Late count: Herbert finalised, Senate results imminent

Prospects for a legal challenge to Labor’s 37-vote win, as the AEC prepares to press the button on Senate election counts across the country.

New South Wales and Queensland results (Thursday)

So then. New South Wales as expected: 1. Payne (Lib); 2. Dastyari (ALP); 3. Sinodinos (Lib); 4. McAllister (ALP); 5. Nash (NAT); 6. O’Neill (ALP); 7. Fierravanti-Wells (LIB); 8. Cameron (ALP); 9. Rhiannon (GRN); 10. Williams (NAT); 11. Burston (PHON); 12. Leyonhjelm (LDP).

But in Queensland, the second One Nation candidate, Malcolm Roberts, pulled off what I deemed the improbable in getting enough preferences to win a second seat:

1. Brandis (LNP); 2. Watt (ALP); 3. Hanson (PHON); 4. Canavan (LNP); 5. Chisholm (ALP); 6. McGrath (LNP); 7. Moore (ALP); 8. Macdonald (LNP); 9.Waters (GRN); 10. O’Sullivan (LNP); 11.Ketter (ALP); 12.Roberts (PHON).

The primary vote front-runner, Gabe Buckley of the Liberal Democrats, received a remarkably weak flow of preferences, and Roberts was further able to pull ahead of the Nick Xenophon Team, Family First, Katter’s Australian Party and Glenn Lazarus Team candidates at various points in the count. The chart below shows the results at Count 9, at which point Pauline Hanson was elected and her surplus flowed on to Roberts, and the race for the final three positions out of the last nine surviving candidates.

2016-08-02-qld-senate-count

Thursday

The AEC has announced the button will be pressed in Queensland at 9am, with New South Wales apparently likely to follow either late today or some tomorrow. I’ve now done a spreadsheet for Western Australia, to go with the one I did earlier for Tasmania, showing the frequency with which voters for the various parties included the various other parties in the top six of their preference order (which in most cases means giving them a preference full stop, since most voters simply numbered six boxes above the line). As before, each party’s first preference vote and preference allocations are listed by row, and there are separate worksheets accessible at the bottom left for above-the-line and below-the-line votes.

Victorian result (Wednesday)

1. Fifield (Lib); 2. Carr (ALP); 3. Di Natale (GRN); 4. McKenzie (NAT); 5. Conroy (ALP); 6. Ryan (LIB); 7. Collins (ALP); 8. Paterson (Lib); 9. Marshall (ALP); 10. Hinch (DHJP); 11. Rice (GRN); 12. Hume (Lib).

No surprises there then.

South Australian Senate result (Tuesday)

1. Birmingham (LIB); 2. Wong (ALP); 3. Xenophon (XEN); 4. Bernardi (LIB); 5. Farrell (ALP); 6. Griff (XEN); 7. Ruston (LIB); 8. Gallacher (ALP); 9. Fawcett (LIB); 10. Kakoschke-Moore (XEN); 11. Hanson-Young (GRN); 12. Day (FFP).

A defeat for Labor as the fourth candidate on its ticket, Senator Anne McEwen, loses out to Bob Day of Family First. McEwen had 39,378 votes after the surplus from the third-placed Labor candidate was distributed, ahead of Bob Day on 31,548. As the table below illustrates, McEwen maintained a lead of 50,515 to 44,907 as the various also-rans were excluded, leaving candidates of six substantial parties competing for the last three seats. However, the exclusion of the fifth Liberal, Senator Sean Edwards, unlocked a decisive flow of preferences to Day, a considerable number for the third Nick Xenophon Team candidate, Skye Kakoschke-Moore, and pitifully few for McEwen, and fewer still for the Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young – who nonetheless came within 16 votes of a quota at this point of the count. Then followed the exclusion of One Nation, and an approximately equal flow of preferences to Day and the Kakoschke-Moore, and much fewer to McEwen and Hanson-Young, although sufficient for the latter to win election at this point. This left Day to a still greater lead over McEwen, which was dented only slightly by the distribution of Hanson-Young’s surplus.

2016-08-02-sa-senate-count

Western Australian Senate result (Monday)

1. Cormann (LIB); 2. Lines (ALP); 3. Ludlam (GRN); 4. Cash (LIB); 5. Sterle (ALP); 6. Smith (LIB); 7. Dodson (ALP); 8. Reynolds (LIB); 9. Back (LIB); 10. Pratt (ALP); 11. Culleton (ONP); 12. Siewert (GRN).

The outcome of the final seat appeared to be up in the air before the count was finalised, with preferences set to determine the winner out of Rachel Siewert and Kado Muir of the Nationals. In the even, Siewert did it surprisingly easily. With the election of Louise Pratt to the tenth seat and the distribution of her small surplus, two seats remained to be filled with three candidates left in the count, of whom Rod Culleton of One Nation had 104,782 votes, Siewert 936,266, and Muir 67,657.

Earlier

First up, The Australian reports that “the Senate count is also due to be finalised this week, with results to be known in South Australia and Western Australia tomorrow, Victoria and Queensland on Tuesday, and New South Wales on Wednesday”.

The other big news today was the finalisation of the recount in Herbert, which delivered Labor a final winning margin of 37 votes. The AEC should declare the result some time this week and must return the writs by next Monday, initiating a 40-day period inal which a challenge can be made before the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns. This court can either uphold the result, reverse it, or order a fresh election. Overturning could conceivably happen if the court ruled ballot papers had been incorrectly interpreted, or declaration votes wrongly excluded. However, all the talk has been of a by-election initiated on the basis that voters had been wrongly denied votes in numbers exceeding Labor’s winning margin.

There are three stories circulating as potential basis for such a challenge: the Australian Defence Force’s confirmation of a failure to vote by 628 Australian Defence Force personnel participating in Exercise Hamel, a military exercise conducted around Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla in South Australia, including up to 85 who might have been based in Townsville; claims that people were unable to lodge absent votes in the neighbouring seat of Kennedy due to a shortage of ballot papers; and a statement Senator Ian Macdonald says he has from medical staff a Townsville Hospital that AEC officials neglected to provide ballots in a particular hospital ward.

A number of legal precedents are of note here. At the Queensland state election in July 1995, the Labor government under Wayne Goss eked out a one-seat victory that depended on a 16-vote victory in the Townsville seat of Mundingburra. This result was voided by the Court of Disputed Returns on the grounds that 22 military personnel serving in Rwanda did not receive the postal votes they applied for in time due to a transportation bungle by the Australian Defence Force, combined with errors made by the Electoral Commission. A by-election was ultimately held the following February and won by the Liberals, resulting in the fall of Goss’s government.

On a purely legal level, the relevance of a case centred on postal votes to the claimed irregularities in Herbert is limited. However, the centrality of Defence Force personnel to the Coalition’s case is very important as a matter of political strategy. The Murringburra by-election was followed at the end of that year by another litigation-initiated electoral re-match — this time in the federal seat of Lindsay in western Sydney, where Jackie Kelly’s win for the Liberals had been overturned on grounds of her employment by the RAAF, an “office for profit under the Crown”. On that occasion, Labor was humiliated when voters gave Kelly a further 5.0% to add to the 11.8% swing she received at the election. If a fresh election in Herbert is to have any chance of being to the Liberals’ ultimate advantage – a very dubious proposition under the best of circumstances – it is crucial that it be presented as a means of redressing the disenfranchisement of military personnel, and not the sort of sore loser act Labor was indulging in in Lindsay.

The second clearly relevant precedent from federal level was the seat of Ballarat at the 1919 election, when Labor’s Charles McGrath was defeated by Nationalist candidate Edwin Kerby by a margin of one vote. This was overturned on the grounds that a handful of voters had been wrongly denied ballots due to various official errors, which in two cases involved voters being denied absent votes. At that time, polling stations were issued with blank ballot papers for absent voting, on which officials would fill out the names of the candidates for the relevant division and provide them to the vote. However, a polling station in Corangamite ran out of such papers, and the presiding officer advised deprived voters to await the arrival of new papers. None arrived, and after several hours, the officer decided instead to issue altered ballot papers for Corangamite – but by this time, two affected voters from Ballarat had given up and gone home.

In response to this episode, a number of legislative changes were made in 1922 – one of which proved to be significant after the Western Australian Senate election was botched in 2013, and another of which has an important bearing on the present circumstance. In determining whether the official errors in Ballarat at the 1919 election were sufficient to warrant a fresh election, the court deemed it material that the deprived voters had intended to vote in a way that would have changed the result. It was felt this violated the secrecy of the ballot, so the Electoral Act was changed to specify that no such evidence was to be admitted. After the 2013 election, this section was invoked to refute the argument that the voting intention of the 1375 voters whose ballots had gone missing during the WA Senate recount should be ascertained with reference to the first count.

This changed to the act widened the scope for potential challenges, so the 1922 amendments also imposed limits on who could give evidence about having been denied a vote. This survives today as section 367 of the Electoral Act, which allows evidence to be admitted only from those who made a claim to vote. Media reports say the AEC set up seven polling stations within the Exercise Hamel area at which 1274 votes were cast, and that a further 1371 force members were taken to vote at surrounding population centres. However, 628 did not cast votes for reasons the Defence Department has declined to shed further light on. Unless these members actually fronted up to vote and were knocked back, section 367 would allow no basis for the court to hear their complaint.

As well as that, the Courier-Mail reports the Liberal National Party has written to postal vote applicants in an attempt to identify anyone who failed to receive their ballot paper. The party’s efforts to cover all bases calls to mind another legal challenge at state level in Queensland, following Labor’s 74-vote victory in the Brisbane seat of Chatsworth in 2009. An LNP fishing expedition cited 130 postal vote applications for which no vote was processed, 30 cases of multiple voting, and various other bits and pieces. Most of these were deemed to have had innocent explanations, and the 10 genuine discrepancies that were identified were too few to influence the result. But with the federal division of Herbert having three times as many voters as the state district of Chatsworth, and fewer than half as many votes having decided the result, there seems to be an even money chance that a court challenge will give the Coalition what it appears to believe it wants.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

362 comments on “Late count: Herbert finalised, Senate results imminent”

Comments Page 7 of 8
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  1. So this senate is slightly worse for the left than before (with Muir and the remnants of pup being more progressive than one might imagine) but also harder to manage. It will be interesting to see how they split the 6 year terms, it’s quote possible that only Hanson, lambie, X, and maybe hinch will get 6 year terms meaning most of the cross benchers will be up in 2019 where the increased quota will do them no favors.

  2. It’s as official as an AEC tweet (in 2 parts) can make it: 3 Lib, 2 Nat, 4 ALP, 1 Green, 1 Lionhelmet and 1 more bloody PHON.

  3. Sorry dtt, didn’t copy last time. Here are the tweets:
    AEC ‏@AusElectoralCom 35 minutes ago
    NSW Senators elected:1.Payne (Lib) 2.Dastyari (ALP) 3.Sinodinos (Lib) 4.McAllister (ALP) 5.Nash (NAT) 6.O’Neill (ALP) #ausvotes
    AEC ‏@AusElectoralCom 35m35 minutes ago
    NSW Senators elected:1.Payne (Lib) 2.Dastyari (ALP) 3.Sinodinos (Lib) 4.McAllister (ALP) 5.Nash (NAT) 6.O’Neill (ALP) #ausvotes tweet 1 of 2

    AEC ‏@AusElectoralCom 35 minutes ago
    NSW Senators:7.Fierravanti-Wells(Lib) 8.Cameron(ALP) 9.Rhiannon(GRN) 10.Williams(NAT) 11.Burston(PHON) 12.Leyonhjelm(LDP) #ausvotes

    [I’m sure someone will be playing Snap with me…]

  4. I suspect that One Nation may try and negotiate an extra Senator (or MP but there is probably nowhere to get them from), like PUP did last time with AMEP/Muir, so they get party status. This is likely their only chance at party status for many years (at least the next DD). I assume that Hanson would be the official leader if One Nation got an extra seat from somewhere and thus get the extra pay (which with her pre-2004 stint in Parliament, I believe would significantly enhance her post-retirement pension).

  5. NSW Senators elected:
    1.Payne (Lib)
    2.Dastyari (ALP)
    3.Sinodinos (Lib)
    4.McAllister (ALP)
    5.Nash (NAT)
    6.O’Neill (ALP)
    7.Fierravanti-Wells(Lib)
    8.Cameron(ALP)
    9.Rhiannon(GRN)
    10.Williams(NAT)
    11.Burston(PHON)
    12.Leyonhjelm(LDP)

  6. The party registration minimums should apply on a state by state basis, with some factor increasing the registration number in the larger states (where the ballot paper size issues are biggest). I suggest the equivalent state-wide number to 50 members per seat (50 being the number of signatures required for independent registration in an HoR seat). 25 could also be the number. The number of nominators for independents should have the same rule apply.

    Alternatively or additionally, party status of the minimum should only entitle a party to 1 Senate candidate name, encouraging group sharing. twice the minimum would be required for 2 (a group not shared). The number of candidates allowed would then increase with party membership size (capped at the number of vacancies).

  7. If LNP want to pass legislation the ALP+GRN oppose, the easier to deal with might be;
    LNP (30) + NXT (3) + ON(4) + 2 of LDP, Hinch, FF, Lambie, its just not going to happen.
    The LNP is going to have an easier time working with the ALP, but thats going to limit what they get through.
    I can see the headlines for the next election already, turnbulls do nothing government.

  8. Welcome Senator Malcolm Roberts

    Credentials

    BE, Engineering, University of Queensland. [1]
    MBA, Business, University of Chicago
    Background

    Malcolm Roberts, based in Brisbane, Queensland, is an Australian Senator for the far-right fringe political party One Nation. Roberts, a former coal miner and mining industry consultant, worked as the volunteer project manager for the Australia-based climate science denial organisation The Galileo Movement.

    Stance on Climate Change

    Roberts claims there is no scientific evidence showing that human emissions of carbon dioxide can cause climate change or that human emissions can change levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
    Roberts repeatedly claims that agencies including the United Nations’ IPCC, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and the country’s Federal-funded CSIRO science agency are guilty of corruption. He has also said that he believes international banking institutions are behind “climate fraud” and that a 1992 United Nation’s document to promote a global approach to sustainable development – Agenda 21 – is part of a campaign for “global governance”.

    “Logical scientific reasoning and empirical scientific evidence proves human CO2 cannot affect global warming.” – CSIROh! document.

    “Carbon dioxide levels in air are a consequence of temperature, not a cause.” – CSIROh! document.

    “Ironically, burning coal simply returns carbon to carbon dioxide from where it came during formation of massive forests that later formed coal. Burning coal though cannot raise CO2 levels as levels are determined by Nature.” – The Galileo Movement Carbon Dioxide Facts document.

  9. And a bit more on Senator Roberts

    Roberts is interesting because he bells the cat of climate denial. As Patrick Stokes has pointed out, he believes that behind the scientific conspiracy is a secret ring of international banking families. Speaking on behalf of the Galileo Movement, in 2012 Roberts told the Sydney Morning Herald that climate change science had been captured by “some of the major banking families in the world” who form a “tight-knit cabal”.

    If that sounds like the toxic far-right claim about the global ambition of Jewish bankers then it is. Roberts seems to share the worldview of those who see the world’s political leaders as, in the words of one group, the puppets of “the Money Master — the Jew — sick, neurotic, carnal, haters of Christ”.

    In a bizarre 135-page document titled “Why? Motives Driving Climate Fraud”, Roberts argues that international bankers are secretly pursuing their agenda of global control through environmentalism. He singles out the Rothschilds (of course), Goldman Sachs, the Rockefellers and the Warburg family.

    https://theconversation.com/one-nation-climate-denial-and-those-jewish-bankers-62176

  10. Who knows how they are going to split full term and half termers. If they choose to take 1-6 elected as full termers and 7-12 elected as half termers. This is what we’ll have;-
    Full term
    ALP – 13
    LIB – 13
    NAT – 3
    GRN – 3
    NXT – 2
    JLN – 1
    ONP – 1
    Half Term
    ALP – 14*
    LIB – 10
    GRN – 6
    ONP – 3
    NAT – 3*
    NXT – 1
    LDP – 1
    FF – 1
    DHJP – 1
    *includes territorian senators.

  11. Ack.
    Half termers
    Half Term
    ALP – 13*
    LIB – 11*
    GRN – 6
    ONP – 3
    NAT – 3*
    NXT – 1
    LDP – 1
    FF – 1
    DHJP – 1
    *includes territorian senators.

  12. I’m shocked a second ONP senator was elected in QLD. I totally didn’t see it coming. He had to pass 5 other candidates to take that last position. He passed: LDP, Xen, FFP, Kat and Lazarus on preferences.

  13. QLD ON Seantor saying he will work very strongly with Pauline Hanson, all says his loyalty is to Queensland.
    Place your bets on how long until he goes solo.

  14. My prediction on how long One Nation lasts together: Culleton (or his successor) lasts a year tops, Burston and Roberts leave by the end of year two. I guess even Hanson might leave – she’s done it before!

  15. I think Culleton with his anti bank Jihad on foreclosures should compare notes with Roberts knowledge of Jewish owned banks climate scam antics.

    These obvious links require a Senate enquiry. Throw in Halal food and you have Lambie on board. Pork for SA and Xenephon signs on.

  16. Tom
    Seems like a good idea.

    Frickeg and Dtt
    Apparently PHON Senators get a conscience vote on everything, so there wont be the same tensions as with PUP, with Palmer trying to bully people into voting his way. As such, I can see them sticking together for longer than you are predicting.

  17. Let’s see:

    Good guys (Labor + Green): 35 seats (no change)
    Axis of Evil (L/NP + FF + LDP): 32 seats
    Centrist (XEN + JL + Derryn Hinch): 5
    Loose Cannons (One Nation): 4

    I would expect One Nation to be more friendly to the Coalition but they will want to push their particular obsessions. Derryn Hinch describes himself as a ‘socialist on Medicare and Health) so will go with the Good Guys on some issues. Bob Day (FF) is a virtual member of the Liberal Right, Leyonhejlm is with the Liberals on economic matters but not social.

    If we add One Nation to the Axis of Evil, that makes 36. It means they need two out of five Centrists to pass legislation. Overall, a more friendly Senate to the Coalition than the old one but certainly a difficult one. We can probably expect One Nation to split up into independents before too long.

  18. With 35, Labor and Green are in a sound place.

    They only need 3 to block anything, so NXT is a true balance of power.

    OneNation, Hinch even Lambie are likely to abstain on issues they don’t understand (much legislation), or have to be swayed, cajoled, bribed by the gun LNP negotiators.

    Day and Leyjonholm are bankers for LNP, so we can count them as 32.

  19. I suppose someone could have a crack at putting the Senate voting through the previous voting rules to see what would have happened. My guess is that for a full DD election probably 2 less for ON but likely 2 or more other FF, Shooters etc.

  20. wakefield @ #328 Thursday, August 4, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    I suppose someone could have a crack at putting the Senate voting through the previous voting rules to see what would have happened. My guess is that for a full DD election probably 2 less for ON but likely 2 or more other FF, Shooters etc.

    We could only speculate as we don’t have a clear idea what the GVT flows would show, but your suspicion might be the case. ONP might only get one seat in Queensland, but things might be the same in SA, or maybe one less NXT.

  21. By my calculations, if this had been a half Senate election we would now have a Senate consisting of:
    Coalition: 33
    ALP: 25
    Greens: 7
    XEN: 3
    JLN: 2*
    PUP: 1
    LDP: 1
    FF: 1
    MEP: 1
    GLT: 1
    PHON: 1
    * JL would not have been standing in this election and I doubt anyone else from her party would have been elected so who knows where that vote would have gone.

    So, are my calculations correct? If they are then the losers in having a DD were the Coalition (down 3), PUP (down 1), MEP (down 1), GLT (down 1) and the winners were PHON (up 3), The Greens (up 2), ALP (up 1) and DHJP (up 1) – plus whatever would have happened to the JLN seat in Tasmania.

    If my calculations are correct I would assume seven Senators for The Greens would have been considered a rather poor result.

  22. So the senate distribution ended a bit easier for Turnbull than the initial estimate from William.

    Initially, we thought he needed any of:

    * Labor.

    * Greens.

    *NXT + PHON + 3 out of 4 others (75%)

    With the SA result going to Bob Day, that changed it to 3 out of 5. (60%)

    Now, he can still pass anything with Labor or Greens, but he only needs: NXT + PHON + 2 out of 4 (50%).

    The 4th PHON can’t help to block anything that the first 3 can’t (until the party disintegrates into PH + independents of course).

    Still, at least the Greens, WA results went the right way, as they could have given more seats to the coalition instead of just to some ‘others’.

  23. The modelling has 282 electing Lee Rhiannon for the Greens for a long term, rather than a short term. This gives the Greens a good shot at increasing the number of Senators by electing another senator in NSW.
    https://sirgraha.me/senate2016/#/scenario/nsw_s282

    Larissa Waters in Queensland and Sarah Hanson-Young in SA (both Greens) are the final defeated candidates in their states but the published modelling result does not show by how much.
    https://sirgraha.me/senate2016/#/scenario/qld_s282
    https://sirgraha.me/senate2016/#/scenario/sa_s282

  24. Can someone explain to me why the AEC computer seems to have trouble stopping. After count 1063 only 12 candidates still gave ballot papers in front of them – all others excluded. 11 have been ejected and one more remains not excluded but not yet elected. The computer continues for two more rounds – WHY?

  25. I believe they keep counting until there is an order of election, one of the options for dividing the Senators into short and long term, and distributions of all a candidates votes can take more than one count.

  26. @ B.C thanks for the analysis. It does of course rely on the assumption that people would have voted exactly the same in a half senate election. It’s not going to be possible to say what ‘would have happened’ because it wasn’t possible to hold a half senate election on that same day, which would likely have hit the Coalition hard considering the trend on their polling before and after the election campaign, perhaps harder than 3 seats worth.

    Additionally, party funding would likely have been very different.

    To take the Greens as an example.

    In a DD, there is no point spending a lot on NSW. They were virtually guaranteed one seat, with virtually no chance of getting 2. That means they probably didn’t campaign hard in the senate there. In Victoria, they had 1 guaranteed, and the other was a maybe. So they would likely campaign hard in Vic.

    In a normal election, however, NSW would be 1 maybe, so worth funding. Vic would have been 1 guaranteed, with virtually no chance of 0 or 2.

    How many extra votes would the Greens have got in NSW, and how many fewer in VIC, if their spending priorities had been different? We will never know.

    It’s also likely that more parties registered for the senate, as the DD reduces the quota. With fewer on the ballot sheet, you will need someone smarter than me to explain the likely winners and losers.

    There are also some tragics who base their voting around things like “how do I make it more likely a party I like would get a 6 year seat instead of a 3 year one”? Ask around on PollBludger and there’s probably a lot that voted differently because it was a DD. In the wider public? Probably not.

  27. B.C. (#333): Grahame’s S282s also elect Hinch in Victoria. As for Lambie it is likely that had there been a half-Senate election in which she wasn’t a factor, Lisa Singh would have won the final Tasmanian seat.

  28. [While you are continuing to dish out unsubstantiated attacks, it is not my job to be your research assistant by reminding you of previous debates in the very recent past.]

    Had nothing got nothing full of it.

  29. the two key claims of the pro senate changes were that the old system was random, this was just false, it looks random if you take the insider perspective of someone trying to negotiate a GVT and you need to know if A will get more votes than B, and thus exclude B at the appropriate point. If you take a sensible perspective of an individual voter there is nothing at all random. There was objectively nothing random in the count. Much may have turned on whether A got more votes than B at a particular point, but that wasn’t a random event that was an event determined by voters.
    The second major claim was that voters were being conned by ‘dodgy’ GVT. Really res ipsa loquitur . One could easily make the case that many voters didn’t know or understand the GVT but there was no evidence that they were being conned or unhappy about it. The insider elites were unhappy about it.
    As for unsubstantiated claims I’ve made, I can’t even think what they were, all I’ve done is point out the core of the case for change was complete bollocks, and it manifestly was. That isn’t to say the new system isn’t better than the old, just that the case from moving from one to the other would only convince a really simple uneducated mind, or a really biased partisan mind.

  30. 4 x PHONP … OMG
    Of course the discussion regarding how democratic the senate voting system really is pales into insignificance given that 99% of voters have no idea who 99% of the candidates on the form are.
    We only find out after the nutters are elected.

  31. “4 x PHONP … OMG
    Of course the discussion regarding how democratic the senate voting system really is pales into insignificance given that 99% of voters have no idea who 99% of the candidates on the form are.
    We only find out after the nutters are elected.”

    The new voting system is now taking alot of heat because Malcolm Roberts has got elected despite only receiving 77 first preference votes. I thought the new system was supposed to eliminate the Ricky Muir’s type results.

  32. I have had a long hard think about it, and I have come the the conclusion that the blame for the Greens’ poor showing in the Senate (I think it is the worst performance for the Greens in the Senate relative to their Reps vote) is solely the fault of Kevin Bonham.

    It is quite clear that too many Greens read this article, and read past the heading “Tactical Voting”.
    http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/how-to-best-use-your-vote-in-new-senate.html

    😉

  33. David,
    You’re comparing apples with oranges. Muir was elected off a vote of only 0.51% for his *party* in total – which included above the line votes and below the line votes for him personally. Roberts was elected off a vote of 9.19% for his party in total – even if only 77 of those votes were below the line for him personally.

  34. Does anyone know when the Lower House distribution of preferences will be published on the AEC site? I’m just curious about a couple of seats, namely Melbourne Ports and Sturt, just to see how close the Greens and NXT were to getting 2nd place.

  35. WWP, you say you can’t remember any unsubstantiated claims and then in the same post you make many more of them. eg “the two key claims of the pro senate changes were that the old system was random,

    ..

    ” – where is your evidence that a key claim was one of true randomness going beyond the appearance of randomness as you allege? Where is your evidence that the claims you claim to be the two key claims were the two key claims?

    Here’s another one ” One could easily make the case that many voters didn’t know or understand the GVT but there was no evidence that they were being conned or unhappy about it. ” Where is your evidence that there is no evidence they were being conned? Where is your evidence that there is no evidence they were unhappy?

  36. I am pleased to report that NSW has delivered perfection in the art of not following HTV cards. A gallant silver medal for the Veterans Party who released a card that was impossible to follow to 6 because it issued split preferences for a joint ticket. One voter got as far on this card (4) as it was possible to go.

    But the gold goes to the Renewable Energy Party (who else) which polled 8008 ATL votes, zero of which got to even #4 on the party card.

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