Wednesday, 25 September 2013

The AEC "Big Bang" Side Show:

Denying open and transparent Scrutiny of the ballot for a side show of pressing the Button

It will very interesting to see if the below the line vote will make any difference to the projected outcome in WA. For one there is over 360 votes attributed to One Nation’s Robert Farmer (Most of these will be reverse donkey votes.)

When the AEC get around to publishing the BTL preference data files, which copies have been denied to scrutineers as it takes the Big bang away from the AEC pressing of the button show and allows room for any last minute twigging of the votes as no one knows what is contained in the data file, leaving it open to possible corruption. Scrutineers prevented from being able to verify the contents of the data-file during the count.

The refusal of the AEC to subject the count to a full open and transparent scrutiny undermines confidence in the overall process.

The preference data-files are eventually published, months after the election has been declared and the crowd and public attention has dissipated. This adds a whole new meaning to “secret ballot” when scrutineers are denied access to copies of crucial computer data-files that are used to determine the results of the election just so the AEC can have maintain an element of surprise and leave open a window for preference data to be tweeked

Had these data-files been published progressively during the count then you would have been able to include them in your Calculator's analysis
It would also be possible to highlight the impact in the flaws in the way in which the Senate vote is counted

Analysis of the WA Sent votes based on registered group voting tickets using three different system to count the vote

Model A

If you count the vote using AEC Senate rules with a non-weighted (Surplus Transfer calculated by dividing Surplus value by number of ballot papers) segmented distribution (distributing votes in segments based on their value, stopping mid stream of a exclusion distribution, skipping candidates remaining in the count and transferring the remaining votes at a higher value then would be the case if they were transferred as a single transaction)
 
PUP and ALP take the last two spots in WA

Model B

If you use the Western Australian Weighted (Surplus Transfer Value based on the value of the vote spot the number of ballot papers) with segmented distribution of excluded candidates votes (as described above)

PUP and Greens in the last two spots

Model C
“The wright System”
If you weight it (Surplus value based on the value of the vote) and apply a reiterative count removing the segmented distribution by resetting and restarting the count on each exclusion only distributing surpluses on each exclusion, one single transaction per candidate.

PUP and ALP win the last two seats.

Model C (Wright System) being the preferred method as it reflects the voters intentions where first preferences from excluded candidates are distributed as if the excluded candidates had not stood

The other alternative model is Meek which in 99.98% of the time produces the same result as the Wright System

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