atw: Re: OT: Grumbling About Elections...
- From: Kath Bowman <Kath.Bowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:33:50 +0930
Hi James,
That was the odd thing. I did take back my spoiled ballot paper. I think the
official was just lazy and did not want to do the process.
Cheers
Kath
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Hunt
Sent: Thursday, 16 August 2012 4:06 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: OT: Grumbling About Elections...
I worked on a lot of elections over the years, Doing My Bit for Democracy, and
some of the observations here surprise me.
The story about the spoiled ballot paper indicates a failure of procedure. If
you spoil a ballot paper, you can get another one, but you have to hand the
spoiled one back. You don't have to explain anything: the electoral officer
cannot query your reasons for requesting a new paper, and has no discretion
about replacing it. The spoiled ballot paper is marked "Spoiled" and placed in
the spoiled ballots envelope. At the end of the day, every ballot paper,
including spoils, must be accounted for. In my experience, there were rare
occasions when people would spoil a ballot paper, tear it up and throw it in a
bin, and then go to the desk to demand a fresh one. They were always refused,
until they brought the spoiled paper back to the desk. If this procedure were
not followed, then the tally sheets would not balance, the integrity of the
booth results would be compromised, and all the electoral officers would have
to ferret through the bins until the missing paper(s) were found - usually very
late at night. (Do you know how much paper an election generates? It's
amazing...)
If you ever have a problem, don't argue with a desk officer: go straight to the
Officer in Charge. The OiCs are much more knowledgeable than the desk officers,
who usually have only a few hours' online training and little experience. (And
if you turn up at 8AM, you will find that they have no experience!)
A few people number their Senate ballots from 1 to a zillion below the line,
but in the booths where I worked (near Monash University, and later in South
Brisbane), hardly anybody ever got it right. Duplicates and missing numbers
were common.
Preference deals are something for the parties to negotiate and publicise. I
recall - vaguely - an Electoral Commission handbook detailing Senate preference
schemes, which was issued to polling booths. A few people - about three in
twenty-odd years - did want to see it.
JH
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