PONDERING who I felt was worthy of being an elected member of my local council, I was examining the bits of paper the Tasmanian Electoral Commission (TEC) had sent me. I found the numbering instructions on the voting slip disturbing, as did I the TEC’s assurances about the security of my vote.
Why are we not told at the top (not the bottom) of the list of candidates for councilIor that we only have to number boxes up to the number of councillors to be elected? (In my case, Huon Valley Council, there are 16 candidates and nine councillor positions.)
At the top of the list of 16 names, we are told, in fairly large, bold, italic type, that we must ‘Number boxes from 1 to 16 in order of your choice’ — which, I’m sure, most people, because of that instruction, will proceed to do.
Then, underneath the name of the last candidate on the slip, we are told, in much smaller, medium, italic type, to ‘Number at least 9 boxes to make your vote count’. What if we have already numbered all the boxes before we get to this tiny line of type? Can we cross off those we numbered despite our contempt for them? Is that allowed? That last line might as well say, ‘Oh, you didn’t really have to go to 16, nine will be quite enough!’
What is going on? Who’s idea was it to mislead voters at the top of the ballot paper that they had to vote the full ticket, then, as an afterthought (possibly to meet the requirements of the law), tell us that we only have to number to the total of councillors to be elected.
It’s the same on the ‘election of mayor’ section of the ballot, where the Huon Valley has three candidates: at the top we are told, ‘Number the boxes from 1 to 3 in order of your choice’, then at the bottom, we are told, in much smaller, medium italic type, ‘Number at least 1 box to make your vote count’.
Ditto, ‘election of deputy mayor’ (five candidates): Number the boxes from 1 to 5 in order of your choice, then at the bottom, we are told, in much smaller, medium, italic type ‘Number at least 1 box to make your vote count’.
Is there a hidden agenda here?
Is there a hidden agenda here, in which the TEC is intentionally/accidentally playing accomplice to politicians who conceived the law and saw it to their political advantage that every voter should be guided into giving every candidate a number (and, therefore, a degree of support)?
This was also the case in this year’s Huon Division Legislative Council election, a poll in which fully numbered ballot papers strongly influenced the final count.
It is more difficult for voters who have to attend a polling booth to register their votes than it is in postal voting, where thoughtful voters have more time to read everything before making their final decisions.
In regions in which literacy is a hugely serious problem — as in the Huon Valley, where semi-literacy is somewhere around 50%, and thousands of adults have difficulty filling any kind of form — it is vital that ballot slips, which play such an important role in the quality of our democracy, should be simply yet explicitly presented.
Another thought: how can voters who decided not to number past 9 (councillors) and 1 (mayor) and 1 (deputy mayor), know for sure that the boxes remaining empty on their voting slips will not be stealthily filled in somewhere during the sorting and counting procedure?
It insults my senses
ODD things do happen on counting nights. I remember, as a rookie scrutineer at the 2009 HVC election, I saw one TEC staffer sort through a batch of 100 voting slips. It was supposed to be a first sort. At the end of doing so, she remarked, in words to this effect: “That’s the first time I have ever counted 100 votes straight for the same candidate.” She was surprised. I was surprised. The supervisor also expressed surprise, but discounted any irregularity by passing off the incident as: “They must have been sorted before.”
My next thought: “How can these votes have been sorted ‘before’ when they are supposed to have just been sorted for the first time.” So inexperienced and timid a scrutineer was I, I didn’t take the matter any further.
BACK to filling in our ballot slips. It insults my senses to have to number even to nine among the 16 candidates on offer here in the Huon Valley. In a truly democratic society (where I believe voting should always be compulsory, which it is not in local government), a citizen should never be forced to vote for a candidate of whom they disapprove, perhaps even intensely dislike and distrust.
I believe that, to make our democracy more democratic, voters should be allowed to award a candidate a “negative vote”, so that, in the final count, a candidate’s measure of support is only arrived at after the total of “negative votes” has been subtracted from the total of “positive votes”. That’s not an original thought of mine, but it’s an idea that gets my vote. — Bob Hawkins.
• Julian Type, in Comments: Bob, If you do not number all the boxes, there is a very real chance that your vote will exhaust at some point during the distribution of preferences when, in fact, you may have a clear preference (or, in your own terms perhaps, aversion) among the remaining candidates. The TEC would be doing voters a disservice to induce exhausted votes. As for the count in 2009, I tend to prefer the innocent explanation, but, then, I would!
