Voting Numbers in South Australia (edited)
The voters in South Australia had two ballot papers, very like in an Australian Federal election. The voter was required to number all boxes on their lower house (Assembly) ballot paper. Full preferential voting was used. Failure to preference all candidates made a ballot informal. Some people think full preferential voting ought not to be used. Others think preferences after 1 should be optional. What do you think?
The news reports indicate the preferences will get some second place getters into first place. I think that is based on two-candidate preferred calculations. Distribution of preferences is a formal step undertaken (when needed) after all votes in the scrutiny have been processed.
In preferential voting, the person with the highest first preference total may still lose, unless they gained 50% plus of the first preference votes.
The Electoral Commission South Australia has a useful website, with full access to details. Surely it is mostly correct and will be completely at the end. The only glitch I have noticed is their line of text:
* indicates that the candidate was the existing member of parliament for this district.
https://result.ecsa.sa.gov.au/
The count will continue for a while. EG, Postals are yet to be included in the scrutiny.
I am interested to see the low informality rate at this point.
I wonder if the results in the Division of Farrer, in NSW (9 May 2026) will be comparable?
Yours sincerely
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