Damian’s notes

New blog post by me:

I was one of the guest observers at the election count on the evening of
4 July 2024 and it was interesting seeing the process in action in detail.

I’m at the town hall as one of the people observing the counting of the vote. Dozens of people carefully counting, recounting and stacking pieces of paper.

I voted in the city elections this morning before work. This is the first time I have voted under the new voter-suppression-lite regulations, so I had to show my Australian passport before voting. No crowds at all this time of day, so the extra ID faff was not an issue.

OpaVote provides elections as a service: you can choose between a variety of counting systems including various flavors of STV. Small elections are free, otherwise they charge by usage (meaning number of voters and number of candidates).

A description in English and in Pascal of Meek’s method for counting an election using Single Transferable Vote. This differes from some methods in that fractional votes are transferred, which entails using a computer to tally the votes.