The Tally Room

Senate reform – does exhausting votes help the party leading?

Ben Raue - March 2, 2016

There's been a lot of attempts by various people to predict the impact of Senate reform in terms of which parties will win and which parties will lose. Some of this has been smart, and some of it has been quite dumb. Some has focused...

JSCEM Senate reform inquiry – video highlights

Ben Raue - March 1, 2016

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I watched some parts of today's JSCEM inquiry, and cut together a few short clips of interesting parts of the day. I thought I would post them on Youtube and here - if you have a section which you think was particularly interesting, let...

How much does an individual candidate’s vote matter in the Senate?

Ben Raue - February 28, 2016

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There's a meme going around from a supporter of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party claiming Senate reforms are illegitimate because Ricky Muir polled more votes individually than a handful of other elected Senators. Here's an example: I've previously discussed how difficult it is to cast a...

Federal electorate map of NSW finalised

Ben Raue - February 25, 2016

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The AEC has released the final maps for the NSW federal redistribution today, after the decisions were first announced in January. I had made a Google Earth map of my best estimates of the electoral boundaries in January, and these are largely accurate. The only spots...

Senate voting reform – the bill drops

Ben Raue - February 22, 2016

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So we now have the government's legislation for Senate voting reform. You can read it here. The key points are as follows. Abolition of group voting tickets From now on there won't be any distribution of preferences beyond a single party group unless the voter marks it...

Queensland council elections – map progress

Ben Raue - February 20, 2016

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Queensland goes to the polls to elect their local councils on March 19. I'm currently working on my guide to the Brisbane City Council election - so far I've finished guides to ten wards out of 26. The other piece of the puzzle is a complete...

How hard is it to go your own way voting in the Senate?

Ben Raue - February 19, 2016

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In the last few days, I've been involved in a lot of discussions about Senate reform, and many times I've had people insist that voters make a choice to hand control of their vote to their party, and any voter should be able to vote...

Refuting self-interested garbage in the SMH

Ben Raue - February 17, 2016

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In yesterday's Herald, Heath Aston ran an 'exclusive' publishing supposed modelling from a couple of so-called "veteran players in minor party preference negotiations" claiming that Senate GVT reform would deliver the Coalition a majority in the Senate. There's a lot of massive problems with this prediction,...

Fixed four year terms across Australia

Ben Raue - February 16, 2016

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I'm currently working on my guide for the Brisbane City Council election, as well as updating my ward map of Queensland, both for the local government election on March 19. On the same day as that election, Queenslanders will be voting in a constitutional referendum,...

Senate voting reform looks set to go ahead

Ben Raue - February 12, 2016

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According to a report in this morning's Guardian, the Coalition, the Greens and Nick Xenophon appear close to an agreement on Senate voting reform. There's also an accompanying media release from Lee Rhiannon. The proposed plan, put to the government by the Greens, would abolish...