Response From ABS to Marriage Law Postal Survey Questions

On 16 August I sent the ABS a list of fourteen questions regarding the conduct of the Marriage Law Postal Survey, in particular regarding count quality assurance issues.  Some of the questions were answered in subsequent public debate.  The response below was received today, September 11, from Michael Wilson of ABS and is reproduced in full.  My questions as sent are in italics.  My thanks to the ABS for their detailed responses at this busy time.

I have added some comments of my own below the responses, and may add more later.

Senate Reform Performance Review Part 2

In this piece I continue the roundup of the performance of the new Senate voting system that I started in part 1.  Part 1 covered proportionality, half-Senate projections, winning vote shares, the impact of preferencing, just-vote-1 rates and exhaust.  This part covers  informal votes, the One Nation question, below the line rates, the two most unusual victories (Lisa Singh and Malcolm Roberts), the impact of the fixed quota, the question of verification and areas for improvement. (There's also a brief note about Inclusive Gregory that isn't relevant to reform, but that I thought I should mention anyway).  Anything else I think of may be tacked onto the end.  I have already discussed donkey-voting, proximity preferencing, the abject failure of most parties' how-to-vote cards, and preferencing patterns by state on the Button Press Week thread. Also, lots of Tasmanian-specific stats can be found on the Tasmanian button press thread.