Sunday, 3 November 2013
WA Senate recount mini addendum
Here at Truth Seeker HQ, we seek the truth however this can be brought to light. Rather than trying to do all the hard work ouselves, in this instance I will just refer you to the comments made by various anonymous citizens on my last two posts - herein exists a great summary of key vote variations due to the recount. Thank you for your collective diligence.
I fear alternative time pressures may prevent me from doing the full booth by booth breakdown, but I am delighted others have gone to this effort.
Final WA Senate results... until overturned by the courts
Well, what a busy few weeks its been! Apologies for not prew in the PUP/ALP vs GRN/SPORT tag team match we've just witnessed). It is also pleasing that this means that informal BTLs were reconsidered, as per my request to AEC.
The revised data dump available online shows the Shooters vs Christian margin which was 14 votes in favour of the Shooters (and hence PUP/ALP) is now actually 12 votes in favour of the Christians (and hence GRN/SPORT).
What has happened is that the number of Christian votes is 25 higher than previously, while the number of Shooters votes is 1 lower. I could make a reference to this being a Christian miracle, but I will let the reader decide if He would intervene to elect an additional Greens MPs!
Notable changes in votes as a result of the recount:
All parties gained votes BTL, half gained and half lost votes ATL
Christians: +26 (incl +5 ATL, +21 BTL)
Shooters: -6 (-23, +17)
Aus Ind, AFLP ATL: -7 (these flowed through to the Shooters via Group Voting Ticket)
No Carbon Tax: -15 (This flowed through to the Christians via Group Voting Ticket)
This means the Christians fared 14 better on other BTLs, and the Shooters fared 12 better on other BTLs. This is slightly high, but not crazily so, given the new number of BTL votes recorded is 701 higher.
(post modified): It is now widely known that there are 1375 missing votes. I think it almost inevitable that a new election will be called. If so, it becomes a gamble to everyone, as we move into unprecedented territory. While a more pleasing option would be to include the lost votes in the manner they were at the counted in the original count, I doubt the courts will do this. I advise readers to view the comments thread from my previous post.
As a slight aside, I also talked about the Kambalda West vote (O'Connor), and stated that the Senate vote for Labor looked 50 votes too low. I note the recount has "found" these votes, with an additional 50 coming Labor's way and an additional 2 (probably BTL) as well. If I was more enthusiastic, I'd rerun my whole discrepancies spreadsheet that I created... (unlikely :-)
I have put some thought into possible Senate voting reform options, but I could not write anything better than the excellent summary that Kevin Bonham has come up with. The only addition to Kevin's commentary I would like to add is that the randomness of voting columns has distorted outcomes. While we acknowledge randomness is fair in theory, I think that listing parties by their performance in the last Senate election would be fairer. Sure, the Liberal Party would be Group A, Labor Group B, Greens in Group C in just about all states. But when 85%+ of people want to vote for these parties, what is wrong with this?
For the future... I doubt I will have the time to post weekly as I previously stated. I think it is highly likely I will resume blogging for the new WA Senate election, the Vic upper house election, and possibly some number crunching for the SA upper house election.
If I don't post again soon, I owe a big thanks to the tens of thousands of you who have visited my blog over the last two months. Also, thanks to Tim Colebatch, Kevin Bonham, Andrew Crook and the prolific Poll Bludger Will Bowe for trusting my work and reporting my conclusions. And thanks to those who have provided me informal information of what's happening behind the party lines, and the mysterious Maxine for sharpening my modelling. My initial aims were to draw attention to a range of unrepresentative election scenarios, and to test whether financial analysis techniques such as Monte Carlo Analysis could be applied to elections. I'm satisfied that I more or less achieved my aims.
The revised data dump available online shows the Shooters vs Christian margin which was 14 votes in favour of the Shooters (and hence PUP/ALP) is now actually 12 votes in favour of the Christians (and hence GRN/SPORT).
What has happened is that the number of Christian votes is 25 higher than previously, while the number of Shooters votes is 1 lower. I could make a reference to this being a Christian miracle, but I will let the reader decide if He would intervene to elect an additional Greens MPs!
Notable changes in votes as a result of the recount:
All parties gained votes BTL, half gained and half lost votes ATL
Christians: +26 (incl +5 ATL, +21 BTL)
Shooters: -6 (-23, +17)
Aus Ind, AFLP ATL: -7 (these flowed through to the Shooters via Group Voting Ticket)
No Carbon Tax: -15 (This flowed through to the Christians via Group Voting Ticket)
This means the Christians fared 14 better on other BTLs, and the Shooters fared 12 better on other BTLs. This is slightly high, but not crazily so, given the new number of BTL votes recorded is 701 higher.
(post modified): It is now widely known that there are 1375 missing votes. I think it almost inevitable that a new election will be called. If so, it becomes a gamble to everyone, as we move into unprecedented territory. While a more pleasing option would be to include the lost votes in the manner they were at the counted in the original count, I doubt the courts will do this. I advise readers to view the comments thread from my previous post.
As a slight aside, I also talked about the Kambalda West vote (O'Connor), and stated that the Senate vote for Labor looked 50 votes too low. I note the recount has "found" these votes, with an additional 50 coming Labor's way and an additional 2 (probably BTL) as well. If I was more enthusiastic, I'd rerun my whole discrepancies spreadsheet that I created... (unlikely :-)
I have put some thought into possible Senate voting reform options, but I could not write anything better than the excellent summary that Kevin Bonham has come up with. The only addition to Kevin's commentary I would like to add is that the randomness of voting columns has distorted outcomes. While we acknowledge randomness is fair in theory, I think that listing parties by their performance in the last Senate election would be fairer. Sure, the Liberal Party would be Group A, Labor Group B, Greens in Group C in just about all states. But when 85%+ of people want to vote for these parties, what is wrong with this?
For the future... I doubt I will have the time to post weekly as I previously stated. I think it is highly likely I will resume blogging for the new WA Senate election, the Vic upper house election, and possibly some number crunching for the SA upper house election.
If I don't post again soon, I owe a big thanks to the tens of thousands of you who have visited my blog over the last two months. Also, thanks to Tim Colebatch, Kevin Bonham, Andrew Crook and the prolific Poll Bludger Will Bowe for trusting my work and reporting my conclusions. And thanks to those who have provided me informal information of what's happening behind the party lines, and the mysterious Maxine for sharpening my modelling. My initial aims were to draw attention to a range of unrepresentative election scenarios, and to test whether financial analysis techniques such as Monte Carlo Analysis could be applied to elections. I'm satisfied that I more or less achieved my aims.
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