|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Elections and Vote-counting Services |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
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 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 an 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 then 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 - All contact by internet or mail
only: As for Type 2, except that PRSAV-T
Inc. does not visit you, but instead receives the completed prescribed
spreadsheet by email or on a floppy disc, 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 60 minutes of our time, and hence attract only our
minimum charge, except where irregularities, or a large scale poll, occur,
and require more time. This Type 3 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 to differ from the
Returning Officer's manual result, further work is needed to obtain results
that match each other, whereas an initial match is a good confirmation of the
manual count. 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 is $90.00. 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 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”.
* * * * * * * * |
||||||||||||||||
