I think you understand well that there is an option to check your status now. If you are still on the books, then I doubt that from now until election day that you will be removed.
Just as an added interesting piece of info, my Senate form if numbered below the line (BTL) only requires numbering the list from 1 to 12 after which a voter can cease numbering or complete as many as they wish to after the initial 12. So really only another 6 than what is required above the line. Again, not an onerous task either way if completing either ATL (above the line) or BTL (below the line).
My electorate is very marginal. 0.5% by Liberal party.
And would you believe it. First on the ballot paper is the incumbent. And would you believe it, dead last is Labor. And that is with 12 candidates on the list. What are the odds!
Hee-haw, hee-haw. Thereās a seat that could well be decided by Equus asinus.
Iāve always found it more convenient to count backwards. Only from 6 this time for our electorate. Doing so from 12? It must be difficult to really know all 12 choices.
Good advice what ever your preferred method.
Informal runs a successful campaign locally, at zero cost. Does not even need to list on the ballot.
4th against 9 others in 2016 here with nearly 7% of the vote. The electorate had wised up to that tactic in 2019 and saw a fall in popularity to less than 5%. Barely good enough for 5th place. If only informal could garner preferences what odds of the most representative member being elected?
On a more concerning point, does having to rank every one on a House of Representatives voting paper disadvantage some voters where there are large numbers of candidates?
Probably no more so than a senate ballot with āa large numberā of parties standing candidates although the rules for filing them in differ. Some are as cumbersome as an old time newspaper.
Yes, but what is the alternative? While ever we have universal suffrage such things will be too hard for some people.
The only way out that I can see is to allow less than the full number of candidates to be marked, perhaps 5 or 6, and still be formal. No doubt there is some disadvantage that I canāt see to that other than their vote may become exhausted in some cases, which in itself I donāt see as being a huge problem as having an effective vote except in the rare case of going to 5th preferences is better than none at all.
This is a good way to vote, providing you correctly total the number of candidates.
Our preferential voting system doesnāt offer a lot of certainty about who your vote finishes up supporting during the final preference count (if one is needed). However, one thing it does guarantee is that your vote will never add to the count of your least preferred candidate.
Whilst not dealing with the donkey vote issue, it may help with the informal vote problem if it was a simple vote 1, 2 and 3. Thatās it. And the same for both reps and senate.
You can of course number more preferences, but as long as there was a 1, 2 and 3 it would be counted.
As for the donkey voting, with computer generated and controlled printing, it is very simple to produce variations on the order of candidates. If 10 candidates, then 10 variations printed out, mixed together, and sent out to voting places. Each candidate would have the same, on average, chance of being first on the paper.
When I was at school, a long long time ago, a suggestion of a round ballot paper was put forward to partially overcome the problems of donkey voting.
You can take some comfort from the following:
The Labour candidate in your electorate will benefit from both reverse donkey voting and from voters who simply choose their preferred candidate, then place the number 2 against the candidate directly below and 3 against the next person etc.
The will be one or more marginal seats e.g. Wentworth, where the opposite has happened i.e. Labour at the top and Liberal at the bottom.
Thanks. No doubt you worked that out from 1 in 12 chance for one candidate to be first, and then 1 in 11 for one of the remaining to be last. But get this. Two independents in the field. Listed second and third last.
Wanna try the probabilities on incumbent first, only serious challenger last, and all independents at the bottom of the list?
1 chance in 12 of Liberal being listed first
1 chance in 11 of Labor being listed last
2 chances in 10 of an independent being listed second last
1 chance in 9 of the remaining independent being listed third last
Equals 2 chances in 11,880 or 1 chance in 5,940
I donāt think there is a community āmathematics and statisticsā badge. It would be deserved. You were determining the odds of the successful candidate being worthy?
Whether it is worthwhile doing that is debatable. The donkey vote might make a difference in close contests but most of the time not.
Maybe a public education campaign is a better answer. Try to persuade people not to donkey vote or if they are so lame as to want to donkey vote then tell them just to leave the ballot blank (which is a more democratic outcome).
Perhaps the best option to eliminate the effect of the donkey vote will come when we have electronic voting in the polling booth. Then, with, say, 10 candidates. The voting computer picks one of the 10-factorial permutations at random (about 3.6 million choices) and displays it to the user.
With electronic voting in the polling booth, it doesnāt matter about counting. Counting can be automatic anyway 1 - and if a manual count is forced for some reason then the computer can print the ballots in a specific order i.e. so that the scrutineers and the AEC counting staff see every ballot in that electorate in the same order regardless of what the voter saw.
However this makes it more complicated for the voter who might plan the vote in advance. It also makes it more difficult for parties who wish to issue How-to-Vote cards.
For the voter, we could go further and change the user interface completely so that rather than numbering boxes, the voter simply makes his or her candidate choices in turn.
1 Imagine that. Polls close at 6pm on the east coast and the actual final results for all electorates and the senate in the relevant states are available by 6:05pm. However that does raise some fairness issues for other states, so maybe have to hold off announcing the east coast results until 8pm (9pm if a summer time election).
I think you understand well that there is an option to check your status now. If you are still on the books, then I doubt that from now until election day that you will be removed.
