Saturday, August 21, 2010 - Australian Federal Election

[Хahar 🤔]

Australia have an American-way of counting the votes, right?

It counts them in the normal way, yes. It's Britain that's... unusual... which sucks from the pov of election geekery

I think our tradition of the town hall count and stuff is pretty cool, except we can't do amazing maps like other countries do.

There should be both. There should be an official count with all candidates and then detailed results later.

[/fantasizing]

[minionofmidas]

I quite agree with Xahar.

[Smid]

I quite agree with Xahar.

Yes, but also throw in Canada's version of polls, where you have to vote at a particular polling station, which are reported individually, allowing for excellent post-election breakdown maps.

[minionofmidas]

I quite agree with Xahar.

Yes, but also throw in Canada's version of polls, where you have to vote at a particular polling station, which are reported individually, allowing for excellent post-election breakdown maps.

Doesn't that apply almost everywhere? Can you Australians just show up at a different booth?
Of course, what Canada does is actually collate these results from across the nation. That certainly doesn't happen in Germany. (And there's issues with attribution of postal votes to their polling places of origin. Some American states do that, Germany never would because that makes postal votes even less secret than they already are.)

[Smid]

Here's an interesting article about donkey votes benefiting the Coalition in more marginal seats.

I quite agree with Xahar.

Yes, but also throw in Canada's version of polls, where you have to vote at a particular polling station, which are reported individually, allowing for excellent post-election breakdown maps.

Doesn't that apply almost everywhere? Can you Australians just show up at a different booth?
Of course, what Canada does is actually collate these results from across the nation. That certainly doesn't happen in Germany. (And there's issues with attribution of postal votes to their polling places of origin. Some American states do that, Germany never would because that makes postal votes even less secret than they already are.)

We can vote at any polling place in the electorate. You can absentee vote in other booths. There are some polling places which are joint polling booths of two (and in some cases, more) electorates - for example, Oakleigh, which is a joint booth for Higgins, Hotham and Chisholm.

Personally, I'd like to see us move to a total postal vote system, as already occurs in some Victorian municipal council elections, and having the electoral commission seperate them and sort them by CCD (Census Collection Districts - about 200 or so households, which would be probably 150 to 400 voters. Postal votes are received and the electoral commission checks the signature on the envelope against the signature on the postal vote application form (or on record for people who are registered postal voters and cast postal ballots every election). Once the signatures have been checked and they've confirmed that none of the postal ballots are from people who cast votes on the day, they open all of the envelopes and put all the ballot papers back into the box - that way they can't see the name on the envelope at the same time as how that voter voted. Then all the ballots are removed from the box and counted. If the electoral commission went down my suggested route (and I can't see it happening any time soon, but hey, one can always hope) - they would need to add another step in the process - sorting into CCDs. If the envelopes were barcoded according to CCD, they could be scanned and it wouldn't be too hard. Much of that could be sorted on days prior to the election, so the results could be still tabulated on the night... indeed, sorting, opening and counting could occur throughout the day with results announced in the evening.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah, that's kind of what larger municipalities in Germany do. Group a number of day precincts into one postal precinct. Smaller towns have only one postal "precinct".

Here, if you "applied" for a postal vote, you can also vote in any other polling booth in your constituency with that instead of mailing in. But that's very rarely done - though I've seen it happen that people used that in their home precinct, along lines of "we thought we'd be on vacation but later decided we won't leave til tomorrow."

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Hello all...

It's certainly been a horrible campaign... Saturday will be entertaining.

[Phony Moderate]

There's a "mega-poll" coming out tomorrow, apparently.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

A megapoll?

Where?

[Phony Moderate]

I don't know. It was mentioned on the ABC Election website.

[You kip if you want to...]

There's a "mega-poll" coming out tomorrow, apparently.

It's out now:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/08/17/nielsen-marginals-mega-poll/

[Phony Moderate]

Is there an exit poll on election night? If so, is it released straight after the polls close?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't remember one last time.

[Phony Moderate]

Gillard is in favor of Australia becoming a Republic when the Queen dies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10997630

[You kip if you want to...]

Gillard is in favor of Australia becoming a Republic when the Queen dies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10997630

Freedom fighter!

[Kevin]

Gillard is in favor of Australia becoming a Republic when the Queen dies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10997630

Freedom fighter!

HP

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Her stance on the Republic is probably the majority view in Australia - there are more 'Elizabethans' than actual Monarchists.

This'll be a close-run thing.

There was an exit poll in 2007 and while it got the Party win correct, they did miss the numbers in the house seats by a bit - especially Eden-Monaro... they did get the national number correct though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We should do a prediction contest. But which divisions?

[You kip if you want to...]

We should do a prediction contest. But which divisions?

Any electorates, currently, with less than a 10% majority?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We should do a prediction contest. But which divisions?

Any electorates, currently, with less than a 10% majority?

There are 48 of those (10% majority being defined as it is in Britain!), and that would still exclude a couple of high profile races here and there. You want to predict about 50 seats? If you all do, there's no problem, obviously.

[You kip if you want to...]

We should do a prediction contest. But which divisions?

Any electorates, currently, with less than a 10% majority?

There are 48 of those (10% majority being defined as it is in Britain!), and that would still exclude a couple of high profile races here and there. You want to predict about 50 seats? If you all do, there's no problem, obviously.

I don't really mind. It was just a random suggestion. I think about 10-20 would do since only a handful of seats will probably change hands in the end.

[Phony Moderate]

All seats which have a majority of 5% or less, regardless of party.

[Platypus]

I'd suggest the following seats:

Tasmania
Bass
Braddon

Northern Territory
Solomon

South Australia
Boothby
Sturt

Western Australia
Cowan
Hasluck
Stirling
Swan

Victoria
Corangamite
Deakin
LaTrobe
McEwen
Melbourne

Queensland
Dawson
Dickson
Fisher
Flynn
Forde
Herbert
Hinkler
Longman
Ryan
Wright

New South Wales
Bennelong
Cowper
Dobell
Eden-Monaro
Gilmore
Hughes
Lindsay
Macarthur
Macquarie
Page
Patterson
Robertson

Australian Capital Territory
Second Senator

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looks like a decent set. I'll add a couple of others just because, and post it up in a minute.

Yeah. Half past three. Urgh.

[Phony Moderate]

An....errrr...."interesting" Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/friends-dont-let-friends-vote-for-Tony-Abbott/106582159380758?v=wall