Comments on: The informal vote

By: The Doctor

The Doctor — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:18:28 +0000

MM,
when I’ve voted electronically at an ACT election it forced a formal vote. I don’t know about other states.

By: Marrickville Mauler

Marrickville Mauler — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:03:16 +0000

Possum, Antony, Peter and other esteemed contributors – has anyone done any analysis of informal rates when people are using electronically assisted voting as per trial at last Federal poll and I think a couple prior at Territory and State level? although process takes longer I think federal electronic trial gave voter feedback before lodging on whether formal requirements satisfied?

By: feral sparrowhawk

feral sparrowhawk — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:57:08 +0000

Fred are you seriously telling me that the SA Greens used a card prior to this election with the House on one side and the Senate on the back? If so that alone would have easily accounted for their losing margin in 2004. I’ve seen this used once and it was a disaster.

By: fred

fred — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:43:33 +0000

Thanks Antony, my past experience has generally been with one particular minor party [you know the one that uses recycled paper].

By: Antony Green

Antony Green — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:40:50 +0000

Ron, the incorrect sequence erros are quite small, so its no numeracy. The biggest groups of informals are ‘1′ only votes, blanks and words and marks. Literacy and language come in because presumably there are some people who can’t read the instructions. As for the just vote ‘1′, all the state informal figures show that at elections where you don’t have the upper house system allowing a single ‘1′ vote, the ‘1′ only votes plummet. Anyone who filled in the upper house ballot paper first has some likelihood of using the same voting method then on the lower house ballot. As South Australia has shown, if you introduce a provision to deal with people using a ‘1′ only vote in the lower house, you promply halve the informal vote.

Fred, from my past plowing through HTV cards, and I do it for most seats at most elections, the major parties have almost always used single sided HTVs.

By: Simon Jackman

Simon Jackman — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:31:56 +0000

My take was here. In 2004, the interaction of NESH and ballot length did ok too.

By: Ron

Ron — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 01:12:09 +0000

Fred , there’s far too much commonsense it what you asked.

Why would we want to simply HTV’s or the 2Houses voting systems
and thereby may reduce informals

The ‘experts’ have failed to reduce informals

By: fred

fred — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:01:29 +0000

On an aside but possibly related, I noted on election day, when I was handing out HTV cards, that the card itself was larger than the HTV cards of previous elections and this one was only printed on one side in contrast to those previous which were printed back and front. Usually they had HoR on the front and Senate on the back, but this time they had both on the front.
I remarked on this to a rival at the polling place and he said theirs was the same and he had heard that the reason for going single sided was that his party believed that voters failed to turn the card over and so their Senate vote had missed out.
Was this the same with HTVs all over or just ALP and Lib and confined to SA?
How correct was the bloke’s explanation?
I wonder what impact this change had and how it could be detirmined.

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:52:00 +0000

2 further points ,

1/ I suggest alot of the highest informal votes are in safe Labor seats where HTV’s are not strongly serviced by Labor volunteers.

YET many of these seats have high NES’s.

To suggest the informals are due to the high NES’s rather than either HTV servicing or a combination is drawing a long bow.

The question is is the informals high in swinging Labor seats where there is a high NES AND in safe Liberal seats where there is a low NES

2/ the 50% incidence of 1’s in informals supports the suggestion there is a numeracy problem for voters of 2 different Houses ballot papers systems rather than literacy

Common ballot paper methods for both houses may reduce informals

By: Ron

Ron — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:48:21 +0000

Anthony ,

The ballot system reuires recording ‘number’preference sequences

Voters who vote unintentionally informal do so due to numeracy
not language.

I suggest the solution lies in the voting system and not in language education