00:00Polling day in the 2025 Tasmanian state election is right around the corner and with more than 23,000
00:12informal ballots being cast in the 2024 state election it's probably worth talking about what
00:18you can do to make your vote count this Saturday. Polling day in the 2025 Tasmanian state election
00:26is right around the corner and with more than 23,000 informal ballots being cast in the 2024
00:33state election the worst in the country by the way it's worth having a chat about the Tasmanian
00:38electoral system and how you can make sure your vote counts on July 19th. Unlike federal elections
00:47which use a simple preferential voting system Tasmanian elections use a Hare-Clarke system
00:54named for Englishman Thomas Hare and Tasmanian Andrew Inglis-Clarke. It's been the default method
01:02of voting for the state's lower house since 1907 and essentially all you need to do to make your vote
01:09count is number the boxes from one to seven with no omissions and no repetitions. The seven successful
01:18candidates are elected through a redistributive process using a quota system. Now it's a little
01:25bit too maths-heavy to get into here but essentially each candidate has a certain number of votes they
01:31have to reach to be elected. Any candidate that reaches that total has their surplus redistributed to
01:38other candidates in accordance with the ballot papers but also weighted based on how much surplus they have
01:45and what the quota is. Now while it's a bit more complex and the counts take longer than a federal
01:54election Hare-Clarke is considered a great way of getting proportional representation in the state's
02:01parliament. Now as for why proportional representation is good don't just take that from me. Proportional
02:09representation particularly through Hare-Clarke is really important because it helps translate votes
02:16directly into seats. So we can kind of examine this by looking at the differences between the recent
02:23federal election and the results in the last state election we had. So in 2025 at the federal election
02:32Labor received about 34.6 percent of first preference votes but that meant that they ended up with 62.6 percent
02:42of the seats in parliament because of the single member electorate system we have there. And then at the
02:49other end the Greens got 12 percent roughly of first preference votes nationally but they only ended up
02:56with one seat which is 0.6 percent of all the seats in parliament. And so then if we contrast that with the
03:02Tasmanian system where we have Hare-Clarke so that means that in each electorate we have multiple MPs elected,
03:10seven in each of our five seats. So in 2024 the Liberals won about 36.7 percent of the vote across the state and
03:20they won 40 percent of the seats. So you can see that's pretty close. You look at Labor they won 29 percent
03:25of the vote and got 28.6 percent of the seats. For the Greens it was 14 percent of the vote and then about
03:3214 percent of the seats. So what we can see there is that Hare-Clarke is really good at translating
03:38the share of votes that a party gets into a pretty close approximation of the number of seats. It sort of
03:44reduces um wasted votes in the system you know in these kind of winner takes all um electoral systems
03:52like they use in the UK where you have just a first past the post. A lot of people who didn't vote for
04:00the winning candidate their vote kind of just vanishes and uh so they are probably not likely to feel
04:06particularly represented um in their seat. It depends what perspective you're coming from I guess um as
04:13we've seen in this Tasmanian state election campaign um both the Liberal and Labor parties
04:19constantly say you know you need to vote for us so that we have a strong stable majority government
04:24um but at the same time our electoral system is at its best should reflect the diverse views that
04:32people in the community have. It's not necessarily just about um producing a government that is able to
04:40dominate a parliament because then some parts of society being cut out of the decision making process
04:45so my personal view it's uh it's much more democratic uh to have more parties more views represented
04:52um it forces negotiation it forces compromise and that's what democracy is all about Tasmania leads
04:59the nation in informal voting should we be concerned about that from a democracy perspective?
05:05So informal voting is always something that we want to reduce um and the Tas Electoral Commission
05:11does a pretty good job in terms of their education campaigns around making sure that people put in
05:18the correct uh number so you've got a number at least one to seven um but informal voting also sometimes
05:27comes from a place of protest um so there's a certain share of informal votes that are due to mistakes so
05:34people accidentally put the same number twice or skip a number things like that but there are also
05:41um informal votes that come from people putting in a blank vote because they can't be bothered
05:46um they might draw lots of crosses all over it and uh draw rude pictures as well although worth noting uh
05:53that if you number all your boxes correctly and draw rude pictures that is still a valid vote um so back to
06:00the point informality it doesn't always come from a lack of education or people being confused
06:06sometimes it's kind of a way of saying i'm not happy with the system and we need to differentiate
06:11between those two things there's a robson rotation that's um basically a way of randomizing ballot order
06:17under the well the hair clerk system correct yeah so this is a great tassie innovation and and it's really
06:23important because we know from analyzing ballot papers from elections all around the world that
06:29there's actually a statistically significant advantage to being listed as a candidate on the
06:35top of the ballot paper um or on the bottom of the ballot paper or even you get a bit of an advantage
06:41from being listed just below a really popular candidate and that's because um people will sometimes do
06:47what's called a donkey vote where they might just go in and write one two three four five six seven
06:52straight down the sheet by doing the robson rotation where everyone's ballot paper is a bit different
06:58it really balances out those random effects of where you're put on the ballot paper so really important
07:06especially in smaller jurisdictions like tassie where a small number of votes can be really important
07:12in determining the final result
07:17you
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