Recount: Recount of above the line and informal votes granted Oct 10. Recount ran from Oct 17 to Nov 1. Various corrections were made but 1370 votes were lost, could not be rechecked, and were excluded from the recount.
Declared Result: Ludlam (Green) and Dropulich (Sports) declared winners by 12 votes at key exclusion.
But There's A Problem: The lost votes would have advantaged Pratt (ALP) and Wang (PUP) by 13 votes, meaning that if there were no errors in the counting of those votes, Pratt (ALP) and Wang (PUP) could have won by one vote.
Where to from here? Outcome referred to Court of Disputed Returns by AEC requesting that election be ruled void. Petitions also filed by Zhenya Wang (PUP) and Simon Mead (ALP state secretary). The arguments for voiding the election were accepted and the election was ruled void, triggering a full WA Senate by-election to be held on April 5 under the existing system.
Updates to this post appear with the newest at the bottom.
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| Democracy in action! Screenshot of the critical point of the preference distribution. |
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Just a post to explain what is going on with the Western Australian Senate count to those not already aware of it. The button was pressed today on the most exciting of the eight Senate post-counts.
Through the complex process of modelling the outcome undertaken by Truth Seeker, Antony Green and others, one point of the long list of exclusions of minor candidates became increasingly crucial and incredibly close. That point concerned which of the Shooters and Fishers and the Australian Christians was excluded first. Neither of these parties had the slightest chance of winning, but because of their different group voting ticket preferences, which one was excluded first would have a great impact on the outcome. If the Australian Christians were excluded, this would then lead to the exclusion of the Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich, and this would in turn result in Labor's Louise Pratt and Palmer United Party's Zhenya Wang getting the final two seats. If the Shooters and Fishers were excluded, this would then lead to Dropulich winning on a preference snowball and taking the Greens' Scott Ludlam with him.
The Shooters and Fishers had a lead on the ABC Calculator, but it assumes all votes are above the line votes, and ignores the impact of below the line votes that do not follow the script. If only reliably "locked in" votes (ticket votes and a share of votes from a party's second and subsequent candidates) were included then the Christians had a wafer-thin lead. But modelling by Truth Seeker here suggested that the Shooters and Fishers were slightly more likely than not to do just well enough on below-the-lines from other parties to beat the Christians at this point. The final Truth Seeker projected margin was 54 votes to S+F, but with a large degree of uncertainty, such that "Is this significantly different to zero? No."
