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Elections
and Vote-counting Services Click
on a blue hyperlink of interest. |
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Types of Assistance with the Scrutiny: Proportional
Representation Society of Australia (Victoria-Tasmania) Inc. provides
elections and vote-counting services, for the fees below,
using software that can count a small election, or one with up to 65,000
ballot-papers and 200 candidates. PRSAV-T Inc. will not charge for
recommendations about electoral systems being used or considered. The earlier
a client gives us notice the more likely it will be that an Officer
can attend. At least one week's notice is preferable, except for a Type 5 Count
below, where at least three weeks' notice is normally needed. It
conducts counts for systems other than the quota-preferential system of
proportional representation if required, as such a count can
demonstrate the advantages of PR over other systems, and also as PR is not
applicable for elections for a single position.
For larger-scale elections, consider the Australian Electoral Commission’s fee-for-service. PRSAV-T
Inc. can, as its clients require, provide one of the
following five types of service as assistance with the scrutiny: TYPE
1 - On-site counting by PRSAV-T Inc: One or more of
PRSAV-T Inc’s Accredited PR Vote-counting Officers (click here to see list)
can visit your premises and conduct the count for, or assist, your Returning
Officer, either manually on paper, or that PRSAV-T Inc. Officer or Officers
can use our counting program, either with your computer or computers, or if
you have no computers, with a laptop computer brought by us. Visits by
PRSAV-T Inc. Officers can be within or outside normal working hours, by
arrangement. TYPE
2 - You enter voting data on a prescribed spreadsheet that PRSAV-T
Inc. then counts:
The cost of a visit is very much reduced, or avoided, if you sort the
ballot-papers into stacks according to the first preference votes shown and
then key - stack by stack, taking the stacks characterized by the first
preference candidate distinctive to each one in the same order as the
candidates' names appear on the ballot-paper - the preferences shown on the
ballot-papers into a prescribed Excel spreadsheet that
PRSAV-T Inc. supplies you in accordance with written instructions it
provides, so its program can utilize that spreadsheet to conduct the count. That spreadsheet has inbuilt warnings to
alert the user to informal ballots, or formal ballots with duplication or
omission of later preference markings. It also sums the first preference
votes for each candidate. You can then arrange a short visit by a PRSAV-T
Inc. Accredited PR Vote-counting Officer to rapidly perform the
count, which ensures that the original voting information always stays with
you. PRSAV-T Inc. would leave you with a results sheet as an Excel
spreadsheet, and will, if requested, email you a signed Certificate of
Computation of Election Results on PRSAV-T Inc. letterhead as a PDF file, and
a colour hypertext or PDF file for display on your website, as is needed to
avoid one or more of the surcharges below. TYPE
3 - Contact by internet or mail: As for Type 2,
except that PRSAV-T Inc. does not visit you, but instead receives the
completed prescribed Excel
spreadsheet by email, USB drive or CD-ROM posted to it at the
above address, or placed on a nominated web page, after which PRSAV-T Inc. would
then email or otherwise send you a results sheet as an Excel
spreadsheet or, if required, as a colour hypertext or PDF file for display on
your website, and a signed Certificate of Computation of Election Results, as
with Type 2. This approach is by far the cheapest option
as it can use a minimum of 30 minutes of our time, and hence attract only our
minimum charge, except where irregularities, unusual or non-standard
arrangements, or a large scale poll, occur, and require more time. This Type
3 Service is also useful as a re-assurance and confirmation for those
Returning Officers that prefer, or are required, to conduct a manual count.
If the Type 3 result were found to differ from the Returning Officer's manual
result, that would be a useful warning that further
work is needed to obtain results that match each other, whereas an initial
match is a good confirmation of the manual count. When a conversation with us
would help, use the contact numbers above. TYPE 4 -
Submitting paper records to PRSAV-T Inc: You can deliver the ballot-papers,
or a certified copy of the information on them, to PRSAV-T Inc. at the above
address. It can count them and post or email a result back. TYPE
5 - Appointment of a PRSAV-T Inc. Officer as your Returning
Officer:
Alternatively, PRSAV-T Inc. can provide one of its Accredited PR
Vote-counting Officers to be appointed by the client as the Returning Officer
for the election, and that can extend to PRSAV-T Inc. conducting the entire
election, including the printing of ballot-papers, and the posting and
receiving back of electoral material by post in the case of a postal ballot. Please note that PRSAV-T Inc. requires
notice of at least three weeks before the date on which it is first required
to post material, and requires a minimum interval of three weeks between the
date on which nominations are to be sought and the close of nominations if it
is asked to call for nominations, and a minimum interval of three weeks
between the date prescribed for its posting ballot-papers and the close of
the ballot. Results file in
hypertext (.htm) format, or in PDF format, with
hypertext links:
As
well as providing the client with a signed and dated report by an Accredited
PR Vote-counting Officer on PRSAV-T Inc. letterhead, we can produce a .htm or a PDF results file, each with hypertext links,
that we can post or e-mail to you or place at a Web page we nominate, from
which you can download it. You can place that file on your website and thus
avoid some or all of the surcharges on our base hourly charge as
stated below. We also provide, if required, a Summary of the Scrutiny and its
Results as an Excel spreadsheet file. See, as an example, the results
sheets that PRSAV-T Inc. prepared for the Australian Conservation Foundation
Inc. for its 2003 Council elections, which ACF displayed on its
website for some six months after those elections. Data Entry: The only
significant time-consuming task is the entry of the preference markings on
each ballot-paper either into a prescribed format of Excel
spreadsheet, or directly into the
computer while our program is running, where it is saved. Our Officers’ rate
of data entry is about 1,000 preferences per hour, but skilled data entry
professionals should easily exceed that. Instruction in the use of the Proportional
Representation Manual: PRSAV-T Inc. will provide an Accredited PR
Vote-counting Officer to visit you to answer questions on, and explain how to
apply, in a manual count, using the Quota-preferential Counting
Sheet it sells, the Rules of the PRSA for Conducting Elections by the
Quota-preferential Method as set out in its Proportional Representation Manual. That will include,
if requested, having the client conduct, under that Officer's supervision, a
practice count for the election described in Example 1 in the Proportional
Representation Manual, using the 65 ballot-papers relevant to that count
that we will bring, and that will demonstrate most of the situations and
possibilities that a Returning Officer is likely to encounter in most
moderate-sized election counts. Alternatively, or additionally, PRSAV-T Inc.
can work with you while you apply the Proportional Representation Manual
in an actual count you need to conduct. Instruction service charges are the
same as our vote-counting charges below. Base Hourly Charge: PRSAV-T
Inc's charges do not include Goods and Service Tax, as its
annual turnover is below the threshold for that. PRSAV-T Inc. will send you a
Tax Invoice for its services stating that. PRSAV-T Inc. has a base hourly charge of $90.00 per Officer for the
time each of its Officers is working on your task - usually one Officer is
enough. There is also a charge, at half that base hourly charge, for
the time each Officer spends travelling to and from the site involved, and
also the re-imbursement of reasonable transport costs, which might be either
for public transport (as low as $3.40 per day for a Senior) or for a
private vehicle at recommended RACV rates,
depending on the persons and locations involved, but firm advance quotations
of that can be given, and it is recommended that such written quotations
should be obtained before using our services. The hourly charge is the base
hourly charge except where it is added to if one or more of the four
Surcharge hourly additions A-D below apply. The minimum total
charge for service is $45.00. PRSAV-T
Inc. advice
on election rules, and its service for filling of casual vacancies
for an election that it has conducted using a computer count where such
vacancies can be filled by it electronically, are each free of charge. If the
information on the ballot-papers is supplied to PRSAV-T Inc. in other than
the particular Excel spreadsheet format we prescribe, the
charge at our base hourly rate is about 9 cents per candidate multiplied by
the total number of ballot-papers, both formal and informal, examined, as we
convert that information into the prescribed form for the client. Any postage
or telephone costs in returning the ballot-papers and results, will be
charged, as will extra time caused by irregularities or inconsistencies that
are not the fault of PRSAV-T Inc. (at the base hourly charge plus any
applicable hourly surcharges). The printout of the election result is free,
but a printout of more than four pages of the table of preference markings
for each vote costs 30 cents per page plus postage. Once data
entry is completed, or the prescribed Excel spreadsheets loaded and
joined to form a single spreadsheet if necessary, the program is run, and a
result is obtained, almost immediately. In addition, if requested, the data
entered can be left with the client as an Excel spreadsheet or PDF
file emailed to the client. A paper copy of that detailed data can be
provided, but with a large election that can extend to a large number of
pages. Any
IBM-compatible computer, running Windows 98 or later, is satisfactory. A
single USB drive is sufficient. Inkjet or laser printers are equally
acceptable. If a printer is unavailable, the report is usually simple enough
to be transcribed from the monitor display, but PRSAV-T Inc. can print a
report and post or email it to the client. PRSAV-T Inc. can usually bring a
laptop (to be used by its Officers only), but many clients prefer to have us
use their computers. Filling any Casual
Vacancies after a PR Election: Click on the
hyperlink at left for more details. The PRSA recommends that the important
principle of direct election by the voters of all the
representatives, as also specified in Sections 7 and 24 of the
Australian Constitution, be maintained in the filling of casual vacancies by
a prescribed re-examination of the ballots cast at the election at which the
vacating representatives were elected. Elections Counted: One of the largest-scale elections PRSAV-T
Inc. has assisted with was the 1994 triennial postal ballot for the Council
of the Australian Conservation Foundation Inc. It involved some 2,700
ballot-papers. In the ACF Returning Officer's written report of the poll
result posted to all ACF members she kindly acknowledged PRSAV-T Inc's
assistance with the count. PRSAV-T Inc. also assisted with the ACF's 2000,
2003 and 2007 postal ballots. Click here for a list of the
organizations for which PRSAV-T Inc. has assisted with counting,
or has conducted the entire election.
SURCHARGES A-D: The minimum base
hourly charge per person assisting increases by 25
percent in each case, A to D below. It doubles in the event, which
planning would normally make unlikely, that all four surcharges A-D apply. For
single-vacancy polls only, the expression, “the majority-preferential method (alternative vote)” is to
be substituted for the expression below, “the
quota-preferential method of proportional representation”.
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