The ACT Electoral Commission is to launch a major education program tomorrow for the lead up to the February 18 election.
The campaign starts with a letter-box drop of all ACT households by Australia Post with addressed mail tomorrow and Friday. It will be followed by a series of newspaper and television advertisements.
The commission faces the task of explaining to about 180,000 voters the new elements of the ACT voting system: three electorates; Hare-Clark; Robson rotation.
(subs bold) Three electorates: (end bold) Voters will vote for candidates in one of three electorates: Molonglo, Ginninderra or Brindabella (see below for the suburbs in each electorate). On election day voters can go to a booth anywhere in the ACT all of which will be able to take votes for all three electorates, though the commission prefers people vote in their own electorate. There will be a polling booth at Bateman’s Bay on the day.
Voters will see only the candidates for their electorate on the ballot paper. For example, voters in Brindabella and Ginninderra will not see the names of the party leaders Rosemary Follett and Kate Carnell, who are both standing in Molonglo.
(subs bold) Hare-Clark: (subs end bold) Hare-Clark is different from the House of Representatives and more like the Senate system. Voters will vote for seven candidates in Molonglo and five in Brindabella and Ginninderra. Mr Green said that, as a general principle, voters would need to mark at least 1 to 7 in Molonglo and 1 to 5 in the other two electorates to record a valid vote, but they could mark preferences sequentially for all candidates.
Under Hare-Clark the candidates appear under party columns, but there is no party vote as with the Federal Senate. Voters have to number candidates as individuals.
It is possible to vote across party lines and still record a valid vote. For example a voter could vote for a Labor candidate first, Liberal second, Independent third, Liberal fourth, Labor fifth, Labor sixth, Liberal seventh across the ballot paper according to how the voters assesses individual candidates.
(subs bold) Robson Rotation: (subs end bold) The order of candidates within the party columns is randomised. Say there are five Labor candidates in Ginninderra: A, B, C, D and E. One fifth of the ballot papers will have E at the top of the Labor column. Another fifth will have D. Another fifth C. Another fifth B and the remaining fifth will have A at the top of the column. So voters in the queue will have the candidates in a different order on their ballot papers than the person behind them or in front of them. It will be extremely likely that the order on the ballot paper will also be different from the order seen in advertisements or how-to-vote cards, for those parties who use them. In short, people will have to think about the individuals they want to vote for.
In this election, the Liberal Party have not pre-selected its candidates in any preferred order; the Labor Party has.
Electoral Commissioner Phil Green said it will be the first time the ACT runs its own election under its own laws. The previous two elections had been run by the federal commission under federal law.
Counting was expected to be faster than the previous two elections when the count took six weeks and four weeks respectively. The final result was expected two weeks after polling, he said.
The critical dates for voters are:
Close of rolls January 20; pre-poll voting begins for those likely to be out of town on election day January 30; polling day February 18.
The critical dates for candidates are:
Close of party register January 12; nomination open January 13; nominations close January 26; party annual returns made public February 1; postal votes close February 24; distribution of preferences begins February 25; declaration of result March (probably in the first week of March).
On election night the commission will count only first-preferences. But more than 95 per cent of them will be counted on the night, unlike Federal elections where only 85 per cent are counted. This is because the bulk of out-of-area voting will be recorded as ordinary votes, and most postal and pre-poll votes can be counted on the night, leaving only a few late postals to be counted in the week after the poll, before preferences are distributed on Saturday February 25.
The count is done on a exhaustive quota preferential system. Individual candidates with quotas on the first count are elected. In Molonglo the quota is 12.5 per cent of the vote and it is 16.6 per cent in the other two seats.
Any over quota surplus for elected candidates is distributed according to preferences. This is done by distributing all the elected candidates’ ballot papers, but they will be transferred at a reduced value to account for the percentage of them used to elect the candidate.
If that distribution gives any candidates a quota they are elected and again surpluses are transferred.
If after all the surpluses have been distributed, vacancies remain, the candidate with the lowest vote is excluded and his or her ballot papers are distributed according to preferences.
It is likely that the last one or two seats in each electorate will be decided on preferences and the others will be decided by distributed surpluses among the major-party candidates.
The suburbs in the three electorates are as follows:
Ginninderra: Aranda, Belconnen, Bruce, Charnwood, Cook, Dunlop, Evatt, Florey, Flynn, Fraser, Giralang, Hall, Hawker, Higgins, Holt, Kaleen, Latham, Lawson, MacGregor, Macquarie, McKellar, Melba, Page, Scullin, Spence, Weetangera.
Molonglo: Acton, Ainslie, Amaroo, Barton, Braddon, Campbell, Chapman, City, Curtin, Deakin, Dickson, Downer, Duffy, Farrer, Fisher, Forrest, Fyshwick, Garran, Griffith, Hackett, Holder, Hughes, Hume, Isaacs, Kingston, Lyneham, Lyons, Mawson, Mitchell, Narrabundah, Ngunnawal, Nicholls, O’Connor, O’Malley, Palmerston, Parkes, Phillip, Pialligo, Red Hill, Red Hill, Reid, Rivett, Russell, Stirling., Symonston, Turner, Waramanga, Watson, Weston, Yarralumla.
Brindabella: Banks, Bonython, Calwell, Chifley, Chisholm, Conder, Fadden, Gilmore, Gordon, Gowrie, Greenway, Isabella Plains, Kambah, MacArthur, Monash, Oxley, Pearce, Richardson, Tharwa, Theodore, Torrens, Wanniassa.