The Tally Room

The Victorian Electoral Commission has published more information about turnout at the 2018 state election as part of their submission to the inquiry into that election, with some interesting bits I wanted to pull out. In particular, there's evidence that turnout dropped due to...

A parliamentary inquiry into the 2019 federal election has recently finished receiving submissions, and amongst other issues a number of commentators have bemoaned the growing numbers of voters casting their votes early. Federal minister Paul Fletcher is worrying about how the volume of pre-poll voting...

The Senate race in the Australian Capital Territory often promises to get interesting, but never really does. The quota for election in the ACT is just over one third of the total formal vote, and the two seats have been split evenly between Labor...

The Australian reported on Sunday about an idea from Queensland LNP senator James McGrath that would see the Senate broken up so that senators represent "provinces" within each state. While details are scarce, this proposal would see the end of proportional representation in the Senate, would...

This is the latest in my occasional series looking back at the final results of the 2019 federal election. The 2019 federal election was the second election held under the new Senate voting system, which included changes to make it easier to vote below-the-line. The...

I posted back in March about the Queensland government's proposed reforms to local government in that state. The reforms include a bunch of other changes to electoral finance and council procedures, but I focused on two proposed changes: introducing compulsory preferential voting for single-member...

New South Wales council elections are due in September 2020, which means that local councils right now are having to decide who they will contract to run their election. This may seem strange to people not familiar with NSW council elections. In most states, all...