The ins and outs of voting in Tasmania.

The Examiner

The Examiner's Joe Colbrook, with a bit of help from Tasmanian Policy Exchange deputy director Rob Hortle, explains how Tasmania's voting system works and how you can make sure your vote in the 2025 state election is counted. Video by Paul Scambler

Transcript

00:00Polling day in the 2025 Tasmanian state election is right around the corner and with more than 23,000

00:12informal ballots being cast in the 2024 state election it's probably worth talking about what

00:18you can do to make your vote count this Saturday. Polling day in the 2025 Tasmanian state election

00:26is right around the corner and with more than 23,000 informal ballots being cast in the 2024

00:33state election the worst in the country by the way it's worth having a chat about the Tasmanian

00:38electoral system and how you can make sure your vote counts on July 19th. Unlike federal elections

00:47which use a simple preferential voting system Tasmanian elections use a Hare-Clarke system

00:54named for Englishman Thomas Hare and Tasmanian Andrew Inglis-Clarke. It's been the default method

01:02of voting for the state's lower house since 1907 and essentially all you need to do to make your vote

01:09count is number the boxes from one to seven with no omissions and no repetitions. The seven successful

01:18candidates are elected through a redistributive process using a quota system. Now it's a little

01:25bit too maths-heavy to get into here but essentially each candidate has a certain number of votes they

01:31have to reach to be elected. Any candidate that reaches that total has their surplus redistributed to

01:38other candidates in accordance with the ballot papers but also weighted based on how much surplus they have

01:45and what the quota is. Now while it's a bit more complex and the counts take longer than a federal

01:54election Hare-Clarke is considered a great way of getting proportional representation in the state's

02:01parliament. Now as for why proportional representation is good don't just take that from me. Proportional

02:09representation particularly through Hare-Clarke is really important because it helps translate votes

02:16directly into seats. So we can kind of examine this by looking at the differences between the recent

02:23federal election and the results in the last state election we had. So in 2025 at the federal election

02:32Labor received about 34.6 percent of first preference votes but that meant that they ended up with 62.6 percent

02:42of the seats in parliament because of the single member electorate system we have there. And then at the

02:49other end the Greens got 12 percent roughly of first preference votes nationally but they only ended up

02:56with one seat which is 0.6 percent of all the seats in parliament. And so then if we contrast that with the

03:02Tasmanian system where we have Hare-Clarke so that means that in each electorate we have multiple MPs elected,

03:10seven in each of our five seats. So in 2024 the Liberals won about 36.7 percent of the vote across the state and

03:20they won 40 percent of the seats. So you can see that's pretty close. You look at Labor they won 29 percent

03:25of the vote and got 28.6 percent of the seats. For the Greens it was 14 percent of the vote and then about

03:3214 percent of the seats. So what we can see there is that Hare-Clarke is really good at translating

03:38the share of votes that a party gets into a pretty close approximation of the number of seats. It sort of

03:44reduces um wasted votes in the system you know in these kind of winner takes all um electoral systems

03:52like they use in the UK where you have just a first past the post. A lot of people who didn't vote for

04:00the winning candidate their vote kind of just vanishes and uh so they are probably not likely to feel

04:06particularly represented um in their seat. It depends what perspective you're coming from I guess um as

04:13we've seen in this Tasmanian state election campaign um both the Liberal and Labor parties

04:19constantly say you know you need to vote for us so that we have a strong stable majority government

04:24um but at the same time our electoral system is at its best should reflect the diverse views that

04:32people in the community have. It's not necessarily just about um producing a government that is able to

04:40dominate a parliament because then some parts of society being cut out of the decision making process

04:45so my personal view it's uh it's much more democratic uh to have more parties more views represented

04:52um it forces negotiation it forces compromise and that's what democracy is all about Tasmania leads

04:59the nation in informal voting should we be concerned about that from a democracy perspective?

05:05So informal voting is always something that we want to reduce um and the Tas Electoral Commission

05:11does a pretty good job in terms of their education campaigns around making sure that people put in

05:18the correct uh number so you've got a number at least one to seven um but informal voting also sometimes

05:27comes from a place of protest um so there's a certain share of informal votes that are due to mistakes so

05:34people accidentally put the same number twice or skip a number things like that but there are also

05:41um informal votes that come from people putting in a blank vote because they can't be bothered

05:46um they might draw lots of crosses all over it and uh draw rude pictures as well although worth noting uh

05:53that if you number all your boxes correctly and draw rude pictures that is still a valid vote um so back to

06:00the point informality it doesn't always come from a lack of education or people being confused

06:06sometimes it's kind of a way of saying i'm not happy with the system and we need to differentiate

06:11between those two things there's a robson rotation that's um basically a way of randomizing ballot order

06:17under the well the hair clerk system correct yeah so this is a great tassie innovation and and it's really

06:23important because we know from analyzing ballot papers from elections all around the world that

06:29there's actually a statistically significant advantage to being listed as a candidate on the

06:35top of the ballot paper um or on the bottom of the ballot paper or even you get a bit of an advantage

06:41from being listed just below a really popular candidate and that's because um people will sometimes do

06:47what's called a donkey vote where they might just go in and write one two three four five six seven

06:52straight down the sheet by doing the robson rotation where everyone's ballot paper is a bit different

06:58it really balances out those random effects of where you're put on the ballot paper so really important

07:06especially in smaller jurisdictions like tassie where a small number of votes can be really important

07:12in determining the final result

07:17you

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