A 50-50 finish and a headache for AEC

Peter, there will be calls to reform the voting system, but basically what is happening here is that the election result is falling within the margin of error of the ballot.  Which means we’ll kinda, sorta know who won--maybe.
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Will any of these seats go to recounts?

In this election, the effect of the non-booth vote on the ALP TPP has been to drag it down by an average of 0.23%, but the numbers range from -1.6% to +0.4%. There are not many positives- in only 25 seats did late counting go the ALP’s way.

Having recently observed the UK election in some detail, I think Australia sets an example they should look at closely. That 2pp all but mirrors the seat count says a lot for the AEC and others getting it about right. Not much evidence of gerrymandering on these figs. In the UK, the Tories need about 40% of the FPTP vote to get a majority, Labour needs about 35%. Arguably, this suggests a skewing not present in the Aussie electorate. I know its apples and oranges, bt I think there are some lessons - please fire away!

You say “ it is unlikely that continued counting will change the seat tally”. There is still no absolute certainty about the final seat count. Who cares about any other measure such as 2PP vote numbers. Therefore if the independents declare who they will support before the final AEC declaration they may, just may, have to change their minds if a seat changes. This would then be pounced on by the media and the “losing” party. I.e. the 3 country MPs could say they will support the Coalition and then just one seat changes. This puts the likely govt as Labour with the Green and the Tassie MPs. So the crazy media should stop this pressure and let process continue properly. We still have a government within caretaker conventions.

In 21st century should it not be workable to vote electronically - each of us gets a pin, logs on to a dedicated website and the results are computed almost immediately. The images of the scrutineers pouring over the pieces of paper belong in the era gone by.

I am over the whole 19th century process. Get a decent digitized electoral system out of this fiasco maybe [snip unnecessary partisan commentary].

Well put, Peter.
Now, is the debate going to revolve around the notion of an “independent speaker”, and for how long? Seems to me it’s a convenient parking spot for a few days, another piece of dead ground, since it’s going to be difficult to explain the pros and cons to the public, in the context of the actual workings of Parliament. 
Labor should offer to legislate for [a] non-elected person[s] to be appointed to the executive (as in the widely approved SA model), then allow any grouping of independents to have first veto on the nominations. I reason that if they couldn’t agree on such a single,
simple and effective novelty, then there isn’t much hope of a workable
government.

I know nothing’s certain in politics, but I think the AEC may need to get used to these sorts of results. If we can get a government up and running, after all the to-ing and fro-ing of the last two weeks, it will be a very different beast from the usual style of things. I think it will prove very attractive to the voters; at least those who think about the political process. It may well happen that we will only get workable majorities in situations where one party is really on the nose.

Hi Peter, my money is on Coalition 50.004% 2pp. You or AEC can round it to two decimal places. Can you please help as to how the total add up to 100% 2pp between two major parties, when in fact there are four Independents and one Greens, ie Others in the 14 millions votes?

It beggars belief that we havent moved to the phone voting used in Brasil. This is reputed to be the most corruption free voting system that I was told was actually invented here...this would speed the system up a bit...plus lets get rid of preferential voting...I vote for one person....not one person, but if that person doesnt get in, then someone else....where is the logic in that....

As a taxpaying Australian, I am going to ask for a recount on the two-party preferred if it is within 500 votes!

Yet the AEC has moved to treat as invalid two largish clods of votes in Boothby and Flynn, disenfranchising those electors over handling errors.  It’s fortunate that these mistakes did not affect the winning Coalition margins in those two marginal seats:  but if they had… (We know next to nothing about what the problem was, but the law is rarely clear on what to do as it balances two values:  not robbing someone of their ballot due to official error vs the possibility of the integrity of votes being compromised).  To say this is no slight on the AEC, in truth errors occur at every election, everywhere.

Peter - I’m curious what you think of the way that The Australian has covered developments with the 2PP vote over the past couple of days.

Any chance Corangamite is going to change hands Peter as it is back on the Close Seat list?

How long are you going to avoid the elephant in the room? The dis-proportionate power of the independents. I calculated the Banzhaf index for the block of 3 independents as 28% - the same as for Labor!! The Independents have 10 times the power of their vote, which is 2%. Undemocratic!

Re. calls for an “independent speaker”.  Why does the speaker have to be a pollie? Why can’t it be a public servant with a fixed term e.g. the GG?

Section 64 of the Constitution puts paid to there being non-elected members of Cabinet. Same for proposals about the Speaker : section 35 provides that he or she is to be elected from members of the House. In both these cases there would have to be a referendum and I doubt whether something which reduced the involvement and accountability of elected members would garner much support.
2PP is of academic interest in the formation of Government and the main game is finding 76 MPs who will support one government or another. It may assist in persuading one of the critical independents on who has greater democratic legitimacy, but the signs are this is not of great importance to them.

Peter, why since you’ve signed on to the Oz have you almost exclusively done posts on psephology and other quant stuff? Your other analysis I personally always found more interesting

Mumble. Any word on provisional declaration votes, in the sense the % that were verified by later voter ID?
Also it would be interesting to see the number of these in marginal electorates.
Word is....they look pretty shonky.

[Snip: unnecessary description of personal political inclinations.] My question is on phone or online voting, Peter - do you know the costs of such alternatives compared to our traditional system.

Can I put a vote in for leaving the system exactly as it is. In the 20 years since i first voted, we have seen a pretty clear result on the night in all bar 2 of these federal elections. We’ve had very few hung parliaments, and nobody could really have been accused of stealing an election and no one has ever had to resort to force to get a result.
Now inevitably some will be dissapointed with whoever the indepents choose, but life will go on. Might not be perfect but it works pretty well.

There was some talk this time that absentee & prepoll votes were tending to favour sitting members rather than one particular party. Is this being borne out? Also is there any work being done or has anyone actually developed an online voting system?

Re electronic voting, two things need to be distinguished: voting and vote counting.  I think it highly unlikely the former will happen for a long time (and certainly none of the fantasy of voting online from home) but the latter (which is what is causing the frustration) could be done relatively easily. Probably existing ballots could be machine read but this is now a very advanced art so it could be done anytime if there is motivation.

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

Cute line. 
How do I find out what the results from the Senate election are (or likely to be)?  If the answer is “wait until the AEC tells you” then can you get your pal Rupert Murdoch to tell them to hurry up, or else he’ll go all “special correspondent” on them

The AEC has made this election a farce, there should be 155 seats in australia, 50 in nsw, 39 in vic,12 in sa, 30 in qld, 15 in wa, 3 in act, 2 in nt, & only 4 in tas, this would make 90000 to 92000 enrolled voters in most seats, instead of the 71000 to 124000 that it is now,total farce.