I scrutineered for Wilkie for 11 hours yesterday and it was intense and draining. Contrary to belief there was no observable Donkey vote; the lack of interest in voting was expressed by the 7% who did not vote. The rest voted party lines and exhausted the vote or used their vote more wisely and exploited the Hare Clark system. It appeared to me that Elise Archer was not elected at all by people who exhausted their vote early on liberals but as Kevin correctly points out the flow of preferences and by people who bothered to number the full 17 candidates.
In terms of the non-apparent donkey vote there appeared an unlikely penalty early on with a candidate being in the far left or first column as Wilkie was. Wilkie and I thought this would be an early advantage. But as I observed to the controlling officers, most people who do the counting are right handed and held the ballot paper firmly with the left hand, thus tending to cover up Wilkie’s column with their thumb as they scrolled through say 50 votes on the re-checks.
I certainly agree that the method for counting is antiquated and the Hare-Clark distribution could be safely improved using a hi-tech count rather than a low tech approach (thumbs and fingers and brain) as is used today.
Kevin your observation that some of the voting is gender based is correct and it did contribute to Archer staying ahead of Wilkie. I also noticed at the end, that the 16th preference for either candidate was being used to decide over the 17th candidate for the other candidate. This is Hare-Clark in all its glory.
On the method of counting, the day was very long, very intense and the room became stuffy in the late afternoon. It was apparent that mistakes were occurring because of the conditions inside the room, it was crowded with active intense people at work. There was a time when the last count was happening and Burnet’s vote was being cut-up to decide the issue, when I spotted a bundle of fifty votes incorrectly in one pile and it turned out to be just the top vote incorrectly inserted onto the other candidates pile. This may have been tiredness or the fact that the votes were being counted into their teens on preferences and thus needed more intense screening and concentration. This problem may have been caught as it was possible that there was still a re-check to go on all votes at that point.
Finally the TEC staff were very diligent, very committed to the fairness and if mistakes were happening they were random and unintentional and I doubt that they caused any deviation from the true result.
If most folks took a little more time to understand how the votes are actually counted then they could have a much better say in the result. To praise the Hare-Clark system without fully comprehending how it works is pointless and wastes the opportunity that this system gives to you. It was an eye opener yesterday, full of challenges for everybody involved and the best I can say is that Hare-Clark like everything else in this world needs some money spent on it to make it work better. Things to do are education and civic lessons in schools, introduction of technology to allow electronic calculations to speed the system up and maybe even vote tracing for each individual so that they can follow their own vote through the system to see when it is counted and how far down the list of candidates you can go with your preferences and the must-do, being able to vote from home.
I suggest to everyone that they try this involvement in the system. Most especially at cut up and distribution of preferences; as you will understand that to vote 1 for say Bacon or Groom with well thought out preferences down the line would never see the light of day for your preferences to be used wisely as an expression of your thoughts past Bacon or Groom. In other words to vote 1 for a candidate who will win inevitably is to waste your preferences and the Hare-Clark system.
