As the count for the NSW Legislative Council creeps to a conclusion, there remains an outside possibility that an error in the NSW Electoral Commission’s iVote system could put the result at risk.
For the first two days of voting for the election, the electronic ballot paper used for iVoting contained an error.
Two of the groups on the ballot paper, the Outdoor Recreation Party in Group B, and the Animal Justice Party in Group C, were shown on the ballot paper without an above the line voting square.
Around 19,000 iVotes were cast before the error was spotted. The error did not prevent votes being cast for candidate of the two parties, but it made voting for the two parties above the line impossible.
The Animal Justice Party has polled around 1.7% across the state, but around 3.5% amongst iVotes. Using this higher figure, this means that potentially the Animal Justice Party missed out on around 660 above the line votes.
In addition, the lack of an above the line box could have denied the party a small number of above the line preferences from voters voting for other parties.
If the result is challenged before the Court of Disputed Returns, it will be possible to estimate the impact of the error on the Animal Justice Party by comparing the results amongst the faulty and the correct iVotes.
However, any estimate of missing votes would have to be discounted by how many below the line votes the Animal Justice Party attracted on the faulty ballots.
At the moment none of this matters. In the race for the final seat, the Coalition has 0.56 quotas towards a tenth seat while the Animal Justice Party has 0.37 quotas. The Coalition candidate is roughly 34,000 votes ahead, too many to claim that an iVote error has impacted on the result.
However, the count is not complete. Based on past trends it is clear that the Coalition total vote will decline as the count nears completion. That final count will narrow the gap between the tenth Coalition candidate Hollie Hughes and the Animal Justice candidate Mark Pearson.
Where the Count Stands now.
The Legislative Council election is for 21 members elected at large across the state. For election a party needs to fill a quota, which is set at 4.55%. For each quota filled a party wins a seat. The final seats come down to a race between partial quotas of remaining candidates. Preferences have to be distributed, but the final vacancies are likely to be filled by the candidates and parties that start the final stage of the count with the highest partial quota.
With 85.6% of the votes counted, 18 of the 21 seats are certain. The Liberal/National Coalition has 9.56 quotas and will win nine seats and is in the race for a 10th. Labor has 6.91 quotas, electing six members and certain of a seventh. The Greens have 2.10 quotas and will elect two members. Importantly the 0.10 surplus for the Greens will be distributed as preferences, and the Greens recommended a third preference for the Animal Justice Party.
By electing nine seats the Coalition will have 20 Legislative Council seats, 19 on the floor of the Council, and needing two votes to pass legislation. Compared to the previous parliament, the government will only need one small party to pass legislation rather than two.
The 19th and 20th vacancies will be filled by the Shooters and Fishers party with 0.83 quotas and the Christian Democrats with 0.61 quotas. Neither party will be passed on preferences.
Trailing them are the No Land Tax Party with 0.38 quotas and the Animal Justice Party with 0.37 quotas. These two parties are in contention with the tenth Coalition candidate for the 21st and final seat.
None of the other parties on the ballot paper have a hope of victory. If this were a Senate election, then those parties could have accumulated their votes together using ticket voting and preference harvesting to accumulate votes to win a seat. This was the method that elected the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party’s Ricky Muir, but this method of election from a low vote is impossible in NSW.
Under the NSW Legislative Council system, parties cannot control preferences and the only preferences that matter are those completed by voters themselves. Since the current system was introduced in 2003, 80-85% of ballot papers for excluded candidates have exhausted their preferences, which means only a party with a significant first preference vote can win election.
That is why only the tenth Liberal candidate, the Animal Justice Party, and as an outside possibility the No Land Tax Party, have any hope of winning the final seat.
Why the Last Position is in Doubt
As I mentioned above, the tenth Liberal candidate is around 34,000 votes ahead of Animal Justice, a lead that would not be under threat from a court challenge.
However, it is certain the Liberal/National vote will fall through the remainder of the count. I’ll keep a running tally of the main participants in the race over the next few days using the table below.
Legislative Council – Progress of Count – Selected Groups
|
L/NP |
ALP |
GRN |
NLT |
AJP |
| % Counted |
% Vote |
Quotas |
% Vote |
Quotas |
% Vote |
Quotas |
% Vote |
Quotas |
% Vote |
Quotas |
| 84.1 |
43.55 |
9.58 |
31.46 |
6.92 |
9.46 |
2.08 |
1.74 |
0.38 |
1.68 |
0.37 |
| 85.6 |
43.46 |
9.56 |
31.42 |
6.91 |
9.55 |
2.10 |
1.74 |
0.38 |
1.68 |
0.37 |
| 86.6 |
43.37 |
9.54 |
31.43 |
6.91 |
9.59 |
2.11 |
1.76 |
0.39 |
1.69 |
0.37 |
| 87.6 |
43.32 |
9.53 |
31.41 |
6.91 |
9.63 |
2.12 |
1.76 |
0.39 |
1.70 |
0.37 |
| 88.0 |
43.29 |
9.52 |
31.40 |
6.91 |
9.66 |
2.13 |
1.76 |
0.39 |
1.71 |
0.38 |
| 88.5 |
43.27 |
9.52 |
31.40 |
6.91 |
9.66 |
2.12 |
1.76 |
0.39 |
1.71 |
0.38 |
| 88.9 |
43.25 |
9.51 |
31.39 |
6.91 |
9.68 |
2.13 |
1.76 |
0.39 |
1.71 |
0.38 |
| 90.3 |
43.18 |
9.50 |
31.37 |
6.90 |
9.70 |
2.13 |
1.77 |
0.39 |
1.73 |
0.38 |
Why I say the Liberal/National vote will fall from this point is that most of the outstanding votes to be entered are Absent votes, where the Liberal/National parties do worse and the Greens better than with other forms of voting. We have already seen this trend occur as the upper house count has progressed beyond 84.0%. The final turnout in the lower house currently sits on 90.4%.
As the absent vote was added in the lower house, the Liberal/National vote fell from 47.0% to 46.7% and the Green vote rose from from 10.0% to 10.3%. If the same shifts in support were to take place between now and the end of the Legislative Council count, then the the Liberal quota total would slip to 9.49 and the Greens would rise to 2.16 quotas. The Animal Justice Party would stay on around 0.37 quotas.
If half of the Green vote had preferences for Animal Justice (a preference flow that I think is much higher than will occur), then the Animal Justice Party would receive 0.08 quotas as preferences and reach around 0.45 quotas, roughly within around 700 votes of the tenth Liberal.
The other factor that needs to be taken account of is that below the line votes are yet to be included in the count. As they are, the Coalition’s surplus beyond nine quotas will fall for two reasons.
First, the rate of below the line voting amongst Coalition voters is much lower than for smaller parties. Second, as the inclusion of the extra votes increase the quota, more of the Coalition’s total vote is soaked up by the nine filled quotas, leaving fewer votes for the surplus.
In 2011 the Coalition’s vote fell by 0.6% once below the line votes were included. If that were repeated in full in 2015, then the Coalition’s surplus quota total would fall to 0.36, behind Animal Justice.
However, in 2011 there was an extraordinary below the line vote for Pauline Hanson. Without her presence on the ballot paper, the Coalition and all other parties will do proportionally better with below the line votes in 2015.
However, both the factors listed above point to the final result being much closer than current totals suggest.
Challenging the Result
Once the result is finalised and 21 members elected, it is possible for the result to be challenged to the Court of Disputed Returns. The petition to the Court must be lodged within 40 days of the return of the writ.
The Court of Disputed Returns will be presided over by a Judge from the NSW Supreme Court.
If Animal Justice win the final seat ahead of the tenth Liberal, it is unlikely there will be any court challenge.
If the Liberals win the final seat, then clearly the Animal Justice Party and its lead candidate Mark Pearson are the likely plaintiffs. They will have to prove that an error in the conduct of the poll has affected the result.
If they prove the result was affected by error, argument would the proceed on what corrective action the Court should impose.
There are two critical tests that will apply to the question of how the result was affected.
The first is whether Animal Justice can pass No Land Tax. Animal Justice is expected to do better on preferences than No Land Tax because of the preference recommendation of the Greens. If Animal Justice does not pass No Land tax then the case has the potential to become messier and more complex as it would require estimating what would have happened had Animal Justice passed No Land Tax and then been in contention with the tenth Liberal for the final seat.
If Animal Justice passes No Land Tax, then the case would be easier, simply a case of arguing over the size of the gap between Animal Justice and the tenth Liberal and whether this was affected by the iVote error.
Why this is Different from the WA Senate case
The WA Senate case was much murkier. The issue in WA was over the order of exclusion between ninth and tenth placed candidates. Missing ballot papers prevented the Electoral Commission and the Court of Disputed Returns from determining the correct order of exclusion. Analysis of the initial count of the missing ballot papers made it clear the missing ballot papers were critical for determining the correct order of exclusion.
At the point of the disputed exclusion, three of the six vacancies had been filled. A fourth was certain to be filled whatever order of exclusion took place. But four candidates remained in contention for the final two seats, and who was elected depended entirely on the disputed order of exclusion.
Given previous court cases, the Commonwealth Court of Disputed Returns had no other choice than to void the election.
The NSW case in relation to the final Legislative Council result is potentially much simpler. It rests on a contest between two remaining candidates for the final seat. The case can proceed in a very different manner to the WA Senate case.
What the Court of Disputed Returns Might Decide.
The Court must first determine whether the error with iVote had an affect on the result.
My rough estimate is that if the result at the final run-off between the tenth Liberal and Animal Justice is under 700 votes, then there will be a case for the iVote error having affected the result.
If Animal Justice falls fewer than 700 votes behind No Land tax at a critical point, Animal Justice could argue they should have finished in front. It would be possible using the data entered votes from the election to then estimate the final race between Animal Justice and the Liberal candidate.
If the Court decides the result has been affected, it has a number of powers under Section 161 of the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act. It can –
(v) To declare that any person who was returned as elected was not duly elected,
(vi) To declare any candidate duly elected who was not returned as elected,
(vii) To declare any election absolutely void,
(viii) To dismiss or uphold the petition in whole or in part
In other words it is within the power of the Court to simply change the identity of the final elected member rather than order a fresh election. Given the cost and effort of holding another election, resolving the final position by simply changing the names of elected members on the writ may be the easiest solution.
Given the Coalition has already elected the nine members it needed to negotiate passage of its privatisation legislation, it would surely be in the interests of the Coalition to give up its tenth member in a close contest rather than risk an entire half-Council election of 21 members to be decided on the single issue of electricity privatisation.
There has been a previous case under proportional representation in NSW where a disputed election was resolved by changing the elected member. In the three-member Wammerawa electorate at the 1922 election, the election of WG Ashford to the final seat was challenged by JA Clark. The Parliament’s Qualifications Committee, the predecessor of the Court of Disputed Returns, ruled that the count had been conducted incorrectly, re-calculated the result and declared Clark elected in place of Ashford.
A Legislative Council challenge could not be as easily resolved as the Wammerawa case as it would be about ballots not cast rather than ballots mis-counted.
The Court would also be mindful of Section 22A(3) of the NSW Constitution that states that periodic elections for the Council should be on the same day as the general election for the lower house. Section 22A(4) then provides an out for a separate Council election if an election is declared void, but the Court of Disputed Returns would be mindful of the intent of Section 22A(3) that elections for the two houses be held together. This would be discussed if a dispute over the election of a single member could be resolved by altering the elected members rather than voiding the election of all 21 members.
In short, if the final result in the Legislative Council is close enough to challenge, and close enough that the iVote error can be ruled to have affected the result, it does not necessarily mean that all 21 seats would be forced to a new election.
Mr Green I love your column. It is very detail and informative. However I believe you didn’t fully complete the reporting task, by concluding some certainties, as position now stands.
Liberal are assured of 9 and CDP (Fred Nile) assured of 2. Last seat undecided and is between Liberal and Animal Justice, as you projected.
With Liberal now assured a minimum of 20 seats ie 11 + 9 plus with Fred Nile 2, Liberal party will no longer need to depend upon the support of two minor parties, but just Fred Nile.
If Liberal win the last seat, then they would have 21 and Liberal party could pass Bills with one further vote ie either Fred Nile or Animal Justice or Shooters party.
It is my view, this summary should be reported, leaving the public the need to drawing any inference
COMMENTS: Your last point is wrong as if the Coalition win 10 seats then the Animal Justice Party will not be elected. If the Coalition were prepared to give up the Legislative Council Presidency to Fred Nile, then 10 seats would give the government 21 seats and a majority on the floor of the Council. If the Liberals keep the presidency as they have indicated they will, then whether the Coalition wins nine or ten seats is a matter of whether they need one or two Christian Democrats to back legislation. The two CDP members tend to vote together on most issues.
I went through all the scenarios on the seats in this post. http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2015/03/the-battle-for-the-nsw-legislative-council.html
Posted by: Sam Ryan | April 08, 2015 at 12:05 PM
Great analysis. Why do the Coalition does less well on Absentee votes? Are they homebodies and vote at home? Are Green voters wandering the state? Any insights?
COMMENT: Absent votes are cast by people outside their electorate on polling day. This is a more likely phenomena in city electorates, especially inner-city electorate, than it is for country electorates. Simple distance tells you a country voter is less likely to drive out of their electorate on polling day than a city electorate. With fewer country absent votes, the Coalition vote is always lower as a proportion of absent votes than polling day votes.
Posted by: Craig | April 08, 2015 at 01:30 PM
It could also be argued that the said voters were not disadvantaged as they could have gone to the hundreds of pre poll centres around the state to caste their votes, even if ivote system was not working. T
To prove a disadvantage and order fresh elections would be very difficult legally speaking one would think.
COMMENT: That is not right. The case the Court would consider is whether the candidate was disadvantaged, not the voter. It is a question of whether an error was made in the conduct of the election sufficient to bring the result into question.
It is an uncontested fact that 19,000 voters were presented with ballot papers that by error excluded a group voting square for two groups. That error amounts to a disadvantage to the affected candidates. Based on those facts, the question the Court of Disputed Returns would consider is whether that accepted error affected the result.
Posted by: Gregory Hynes | April 08, 2015 at 02:03 PM
“it would surely be in the interests of the Coalition to give up its tenth member in a close contest”
Antony I was following up to this point and then you lost me. How could the Liberals “give up” a member as an outcome of an AJP court challenge?
COMMENT: Animal Justice can petition the Court of Disputed Returns to have its candidate declared elected. It would be in the party’s interest to have its member declared elected rather than to call for a fresh election. The Court has the power to vary the names of the elected members.
If the Court finds that the result was affected by the iVote error, and if Animal Justice ask for their member to be declared elected in place of the tenth Coalition member, the Coalition might agree to that solution rather than risk a fresh election.
The Court’s role is to rule on whether the names returned on the writ are correct. It can let the writ stand as returned, it can void the writ and require a new election, or it can vary the names of the members declared elected.
Posted by: Angela | April 08, 2015 at 03:03 PM
Hi Antony,
Great column. The LC is the ‘real’ election in this whole process, given the likelihood of Baird’s re-election.
Q: Does the President of the LC have a deliberative vote and/or a casting vote?
It seems bizarre that the Libs would keep Harwin in there if giving Fred the LC Presidency would give them a majority.
Q2: Also, do you see iVoting expanding for furture elections?
COMMENT: The President only has a casting vote, so votes are decided from amongst the 41 members on the floor unless there is a member absent from the vote.
The Presidency brings with it a range ceremonial and diplomatic advantages that governments find useful. In addition, the Coalition would have to vote Nile into the chair and I am sure that Labor and the Greens would have great fun at the Coalition’s expense if it were to do so. Voting Nile into the most senior office holder position of the parliament would attract criticism than relying on him for his vote on legislation.
I am not sure iVote will expand. Some are of the view it has expanded too far. It is designed as a replacement for postal voting. In my view there should be more attention to electronic voting to replace pre-poll than in expanding internet voting.
Posted by: Danny | April 08, 2015 at 03:04 PM
Thanks Antony for the explanation, but yes I am aware that the AJP candidates can claim to be disadvantaged but the burden of proof rest on them and they must prove that the lack of ivotes significantly disadvantaged their vote tally when other alternatives were available.
As for Coalition giving up its 10 th seat, I doubt that would happen, parties rarely concede hard won seats like that. It will be interesting to see how this issues turns out.
COMMENT: There is no question of ‘other alternatives’. It is a fact that 19,000 voters were given a defective iVote electronic ballot paper. By whatever method they choose to vote, a voter is entitled to be given the correct ballot paper, and if they have been given an incorrect ballot paper, then there is an error in the conduct of the poll. An example of this was The Entrance judgment in 1991 when enough voters to affect the result were given absent ballots for Gosford by mistake.
The iVote error will be a fact before the Court, not a matter of dispute. It will be for the Animal Justice Party to plead and the Court to decide whether the error affected the result. If the Court finds it did affect the result, then it will be for the parties before the court to plead on what action should be taken.
The Court can vary the names returned on the writ, or it can void the election.
In the circumstances where the Court first ruled the case on affecting had been proved, what would the Coalition plead? It can plead the error should be ignored, it can plead to vary the writ and give up a seat to the Animal Justice Party, or it can plead that the election be voided and a new election for 21 members be held. I very much doubt the Coalition would want any part of a fresh election.
Posted by: Gregory Hynes | April 08, 2015 at 04:50 PM
Hi Antony,
I was under the impression the President of the NSW LC had a deliberative vote, and that 22 votes are required to pass legislation. Wikipedia seems to agree, though I accept it’s not a rigorous source. Has this changed recently?
COMMENT: Section 22I of the NSW Constitution states that “All questions arising in the Legislative Council shall be decided by a majority of the votes of the Members present other than the President or other Member presiding and when the votes are equal the President or other Member presiding shall have a casting vote.” The section has never been changed so my conclusion is that Wikipedia is wrong.
Posted by: Ben | April 08, 2015 at 05:26 PM
Antony, surely the existence of Section 22A(4) specifically dealing with running a separate Council election in this potential circumstance shows the Parliament recognises that the aspiration expressed in Section 22A(3) can’t always be met? Besides which, a joint election was indeed held as required, and if not for the error the issue would never have come up.
Why do you think the Libs would be so concerned that they wouldn’t manage to replicate the present result on a re-run? I wouldn’t have thought it at all likely they would end up worse off than 9 seats, surely, after their big election win, so why not have a crack at the 10th if a fresh election is the only way to get it? It’s not like they’d be paying the bill.
Electoral errors sure are giving us all something to discuss these past few years!
COMMENT: Why am I so sure? Because I asked. The Coalition do not want another election. Under no circumstances do they want the functioning of parliament held up followed by an election where the only issue is privatisation of electricity and the fate of the government is not at risk. All this in an environment where Federal politics might be intruding at the same time. The government has elected the nine members it needed, ten would be nice but not at the risk of an election.
Posted by: Peter | April 08, 2015 at 06:04 PM
Antony, great writing again, I wish there were an economics writer with your ability to explain complicated things but stay politically neutral at the same time.
Now for the important question: if elected, will the Animal Justice Party member have to sit next to the Shooters and Fishers? Won’t that be fun?
Posted by: Richard | April 09, 2015 at 06:57 AM
It was my understanding that an elector could change the iVote the cast up to polling day. With the publicity around the error, surely anyone who meant to vote for the two parties erroneously not above the line could have gone in and changed their vote. I think this will also be considered by the court.
COMMENT: it is no doubt a matter that will be considered by the Court if there is a petition against the result.
Posted by: LuxuryYacht | April 09, 2015 at 08:32 AM
Great debate. A re-election? The whole Legislative Council or like a by-election, only Lib/Nat, Animal Justice and No Land Tax?? I would hope ALP voters in this scenario would vote Liberal, but who knows given the Greens persistent results! What about banning preference distributions among parties, they only be considered if the voter takes that choice to markl preferences?
COMMENT: As in the WA Senate case, a new election would mean all positions, not some positions. Preferences controlled by parties have already been eliminated for the NSW Legislative Council and the only preferences that count are those filled in by voters themselves.
Posted by: michael ross | April 09, 2015 at 11:41 AM
Hi Antony. Can you confirm how BTL votes in NSW will be allocated against the quota system……looking at the greens who have 2.13 quota and say may go to 2.20 quota once BTL is included…..when they fill the 2.0 quota how do the 0.07 BTL included in the vote get allocated and potentially lost as a further preference? (I think I may have worded this clumsily but hopefully you get my meaning!)
thanks.
COMMENT: The total first preference vote for the lead Green candidate will be totaled. This will be in excess of two quotas. A random sample of votes with further preferences equal to the size of the vote surplus beyond one quota will be taken. These sampled ballot papers will be distributed at full value.
This will put the second Green candidate over the surplus. A random sample of the ballots transferred from Candidate 1 equal to the new surplus will then be taken from the transferred ballots. This sample will then be distributed as preferences. Note that only the bundle transferred will be examined. First preference votes for the second Green candidate are not examined to determine preferences of the surplus.
The transferred ballot papers from the second surplus calculation will now mostly be with the third Green candidate. If distributed, all votes with the third Green candidate will be distributed at full value.
All the sampling is done from votes with a ‘1’ for the lead Green candidate. About 53% of candidate 1’s ballot papers will be sampled and transferred at full value. That will be about 53% of single ATL votes, 53% of ATL votes with preferences, and 53% of BTL votes.
The system is different from the Senate. Only the last bundle of votes received is examined for surplus to quota preferences, not all votes held by the candidate. In NSW the transfer value is used to determine how many ballot papers will be random sampled and transferred at full value. In the Senate all ballot papers are transferred but vote value equal to the total ballot papers times the transfer value.
Posted by: James | April 09, 2015 at 02:07 PM
Hi Antony
Fascinating analysis as always.
Based on what you predict, it appears that AJP could come within 0.04 quotas of the 10th Lib candidate (0.49 to 0.45). However, I thought that this would be around 7000 votes – not the 700 you’ve stated? (Quota is I think about 190,000)
On that analysis, surely they would need to be less than 0.01 of a quota from the next best candidate to have a real chance in a legal challenge?
COMMENT: My estimate in the update is around 0.005 quotas at the end of the count after preferences
Posted by: Mitch | April 09, 2015 at 04:36 PM
Hi Antony,
Thanks for the great work. Why couldn’t the 19000 people or if necessary all who used ivote be ordered to recast their vote? Then it ensures their vote counts without the massive cost and complexity of a whole new election.
COMMENT: Because the law doesn’t allow that to happen.
Posted by: Scott | April 10, 2015 at 01:27 AM
I notice in one of your comments above that only a sample of votes are used to distribute preferences, as opposed to all, as in the Senate. How is this sample chosen? It would need to be a very representative sample, as there are pockets of great difference across the state.
I can envisage that such sampling could cause one party (AJ perhaps) an advantage, or disadvantage, depending on where they came from.
And I love you work. Thanks Antony.
COMMENT: All ballot papers are data entered. A computer random number generator chooses the sample.
Posted by: Christine Cave | April 10, 2015 at 10:55 AM
Antony, my feeling is that if there is a re-vote/re-election for the Legislative Council, it is likely that iVote will be a higher proportion of the voting method used than it was in the original effort.
I haven’t seen an analysis of how iVote votes may differ from other voting methods, as for instance you gave for how absentee votes differ from in-electorate votes. If iVotes do in fact show a different pattern, could you please tell us so, and tell us how they differ?
Thanks.
COMMENT: First, I don’t think there will be a re-vote. The result does not look that close. There are also other options to be considered first. For instance, if the 19,000 iVotes were excluded from the count and the preference distribution done again, then if the result was the same then the result would be let stand.
An increase in pre-poll, iVote or any other type of voting doesn’t affect the result. It just changes the time and place when a vote is cast. People look at whether a party is advantaged or not by vote type, but the trends are just a difference, not necessarily an advantage.
Second, I haven’t looked at the iVote from the state election, but iVote at previous by-election had seen a higher proportion of Coalition votes being cast.
As I pointed out in a previous post, there appears to be an advantage to parties on the left hand end of the iVote Legislative Council ballot paper. http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2015/04/does-electronic-voting-increase-the-donkey-vote.html
Posted by: Don Armstrong | April 12, 2015 at 05:07 AM
Thanks Antony, would the court be swayed by the fact that the error was corrected after two days and that anyone who wanted to change their iVote could do so up until election day? The publicity the error received, including that the vote could be changed up until polling day, should mean that anyone who mis-cast their vote had ample opportunity to correct it.
COMMENT: All of those issues are matters that could be raised in a court case if their is a petition against the result.
Posted by: MuxuryYacht | April 13, 2015 at 08:47 AM
iVote is an already abused system as there are many people who use it as a means of avoiding voting on the day – which is not what it is there for.
I saw many people posting on social media that they used iVote (and Pre-poll) as a means of not going on the day. When challenged their only argument was “..who cares – at least we voted…”.
COMMENT: People voted one way rather than another. How rigorously did the EC question people who voted pre-poll on whether they could attend a polling place on election day? Once you had to sign a declaration about being infirm, pregnant, x-miles from a polling place etc. It’s exactly the same issue with iVote.
For different reasons I think that access to iVote should be limited. I think greater emphasis should be given to using electronic methods to collect pre-poll votes, which allows people to get their electronic voting jollies fulfilled that way..
In the end people voted by the method they found most convenient, and I’m happy to tolerate that even if you view it as ‘abuse’. I’ve seen the UK system where if you can’t attend your fixed polling place on election day, then tough, you can’t vote.
Posted by: Colin Hanna | April 13, 2015 at 12:37 PM