Talk:Electoral system of Australia/Archive 2007

Section Nominations

In section Nominations, there is a mistake in the Senate candidates deposit. The deposit amount for senate candidates is $1000, and not $100 as is written on the page. I will leave it up to the author who edits the page to correct it.

--Tmsener (talk) 10:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Compulsary voting

I heard that in order to avoid voting with the compulsary voting system is to simply spoil one's ballot - that way your name is crossed off, you place your ballot in the box, but you haven't voted. Is this true? Otherwise it would seem to me that checking someone has: 1) had their name crossed off the register, 2) placed their ballot in the box , 3) placed an 'x' in a given box; means that their vote would not be secret.

Answer to above anonymous question: A spoiled vote, as you describe above is what's called an informal vote, and of course does not count towards any candidates votes, but does get the voter off the hook so far as their voting obligations goes. In Australia we have secret voting. Once a voters name and details is found on the roll, they're given two voting papers (ballots). One a green smaller paper with the divisional candidates, and another white long sheet of paper with the senate candidates. The voter then takes these with him/her to a booth where s/he can secretly number the candidates according to their preference. Or, as you suggested, spoil the vote. Every year, about 5% of voters either mistakenly, or deliberately cast informal votes.

--Tmsener (talk) 10:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

---

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.79.24.162 (talk) 12:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

the desciption of the counting process is far too simple to give an accurate description.

Given the amount of polling booths in each electorate, there may be the perception that the following 'The count is conducted by officers of the Australian Electoral Commission, watched by nominated volunteer observers from the political parties, called scrutineers. If one of the candidates has more than 50% of the vote, then she or he is declared elected' can mean that a declaration of a winner is possible by this group Andrewseyfang 03:20, 11 September 2007 (UTC)andrewseyfang

---

An excellent entry, Adam: clear, precise, unbiased and readable. I look forward to seeing it completed. Tannin

---

"The voter is also free to place the ballot paper in the ballot box unmarked, or with a rude remark written on it. This is called informal voting."

Writing rude remarks do not make votes informal.

I meant to convey that the vote is informal if only a rude remark is written on it. Dr Adam Carr 07:04, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

A vote is also informal if the presiding officer believes the writing on it could identify the voter, e.g. name, address, phone, email, etc. --ajdlinux 22:39, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I think a campaign to write "NO DAMS" on ballots at a Tasmanian (Bass?) bielection in the early 80's help convince the ALP to adopt a policy of preventing the Franklin Dam and that these votes were still counted.

Pwd 06:24, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

This tactic was used twice:

1. At the 1981 (I think) referendum held by the Tasmanian government which asked the voters to choose between two dams. Those who didn't want either dam wrote NO DAMS. These votes were informal because the voters refused to express a choice between the two options given. 2. At the 1983 federal election the No Dams people urged their supporters to write NO DAMS on their ballots. These votes were formal provided the numbers were filled in correctly. Dr Adam Carr 07:04, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Could you change the wording so it is clear that writing on ballot papers does not make them informal?

This is getting of the topic, but according to the [parlimentary website] many of the referendum ballots with NO DAMS written on them still expressed a preference. These were initially deemed informal, but then counted as formal after legal advice!

I looked at your website, Dr Adam Carr, and I see that the Bass Bielection was in 1975! What was I thinking?

Pwd 23:59, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

---

Preferential voting is the Australian expression for what is called elsewhere the single transferable vote (STV) or instant runoff voting (IRV). These terms are not widely known by Australians, who tend to assume that Australia is the only country in the world where this voting method is known, let alone used.

I love this dig at Australian ignorance :) PMA 10:28, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Joint Sittings

There seems to be a gap in Wikipedia's coverage of joint sittings of the House and Senate. One would come to the conclusion that the only time a joint sitting could ever be held is under s.57, following a double dissolution. However, casual vacancies in the representation of the ACT in the Senate (and presumably of the NT as well), are filled not by nomination by the relevant "state" parliament (the ACT or NT Legislative Assembly), but by a joint sitting of the Federal Parliament. This is precisely how Margaret Reid was chosen to replace John Knight. As far as I can see there is absolutely nothing about this in any article at present. Indeed, there seems to be nothing about how casual vacancies in either house of parliament are filled. JackofOz 13:00, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The Margaret Reid article states This was the first of only two occasions on which a Senate casual vacancy was filled in this manner, as the law was later changed to provide for the relevant territory (ACT or NT) legislative assembly to appoint a replacement senator. Bjenks (talk) 16:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yep, thanks. Those words were actually mine. My initial post above was a little flawed, and since then I've done a lot of work on the Casual vacancy article. Feel free to improve it. Cheers. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks pretty good to me. When next you edit, you might consider using uniform lower case for 'parliament', 'state' and 'territory', etc, where not used as part of a proper noun. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 03:20, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Advertising

Shouldn't there be mention of the advertising restrictions on our system? I believe these are largely unique to our electoral process. For example, the news blackouts, candidates advertising posters restricted to certain time periods, candidates fined if they don't remove election posters and campaign fund restrictions etc. Wayne 19:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Senate: surplus votes

"Their surplus votes were then distributed. The surplus is the candidate's vote minus the quota. Hutchins's surplus was thus 1,446,231 minus 536,533, or 909,698. These votes were distributed to whichever candidates received the no 2 votes on Hutchins's ballots."

But which surplus votes? Is there a statistical application of the number twos in all of the votes, both those that go towards making the quota and those left over? It needs to be clarified. Tony 00:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

That's answered further on in the same section. --Calair 01:33, 22 May 2007 (UTC)