Labor’s Trevor Kaine is still in the race to get a seat and Labor’s Andrew Whitecross is not assured of winning his seat, according to scrutineers and an analysis of the way preferences are flowing.
The change comes because of the large number of major-party voters who voted for only five candidates or only seven in Molonglo, voting straight down the ballot paper in whatever order the Robson rotation system presented to them.
The ACT Electoral Commission issued no new vote count yesterday, but information from scrutineers and the analysis of preference flows reveals a different candidate position from late Saturday night, though the likely party make-up of the Assembly remains the same: Liberal 7, Labor 6, Greens 1, Moore 1, Osborne 1 and the remaining seat either going to the Greens or the Osborne group.
Seat-by-seat the likely results are as follows:
Molonglo: 3 Liberals (Carnell, Humphries and Kaine); 2 Labor (Quinlan and Garth); 1 Green (Tucker) and Moore.
Brindabella: 2 Liberal (Smyth and either Kaine or Littlewood); 2 Labor (Wood and either Hargreaves or Whitecross); 1 Osborne.
Ginninderra: 2 Liberal (Stefaniak and Hird); 2 Labor (Berry and Stanhope) and either the Osborne Group’s Dave Rugendyke or the Greens’ Shane Rattenbury. This undecided seat will largely determine the political and legislative balance in the Assembly, (presuming that Kate Carnell is re-elected Chief Minister anyway).
This is because if Mr Rugendyke wins it, Mrs Carnell will only have to rely on the Osborne group to get her way in the Assembly on legislation and procedure, and will not have to rely on Michael Moore or the Greens as well.
It would mean, for example, greater pressure on the Liberals to increase police powers and greater pressure to ignore social reform. In the past three years Mrs Carnell has used the need to be sweet to Michael Moore to hold the more right-wing members of her own party from pressing claims for socially conservative action. Without that need she will find it more difficult to resist any demands from the Osborne group.
(This presumes that the Osborne group do not do an unexpected swap to Labor under a new leader.)
At present, Mr Rattenbury for the Greens appears to have a tiny advantage. That advantage comes because there is very little spillage from the Liberals who are on almost exactly two quotas which would be expected to favour Mr Rugendyke. Democrat preferences are favouring the Greens by nearly four to one, however, a lot of Democrat vote is exhausting after five Democrat preferences. Mr Rugendyke, on the other hand, is getting the flow of preferences from the Nile and Hill groups which each had only two candidates and so people voted for at least a further three.
Against Mr Rattenbury also is the women’s vote. Scrutineers have seen quite a few ballot papers which express preferences for all the women candidates and only women candidates and then exhaust. So Mr Rattenbury will not get all the preferences from his fellow (for want of a better word) female Greens.
In Brindabella, Mr Kaine appears to have benefited from voters who voted one to five straight down the Liberal column. It is not really a donkey vote, because the voter is expressing a clear preference, but just not articulating it between the Liberal candidates, rather leaving it to the chance of who happens to be on top of the Liberal column on their ballot paper. A better term would be a “”lineal party vote”.
At present, Louise Littlewood is 525 votes ahead of Mr Kaine. But when the fifth and fourth Liberal candidates (Head and Didier) are excluded, Mr Kaine will inevitably draw ahead. This is because on ballot papers printed with Head or Didier on top of the Liberal column, Kaine’s name appears before Littlewood’s and he will get the lineal party vote whent he preferences are counted. That name order is determined by lottery before the ballot papers are printed. Each Liberal candidate gets one fifth of the ballots papers with his or her name on the top of the party column, but the order underneath is not so evenly split and it is not jumbled.
Similarly with Labor in Brindabella. Mr Whitecross is 550 votes ahead of John Hargreaves. But when the fifth and fourth Labor candidates (Presdee and Mow) are excluded, Mr Hargreaves can expect to get the lineal party vote ahead of Mr Whitecross, though it is not quite as clear cut as in the Liberals’ case because some of the preferences have to go to get Labor’s leading candidate Bill Wood over the quota.
The lineal party vote is also affecting Labor in Molonglo. It seems about 70 per cent of Labor voters have voted this way. At present, sitting MLA Simon Corbell is ahead on first preferences by 400 votes, but this will get whittled away as Labor’s lower candidates get excluded, as the lineal party vote favours Ted Quinlan and Steve Garth.
It seems that up to four seats will be decided according to the randomness of ballot order, though it will not affect the party complexion of the seats.
Greens candidate Miko Kirschbaum (who is not in the running for a seat) put a case to a Legislative Assembly committee for slight changes to the Robson rotation system that would remedy the problem, but it was rejected. Perhaps it should be revisited.