Do they even count all the votes if there is no need to distribute preferences? If a candidate wins by a landslide and has over 50% of the potential vote before counting finishes, they may not bother. They would certainly focus on getting the close races counted first.

You better believe it, freediver.

The Divisional Returning Officers invariably do count all the votes. For the sake of maintaining transparency in public accountability for the even-handed conduct of elections, it is essential that they do so. If they didn't, how, for example, would it be possible to determine voting swings from one election to the next?

Ballot papers tend to be viewed by DROs like banknotes. There has to be a full accounting for the bulk disbursment to polling staff, issue in detail to vote claimants, and return of unused and spoilt papers at the close of the poll, let alone the accounting for the contents of the ballot boxes themselves. Uncontrolled genuine blank ballot papers could, in the wrong hands, be used by way of substitution during the count to distort genuine electoral results. All of this DROs strive to nail down before a single vote is counted. Historically, very few papers have gone missing after issue to voters. The question is as to whether the operating procedural instructions they have received from on high, particularly for around 22 of the last 24 years, have permitted them to efficiently and securely do all this.

If you have been observing the VTR progressive results, you may have noticed differences between pre-poll ballot paper issues and pre-poll ballot paper returns reported on the 'Declaration Vote Scrutiny Progress' pages for various Divisions.

Given that a ballot paper issued at a pre-poll voting location should not ever leave the room before being inserted, folded, into the declaration envelope in the sight of the polling clerk, then be sealed up and returned, and that this part of the electoral process is finalised BEFORE election day, I await with interest the explanation for the widespread differences between 'issued' and 'returned' shown during the count, let alone changes during the count of the number of issues. I'll lay odds it has arisen from the outworking of some (ill-thought-out?) central operational directive!

Just for the record, I have never been a casual or permanent employee of the AEC.

have you been a scrutineer? What about postal votes?

Yes, freediver, I have been a scrutineer.

The issue of postal voting ballot papers, like those of pre-poll ballot papers, is something that should be finalised before election day. It is likewise to be expected that the total number of such papers applied for and issued should be in the very first returns posted to the VTR, and should not be subject to change as the count proceeds.

It is obviously possible that some postal votes will not have been received by DROs before the deadline for such receipts, and consequently such will not contribute to the count. Such papers nevertheless must still be accounted for, as if this did not occur it would be rendered more possible for postal voting applications to be made, or mail intercepted, by persons desirous of getting their hands on blank genuine ballot papers.

What this curious 'Turnout by State' table indirectly makes clear is that something of the order of 20% of the vote cast is one form or other of declaration vote. This has implications for the maintainance of the integrity of the ballot. As the convenience of electors has been given increased consideration, so too have the opportunities multiplied for defeating effective scrutineering. The whole electoral process is becoming just too strung out, excuse ridden, and diffuse for scrutineers (most of whom are unpaid volunteers, irrespective of party alliegance) to watch effectively.

Once it becomes known that scrutiny is likely to be weak or non-existent short-cuts start to be taken at the administrative level, and risks become worthwhile for those within or outside the system who might wish to criminally distort or reverse real electoral results.

No doubt it will be contended that the timeliness and accuracy of updates to the VTR is primarily the responsibility of the DROs. The inescapable fact is that responsibility for the design and operation of the VTR website must have been a central office function. I strongly suspect that any DRO, if consulted, would have identified a progressive comparative turnout as a nonsense.

However, let's not rush to judgement.

Caveat elector!

On its official election results page for the Division of Paterson, updated as at 12:42:27 PM on Wed 5 Dec 2007, the AEC VTR reported a turnout of 93.06%.

On the 'Two Candidate Preferred by Polling Place' page for this Division a total of 81,216 votes was given as having so far been counted, at the bottom of a column headed 'Formal'. Subtraction of the counts given for Absent, Pre-poll, Postal, and Provisional formal votes from this 81,216 total yielded a remainder of 65,528 as the valid ordinary vote.

On a separate page, that identified as 'First Preferences and Two Candidate Preferred', the progressive total of informal votes was given, 3,005 votes. The total of 3,005 informal votes, when added to the valid ordinary vote of 65,528 gave a sum of 68,533.

Was the total declaration vote issued, shown as 21,038 (down from 21,360 in an earlier update, BTW) added to the total of the valid ordinary vote and the informals, a sum of 89,571 would be given. This sum represents apparent turnout of 98.97% of the 90,504 enrolments for Paterson, an extremely (dangerously?) high figure.

Now as it stands the calculation is not quite a proper one, for two reasons. The first is that the total given for the informals derives in part from the counting of the declaration vote, and this method of assessing turnout may double count some informals.

The problem is, on pages updated at 5:43:07 PM on Tue 27 Nov, 2,709 informals were recorded at a time when only 3,450 declaration votes (all pre-poll votes) had been claimedly counted. Commonsense (and scrutineers) would tell us that the bulk of the informals would have come from the ordinary vote. If informals are spread evenly throughout the vote, we should expect around 2,600 of those 2,709 informals came from the ordinary vote. On this (reasonable) assumption, we are at risk of only having double-counted at most 350 informal votes in assessing turnout.

TBC

(continued)

The second slight impropriety in this calculation of turnout in Paterson is that it assumes that all declaration vote issues will be admitted to the count. So far, 805 declaration votes have been rejected. Only 492 declaration votes remain outstanding.

If we deduct the notionally double counted 350 informals from the total of 89,571 previously calculated, and then further deduct the 805 rejections, we have a remaining total of 88,416. This equates to a turnout of 97.69%, a far cry from the officially claimed 93.06%. Even if it is assumed that every single one of the 492 outstanding declaration votes either never is returned, or upon return is rejected from the scrutiny, turnout will be close to 97.15%!

What does this mean?

The first thing seemingly meant is that the VTR calculation of the [meaningless(?) progressive] turnout percentage displayed has been throughout DIVORCED from the realities of scrutinised vote counting in Divisions, and the claimed reporting thereof.

Being translated, the AEC VTR reports were acting to deceive all Australians as to the extent of apparent turnout (whatever that meant) DURING THE PROGRESS of the count.

What is the significance of this deception being during the PROGRESS of the count?

The significance may lie in the prospect that the deception may have been meant to provide TEMPORARY cover for adjustments to the publically reported number of vote claims made, such as to prevent the anomaly of more ballot papers ever being seen to have been issued than there were electors enrolled in given Divisions. The reason the cover may only have been temporarily needed could have been because time was available, courtesy of the inevitable delays between actual counting and reporting, to adjust if necessary the record of lodgement, if not that of unlawful claim, of declaration votes so as to not transgress credibility.

It was exactly such transient apparent issues of ballot papers in excess of total enrolments in several spot checked Divisions that my claims in the 26th post in this thread highlighted.

Was the whole election result unlawfully distorted, even reversed?