Thread by @kevinbonham

Controversy over VEC interpretations regarding how-to-vote cards for independents.

abc.net.au/news/2022-11-1…

#VicVotes

This seems unsatisfactory. Sheed v VEC (austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdo…?) found “Then number Every Box" is not sufficient but the VEC guide implies "a statement to instruct the voter
to number all the boxes." is OK?vec.vic.gov.au/-/media/3b00f7… #VicVotes

I mean, what more is Frederico supposed to do, her card already tells voters they must number all boxes *twice*, does she need to say it a third time and get her lawyer to send the VEC a copy of The Hunting Of The Snark?

Quite possibly this is what they want (it's consistent with Sheed at [35]). But if that is the case their candidate guide should say so.

https://twitter.com/joegarra61/status/1591244327682215937

Not convinced they do. Correlation <> causation. But voters who vote for teal INDs in teal seats are unlikely to stuff up anyway. (Have seen some scrutineering reports re Ryan's votes on this.)

https://twitter.com/rebaillieu/status/1591185014662000640

Seeing more of this stuff so just want to make some points about informal votes to draw attention to the trickiness of informal vote rate analysis and point out that claims like this ("PROVEN to reduce informal votes") are unwarranted.

https://twitter.com/BrentHodgson/status/1591186027456376832

So, the informal vote rate in Kooyong fell - but only by 0.08%, a trivial decrease and at an election where the national informal rate dropped by 0.35%.

Goldstein and Indi had similar cards but their informal rates rose by 1.22% and 1.11%.

Reps informal rates have many underlying causes. They can be influenced by education levels, voting literacy levels, state electoral systems and proximity of state elections that have different systems.

But they are also influenced by candidate number changes.

Two factors that influence change in informal voting rate in a Reps seat are: 1. how much did the number of candidates increase or decrease? 2. did the number of candidates change from below 8 to 8+ or vice versa?

(Reason for 2 is votes that copy Senate instructions.)

On a regression for Vic on candidate number changes the Kooyong informal result is good (expected change was +0.5) but the other two went up more than expected (even given that they crossed the magic 8 candidate line).

Even if there had been a pattern, it could just be that teals running (not their cards) caused some voters to cast a formal vote.

There's no evidence that the use of this style of open card by teal candidates in Vic federal 22 affected the informal rate in either direction.

OK the VEC candidate handbook at page 30 contains an absolutely clearcut instruction that any HTV submitted with blank boxes gets rejected.

https://twitter.com/kevinbonham/status/1591242072605921280

This in contrast is the Sheed card from 2014 which was found to be OK by VCAT.

Notwithstanding some poor wording in the checklist, the VEC's actions are consistent with the Act as interpreted by VCAT in the Sheed case.

NB Time permitting I may be doing a detailed writeup of this how-to-vote thing on my site tomorrow.