Ballots for 2013 – now with W.A.
19 August 2013
[Update 11:45 am: The updated Western Australia GVTs were published earlier this morning and you can now use the tool for your W.A. vote.]
On Sunday, the AEC published the group voting tickets for all states and territories, although the Western Australia tickets have been removed pending an update. I’ve just (as of 12:30 am) finished entering the data for the other divisions, so if you live outside W.A., you can now use the tool to start deciding your upper house vote!
- ACT
- New South Wales
- Northern Territory
- Queensland
- South Australia
- Tasmania
- Victoria
- Western Australia
Happy voting!
23 August 2013, 3:44 pm
Thanks very much for making this very helpful and common sense tool available.
- Hopefully the AEC will adopt it (or something similar) for their site, if they haven’t already of course, so many more folks who don’t stumble across your site by accident (as I did) can vote correctly as they preference!
- Will be able to refer anyone here who is scarred of the confusion/potential to mess up below the line (as I have been).
- My only suggestion for increasing the value of this service is that you have either a third column (which maybe “floats” beside the candidate you are “hovering over”) that shows that candidates ordered preferences and a link to their website listed beside it.
- Alternatively, each candidates name could be a link to their ordered preferences or their website where available.
* As I used this tool I was having to web search many of the independents and minor parties to understand who they were.
- Acknowledging that I am not completely across the ins-and-outs of the voting system, this added functionality of the “floating ordered preferences of candidates” would allow the voter also to engage in the political practice of “preference deals”. (my confusion is whether “below the line voting” still has this affect, i.e. exactly how the preference flows work, above or below)
- If the preference element of this suggestion is moot, the website link would still be very helpful.
* In addition to having this website available online, maybe one day the AEC, short of having the benefit of electronic voting (which is a little anomalous and scary itself regarding potential/or fear of cyber interference) to make the element of mistake/fear of mistake leading to “un-preferential” voting above the line, minimalised from the senate tickets by having a computer station set up at polling centres where you can access this tool, print out your draft ticket, walk over to the booth, transcribe your ticket, and be on your way.
24 August 2013, 8:08 pm
Hi, anonymous commenter.
It maybe wasn’t obvious before, but you can start off with a party’s registered preferences and then tweak them from there. You can do that by switching to “Ballot view”, clicking a “1″ above the line to fill in the preferences according to that party’s registered ticket, then switch back to “List view” to begin reordering them.