as a final check.
HERE my ignorance kicks in.
When all the booths are done, do they have to go through all the pre poll, absent. postal and provisionals again ?
Vernula Publicus@401,
Thanks for the analysis of how the vote counting has worked so far.
Also, your gravatar looks like an amazing bipolar outflow, with the typical hourglass shape generally seen in low mass star formation.
It is probably something completely different of course – probably a couple of jelly fish interacting 😉
kevjohnno @ #98 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 8:29 pm
They still have to do the actual distribution at some stage. By that stage one would hope there were not any errors remaining following the full recount, but I’m not sure if they’re able to declare it before doing the distribution. There is no point me referring to normal policies that they already haven’t followed!
sprocket_ @ #92 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 7:14 pm
How are you tracking these? In many cases it is obvious which ones have been recounted because the numbers have changed, but how do you tell between one that has been recounted without change and one that has not been recounted at all?
Also what I’m not sure of here is whether or not those figures include resolutions of all challenges.
Kevin @ 11.45
I’ve been looking at the list of polling places that give the most recent date and time for the two candidate preferred returned. I’m assuming that any that had their last update before around 20 July have not been recounted yet.
tpof @ #106 Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 12:00 am
That seems like a handy trick. Ta.
@Tetsujin – thanks for earlier summary of Oz article. Much appreciated.
Love the GG quote
[
Labor has slipped ahead of the Coalition in the final outstanding federal seat of Herbert after a preference counting error was found.
]
As if an error, not the miscount but that Labor has ‘slipped’ ahead.
In the Australian, the AEC has responded to the allegations regarding the soldiers & the Hospital patients being unable to vote:
Ian McDonald is meanwhile arguing that the two counting error suggest that there may be other errors in entering data into computers, which no one knows about:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/herbert-recount-dramas-may-force-a-revote-lnps-ian-macdonald/news-story/5edad52a0292c662fe08e57151de8e43
Thanks for the info Vernula Publicus & Kevin. These close results, recounts & challenges are always interesting and give me a bit more insight into the electoral procedures.
From Rosie Lewis in The Australian
‘Liberal National Party senator Ian Macdonald is predicting a fresh poll in the electorate of Herbert after a day marred by confusion in the Townsville-based seat’s knife-edge recount.
Last night Labor candidate Cathy O’Toole had increased her lead by 73 votes after a day of drama amid allegations a bunch of preferences from One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party had been allocated to the wrong piles.
At one stage yesterday, government spirits were buoyed when incumbent MP Ewen Jones moved ahead by 12 votes.
Senator Macdonald, who is acting as a scrutineer in the recount, said the final result may be known today as lawyers for the party arrived to collect “evidence” for possible action in the Court of Disputed Returns to force a new election.
“There’s been two errors identified but it begs the question: how many others are there because we simply do not know what the AEC staff are entering in the computer?” Senator Macdonald told The Australian.
“I’m not suggesting any foul play, I’m suggesting human error. My assessment is there is sufficient irregularities in so many different areas as would warrant serious consideration of an appeal (but) that is a matter for the candidate and the party, and not for me.
“Instead of a break, I expect we’ll be into campaign mode again.”
If the Turnbull government can retain Herbert, it would win 77 seats, which would give it extra breathing space in parliament.
Malcolm Turnbull, who will fly into Townsville today for the 50th anniversary of the Lavarack Barracks, is expected to meet Mr Jones, who was a government whip in the previous parliament. Senator Macdonald has expressed concerns that Australian Defence Force personnel on assignment in South Australia and patients at a Townsville hospital were unable to cast their votes.
The AEC says such reports are “speculative”, insisting it provided services to personnel on exercises and delivered an extensive polling program in hospitals.
The commission will look into the allegations as part of its post-election review and said the recount was on track to be completed this week.’
Whoops. Sorry for the duplication.
Ian Macdonald is doing his desperate best to cast doubt, but if the final margin is something like it is now it would be a hard argument to make to have another election. I doubt there would be enough disputed votes to make up the difference. Unless the margin ends up much lower or there was some stuff-up by the AEC, such as lost votes or not providing the means to vote for some people that they claimed would be provided, I can’t see why a court would decide that the result shouldn’t stand.
Boerwar
We are talking here of Ian Macdonald of “I don’t read reports” fame. He is a blight on good governance.
Kevin
You are spot on with how to tell which booths have been recounted, Hat Tip to Rod Hagen who worked this out on page 1 of this thread.
It did appear they were recounting in booth alphabetical order, but the Deeragun booth was the first one they skipped, now 3 from the alpha order not yet posted. May well be some issues there.
As for Senator Macdonald wanting a fresh election for Herbert, he might have a better chance after his pal George Brandis is elevated onto the High Court bench.
So are many of the ‘errors’ due to incorrect preference allocation.
Say unclear ON votes that preferenced Labor but were not allocated correctly in the first round of counting?
If so that may show the need for an enquiry on election day counting and scrutineering, but no basis for a re-election.
The treatment MacDonald and O’Sullivan gave to Gillian Triggs in Senate Estimates was the low point of the last parliament
I wonder how many of those soldiers missed the vote.
If Labor “slips” further ahead, then the votes of those soldiers, even if truly deemed to have missed out on voting and with the patients would not have affected the outcome to go the other way. I’m assuming that not all of the 628 ADF personnel were the cases, only a portion of them, the way it was written.
Since O’Toole won the original count by 8 votes, the discovery of the wrongly placed ON votes should have put her in the box seat, yes? For Jones to catch up he needs equivalent errors discovered in the opposite direction plus a few more.
Raaraa, as I understand it the maximum number of ADF who may have been involved wrt Herbert is 85, and it is far from clear that all (or any) of them were actually unable to vote. It is worth remembering , too, that although ADF seem to have a slight bent towards the conservatives, far from all of them vote that way. If ALL of the 85 were unable to vote, and their votes split 60% to 40% to the libs, it would make a difference of 16 votes.
Not really Triton. The changes are progressively made against the existing count, so the original difference isn’t really relevant to the equation. That said, picking up 73 from the remaining 10 booths must look pretty daunting to the Libs.
[ Ian McDonald is meanwhile arguing that the two counting error suggest that there may be other errors in entering data into computers, which no one knows about:
“There’s been two errors identified but it begs the question: how many others are there because we simply do not know what the AEC staff are entering in the computer?” Senator Macdonald told The Australian. ]
While I knew that the computer data was essential for the Senate distribution of preferences I did not know it was used in the Reps seats except in a logging & recording way. Perhaps naively I had assumed they would still use the actual ballots in the preference throw in seat counts.
Scrutineers checking on data entry seems a difficult & time consuming prospect but you have to wonder how the accuracy of the data entry is verified. Can anyone with scrutineering or AEC experience give me an idea of how this part of the count is checked?
Sprocket: “the Deeragun booth was the first one they skipped, now 3 from the alpha order not yet posted. May well be some issues there”
Yes. The Deeragun booth count looks odd for other reasons, too. It seems to have the highest ON vote count in a large booth by a fair way on the initial count, with the One Nation candidate, Virgo, polling over 21.5% of the vote there.
It is an ‘aspirational” new suburb, but it doesn’t fit the rest of the picture for similar places all that well. Maybe the ON candidate has a close association with the area, or maybe there are particular “local issues”, but, regardless, it does stand out a bit from the rest.
rod hagen @ #122 Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 10:09 am
If changes are made against the existing count, then doesn’t that make the original difference relevant? To be ahead at the start of the recount and end up behind, your opponent needs whatever errors are discovered to go more in his favour than yours, by enough to make up the difference. If the errors go 50-50 you still win.
Yes, but the “8 vote lead” at the start of the recount is already factored into the figures you are seeing at present. So the Libs don’t need 73 +8 to catch the ALP. They just need 73. Maybe I wasn’t clear about what you were saying in the original comment.
Just checked the AEC website. Now 74 votes in favour of ALP
Rod Hagen
Yes, I realized that. I just meant that over the recount Jones needed errors to go in his favour to make up the difference, and the ON batch in Labor’s favour has made that less likely.
Margin now 67. I still count 10 polling places remaining after the latest update.
Yes, 67. The latest vote change reported doesn’t seem to involve the addition of a recount in any new booths. Perhaps an AEC ruling on some votes previously set aside?
AEC tally room page down, last I checked O’Toole +67. The link is broken………..it’s a nail biter!
Entire AEC website down. “No site configured at this address”
Now 58. I was feeling comfortable, but now getting nervous.
Victoria I just checked and the count had dropped back to 58 at 11.28am
Latest (11.28am) update seems to be from “The Weir” booth.
Now I count 9 polling places remaining.
From AEC Cathy’s lead now 58.
Last TCP polling booth update was from The Wire at 11:58 today.
Townsville South booth in. Margin 57.
Nail biting stuff…. Still, much better to be 57 ahead than 57 behind!
Indeed. I remember seeing this somewhere but could not remember where.
8 booths to go. And then some more fun.
Labor lead back up to 59, but no additional booths added.
Latest AEC update at 12:15 today.
TCP +59 to Cathy.
Booths not recently updated, date is last update.
Deeragun Wed 6 July
Kirwan East Fri 8 July
Mount Louisa Fri 8 July
Mundingburra Sat 9 July
North Shore Sat 9 July
North Ward Mon 11 July
Rasmussen Mon 11 July
Special Hospital Team 2 Thurs 14 July
Deergun is in , -8 for Labor now 51 in front with 7 booths to go
Now 51. Deeragun has been added to the recount
About 13,500 votes left in recount of the remaining 7 booths. Not sure if declaration votes, Absents/Postals etc have been recounted already or not.
Lead dwindling, but at least that odd one Deeragun is out of the way now (assuming it’s completed, not just updated).
Looking at the remaining 7 booths, only Rasmussen has a Labor lead on primaries, with the rest LNP well ahead. Some strong showings by ON as well. Roughly 10,000 votes to count.
Given that counting errors are being found in just about every booth, the end result is uncertain.
It should be a good thing for O’Toole that most of the remaining booths are stronger for the LNP, since there’s a higher probability that errors found will be in votes currently in his pile.
10,343 by my calculation to go. A few big ones in the assumed booths not recounted, so once they are done we should start to get a pretty good idea I would assume.
sprocket
North Shore had a labour lead also. Total of 2,218 votes
Not that it matters much as a large error in allocation can obviously occur at any booth, large or small.