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Service for Counting Proportional Representation and Other Elections |
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Types of Assistance with the Scrutiny: The Proportional Representation Society of Australia (Victoria-Tasmania) Inc. provides a service using software it has that can be used to rapidly count an election involving fewer than 65,000 ballot-papers and 200 candidates. The PRSAV-T Inc. will make recommendations about aspects of electoral systems being used or considered, and will count elections using 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. The PRSAV-T Inc. can, to suit the client’s requirements and preference, 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 key 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 required, later email you a signed Certificate of Computation of Election Results on PRSAV-T Inc. letterhead as a PDF file, and also email you a colour hypertext file for display on your Web site, 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, flash drive or CD-ROM posted to it at the above address, or placed on a nominated web address, 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 file for display on your Web site, 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, 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, and it can count them for you and post or fax a result back, or send it in electronic form. 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 address we nominate, from which you can download it. You can use that file to place on your Web site 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 Web site 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 on either or both of a floppy or hard disc. The rate of entry of data by our Officers is about 1,000 preferences per hour, but skilled data entry professionals should be able to do much better than 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 Reprsentation Manual in an actual count you need to conduct. The basis for the charges for the instruction service is the same as for our vote-counting service. Base Hourly Charge: The PRSAV-T Inc's charges do not include Goods and Service Tax, as our annual turnover is below the threshold for that, but 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 spent 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 $3.30 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 quotations in writing should be obtained from us, 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. 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 equivalent to 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, fax or telephone costs in returning the ballot-papers and results or entering into discussion because of irregularities that are not the fault of PRSAV-T Inc. will be charged, as will extra time caused by irregularities or inconsistencies (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. As soon as data entry has been 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 by our copying it onto a disc provided by the client. A paper copy of that detailed data can be provided, but with a large election that can run to a large number of pages. Any IBM-compatible computer, running Windows 98 or later, is satisfactory. A single 3.5 inch floppy disc drive is sufficient. Dot matrix, 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 fax it to the client.. PRSAV-T Inc. can usually bring a Pentium 3 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 is increased by 25 percent in each of the cases A to D below so that it is doubled in the event, which foresight and planning would normally render 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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