MaliciousOnion posted:

quote:

The way drugs are regulated in fact ensures that the risk is retained. There was a bus-ad series run not long ago as part of the National Drugs Campaign that tried to dissuade consumers by telling them ecstasy was MADE USING DRAIN CLEANER, BATTERY ACID OR EVEN HAIR BLEACH. THEN POPPED IN YOUR MOUTH. ECSTASY. FACE FACTS. Presumably drug manufacturers would be quite happy to use pharmaceutical-grade precursor agents if they could get them, but they can’t. This ad showed ecstasy being made in a filthy toilet, which seems like a strange place to run an expensive illegal lab, and a cheap way to make the drugs look extra disgusting. The toilet was dirty enough to suggest it was still being used. Perhaps there are some criminals stupid enough to poo poo on their own multi-million dollar enterprise, but it doesn’t seem very likely.

That toilet might seem like a clumsy prop in a scare campaign, but it’s really a very valuable piece of information about just how the drug war works, as it’s now constituted. Because when anti-drug campaigners say “drugs are bad”, their opponents don’t understand what they really mean. They think they mean “drugs are harmful”. But these people mean “drugs are bad” in same way we think that faeces is repulsive. It might be repulsive because it is linked to sickness, but it is also repulsive because it is inherently repulsive, and that status is enforced and ring-fenced by a whole series of taboos involving cleanliness, purity, corporeal integrity and social sanction. It is more than just a hygiene provision – it is how we constitute a shared communal reality, by deciding what is unclean.

It makes sense then, that the best predictor of someone’s views on recreational drug use isn’t their age, or their political affiliation, or their religiosity. It is their views on promiscuity. The researchers who first identified this linked it to evolutionary strategy. The idea is that people invest in the concept of monogamy to ensure their offspring are their own, then oppose drug-taking because it reduces sexual inhibitions. But that kind of ev-pysch rationale isn’t necessary. It can work from much more fundamental things: the conception of bodily integrity, or the idea that sinful behaviour should be its own punishment. That’s why trying to co-opt conservatives into a harm reduction strategy is waste of time: because they want drugs to remain harmful.

freebooter posted:

Re all the ecstasy stuff, there was an article in The Monthly not long ago that was really great:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/richard-cooke/2016/16/2016/1455587273/drugs-are-bad-part-2

MaliciousOnion posted:

edit: \/ If I weren't poor I'd get this as a new avatar.

MysticalMachineGun posted:

The amazing thing about Bullock was how he didn't come straight out and say "I hate gays" he danced around it so much I wasn't sure if he was quitting because Labor supported gay marriage or not.

spamman posted:

Pat Dodson to replace Joe Bullock. Wow.

starkebn posted:

that "Eat the Boomers" article from a few pages back has gained enough traction they were talking about it on triple j this morning. Apparently it is doing the facebook rounds pretty heavily.

Not that I think that will mean it will change anything, but the groundswell is there.

Amoeba102 posted:

"John Howard: The greatest PM of our time" - Terry Barnes is a policy consultant, former senior Howard government adviser and a weekly columnist for The Drum. He worked on Coalition health, aged care and carers policies for the 1996 election campaign.

That's from the Drum

Cartoon posted:

It is unfortunately true. Between 1996 and 2016 who's a better PM? Rudd/Gillard is really the only other nominee and as hosed up as Howard is/was they really can't claim to have done much. Ten plus years in the job carries it's own gravitas. If anything it is a damning indictment on the poo poo nature of our politicians.

tithin posted:

Is Bolt turning on Pell?

Frogmanv2 posted:

Gillard got quite a bit done, the majority of which was good for the nation. The NBN, the BER, the price on carbon. Plus she worked with a minority government and a much more fractured senate than what we have now.

Its not her fault it all got dismantled after she got rolled.

thatfatkid posted:

She also stabbed her own party leader in the back to appease the mining companies, brought back offshore detention and went to the 2010 election with a policy to think about maybe doing something about carbon pollution (the minority govt was the only reason a carbon tax was ever put in place). Gillard was the personification of everything wrong with the ALP/politics in general and should not be lionized.

tithin posted:

Is Bolt turning on Pell?

quote:

Columnist Andrew Bolt has stepped back from his harsh criticism of Cardinal George Pell in his most recent column, after regretting he had “joined the pack” of critics.

In his syndicated column for News Corp Australia today, Bolt, who has secured an exclusive interview with Cardinal Pell at the conclusion of his testimony, wrote Pell had “uttered words that will stain his reputation forever” and the “rightly aggressive” royal commission now “seems poised to consider whether this prince of the Catholic Church is a liar.”

This morning on Sky News, for which Mr Bolt is reporting as a special contributor in Rome, he said he felt “embarrassed because I think I’ve joined the pack attacking Pell.”

“I joined that attack on George Pell, as you’ve just read, and I think for the first time in my life I’m trending positive on Twitter as a result,” he said.

“In retrospect, if you look at those comments of his, he spoke incredibly poorly but to think he didn’t care about abused children, which is so widely agreed to what his words suggested, is actually false,” Bolt told Sky News.

“I think I owe an apology and I’ll go back to being hated on Twitter,” he added.

Milky Moor posted:

I doubt it - he's too old.

Milky Moor posted:

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-cardinal-george-pell-the-victim-of-a-witch-hunt-to-destroy-an-innocent-man-for-the-sins-of-others/news-story/2e4738669e01c120682d53256128bce3?nk=ab8e73b97ba34cd523ad5007691ab539-1456883821 posted:

Andrew Bolt - Opinion: Cardinal George Pell the victim of a witch hunt to destroy an innocent man for the sins of others

CARDINAL George Pell is the victim of one of the most vicious witch hunts to disgrace this country.

It is shameful. Disgusting. Frightening.

COMMISSION: Abuse victims ‘take fight’ to the Vatican

People pretending to be moral have competed with each other to slime Pell as the defender of pedophiles, if not a pedophile himself.

There is no mercy and no attention to the facts. There is just the joy of hatred.

Check the snarling glee on the face of comedian Tim Minchin as he sang a hymn of hatred to Pell on Channel 10’s The Project on Tuesday.

“Scum,” he called Pell, who is too ill to fly from Rome to give evidence (for the third time) to our royal commission into child sex abuse.

“Coward,” he jeered, vilifying Pell for more than four minutes of prime-time television, falsely portraying him as a defender – even a friend – of pedophile priests.

(Note to Project host Waleed Aly: would you have screened four minutes of unbridled hatred for a Muslim cleric?)

Meanwhile the ABC promoted a crowd-funding effort to raise the money to send a lynch mob – former victims – to Rome to “confront” the Cardinal with “face-to-face contact”.

To stoke up hatred of Pell, it also published a mocked-up picture of the cardinal driving a car of huge rock-spiders – code for pedophiles.

ABC news also falsely claimed “the Commission has heard from child abuse victim David Ridsdale that Cardinal Pell tried to bribe him to keep quiet” about his abuse by his uncle – when Ridsdale in fact told the commission “I never have said that he bribed me”.

And many media outlets sternly reported Pell wouldn’t “face the victims” in person at the royal commission, without adding he’d faced victims repeatedly.

Pell has met victims privately and twice given evidence with victims present – to the royal commission and a Victorian inquiry into child sex abuse.

Indeed, in 1996 he became the first senior person here – in church or in government – to confront the horror of sexual abuse of children.
In 1996 Cardinal George Pell became the first senior person in Australia – in church or in government – to confront the horror of sexual abuse of children. Picture: AFP

Just three months after becoming archbishop of Melbourne, he created the Melbourne Response to help victims. No bishop of any other church had done anything like it.

Yet no insult of this man has been enough in a campaign of public denigration – even dehumanisation.

Channel 9’s 60 Minutes interviewed an English abuse victim who’d never met Pell and seemed uninformed on crucial details yet still felt free to defame him as “a dangerous individual” and “almost sociopathic”, with a “catalogue of denigrating people”.

I know Pell. “Sociopathic” is a lie.

But this is the mob at its most vile: each person feeling licenced by the brutality of the rest to be brutal, too.

If “everybody else” hates someone then that person must deserve hating. You can surrender your own judgment and conscience, and give in to the pure pleasure of unbridled hatred, disguised as moral righteousness.


Viciousness dressed as morality: is there anything sweeter to the stupid, the resentful and the bully? Ask the “godly” who murdered the “witches” of Salem. Ask the jihadists who now behead “infidels”.

Pell’s accusers are not violent but flirt with that same pitiless sanctimony.

“Die Pell,” urged a post on The Age’s Facebook page, and many of those now demanding he fly here don’t seem to mind if he does.

The Sydney Morning Herald published snide items urging Pell to get on a plane, despite being told by cardiologists that Pell’s medical advisers were right – it could kill the 74-year-old, given his heart problems.

No mercy in The Age, though. “Unwilling to trust his God,” sneered one headline.

Labor NSW Premier Kristina Keneally even taunted: “Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another.”

Nor did anyone seem to care that Pell will give exactly the same evidence from Rome he would give if he flew here. He is not fleeing justice like, say, Julian Assange, the hero of this same Left.

No, the mob is just hungry for a scapegoat and wants Pell close enough to humiliate.

It’s the primitive moral calculus of the tribalist: that an injustice to one side can made good with an injustice to the other.

It’s enough that Pell now is our most senior member of the Catholic Church which once betrayed so many children.

But what makes him an even better target for the Left is that’s he’s a conservative who has defend traditional marriage, attacked global warming alarmism and correctly seen the green faith as a competitor to his own.

He’ll do, they cry.

How Pell has as a human being survived their onslaught astonishes me.
Gerald Ridsdale appears via video link from Aarat Prison for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Ballarat. Picture: Norm Oorloff

Worst of all, he was falsely accused of having himself abused a boy when a young priest, although an inquiry later into this highly dubious claim found no proof of any such thing.

It’s continued. A former child victim of one Ballarat priest claimed in the royal commission that Pell in 1969 heard him pleading for help but did nothing – only for Pell to later produce his passport, showing he’d been in Rome that year.

But hatemongers such as Minchin still claim the young Pell must have known his then Ballarat housemate and fellow priest Gerald Ridsdale was abusing children – an allegation Pell denies.

Yet none question the word of another young priest who shared a house with Ridsdale – Paul Bongiorno, a Leftist and now ABC commentator who says he had no idea, either.

“Ridsdale never came to the presbytery in Warrnambool and said: ‘Guess how many boys I’ve raped today?’” Bongiorno said.

“They hide it.”

And they hid it from Pell, who has repeatedly denied on oath protecting pedophiles or keeping crimes hidden.

Neither of the two inquiries so far has yet found proof that he’s lying. Even Gerald Ridsdale, the worst of the pedophile priests, failed to incriminate Pell in the royal commission last year.

His evidence, suggesting Pell knew nothing, seemed to anger the royal commission. Justice Peter McClellan even warned Ridsdale the commission could find out who visited him in jail before he’d given evidence, which seemed to suggest McClellan had expected more damning stuff from Ridsdale and suspected he’d been nobbled.

In fact, the royal commission has throughout seemed only too ready to doubt Pell’s word whenever his recollection conflicted with his accusers.

It has also asked Pell to give evidence three times – more than any other witness – in what is now becoming a punishment by process.

Pell knows his church betrayed many children and protected the priests who preyed on them. He knows he could have handled the scandal better but nothing I’ve seen so far shows he protected pedophiles.

Nothing.

If that changes, I will drat him then, but right now there is proof of only this: a witch hunt to destroy an innocent man for the sins of others.

Shame on every coward who joins this vicious mob. You claim you stand for good, yet you show such gloating evil.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt/cardinal-george-pell-went-by-the-book-and-not-the-heart/news-story/d991048345a7b669ce9fd078a31e5f68?nk=ab8e73b97ba34cd523ad5007691ab539-1456883648 posted:

Cardinal George Pell went by the book and not the heart

CARDINAL George Pell ­yesterday uttered words that will stain his reputation forever.

Referring to notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, Pell fatefully declared: “It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me.”

Here is the question now for the royal commission into sex abuse of children: is the Vatican’s third-most powerful leader a liar when he says he never knew what Ridsdale, his colleague, was doing in Ballarat?

CNN is confused about Australia

Or was he just dangerously indifferent to his responsibilities and to the warning signs that children were being raped?

The royal commission seems to think the worst, to judge by its rightly aggressive questioning of Pell yesterday.

Pell has maintained he never knew about Ridsdale’s preying on children until around 1990, three years before Ridsdale was charged, and didn’t even hear gossip about it in the years he was a priest in the same diocese.

Gail Furness, SC, assisting the commission, was clearly sceptical.

She repeatedly asked how Pell could not have known about Ridsdale’s abuse of children when it was known by several fellow priests — including a cousin and friends of Pell — as well as by his bishop, a school principal, a doctor, a policemen, drinkers at the Apollo Bay pub, and several parents and children at schools in three towns in the Ballarat diocese.

And this when Pell was the episcopal vicar for education in the diocese. At the very least, he seems to have failed in his job.

Pell offered various reasons — or excuses. His role as vicar was not actually an executive one. The time he could give to it was “limited” by his full-time job running a teachers’ college.

He was often in Melbourne and so “I certainly was not plugged into the life of the diocese”. And he was not one for gossip, saying priests were actually “the most secretive of ­people” and quoting a church saying: “Those who know don’t say; those who say don’t know.”

More damningly, he also ­argued that a parish priest had a lesser responsibility to step in and save children from paedophile priests than did his boss, the bishop.

It sounded awful. It sounded too much like a mind-your-own-business excuse for doing nothing — which Pell denied, insisting he meant that bishops had extra responsibilities.

Indeed, it sounded in some ways like the authentic Pell, an authoritative or authoritarian leader who demands people do their job and follow the rules.

And that was when Pell said those awful words: that Ridsdale’s crimes, when they finally came to light, “wasn’t of much interest to me”.

His fate was sealed. That quote will be hung around Pell’s neck forever. The priest who went by the book, not the heart.

Explaining himself, Pell added: “I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils Ridsdale had perpetrated.”

No, that was really a matter for his bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, who Pell says was a liar who acted disgracefully and “inexplicably” by repeatedly moving Ridsdale from one parish to the next each time he was caught molesting children.

There had been a “gigantic failure of leadership”. But was Pell among those who failed?

And that is when things got a whole lot uglier on Tuesday for him.

In 1977, Pell was appointed one of the “consultors” to Bishop Mulkearns, advising him on things like the movement of priests. Pell has said he never discussed the many moves of Ridsdale — each time to flee scandal — at the meetings of the consultors. He was wrong — or he lied, say his critics.

The royal commission has uncovered minutes showing Pell was present at two meetings that discussed Ridsdale, including one in 1982 after the paedophile had to flee Mortlake.

No wonder. Parents had complained to Mulkearns that Ridsdale had molested children and was even living with a 14-year-old boy who slept in his bedroom. That boy, Paul Levi, says he was continually abused, and that Mulkearns had even seen him living there when he came over for dinner.

But it was Pell’s cousin, vicar-general Henry Nolan, who ­finally ordered Ridsdale to get out of town after finding him with Levi.

The minutes record that the consultors meeting — with Pell — was told moving Ridsdale had “become necessary” but they don’t say why.

Pell said he remembered nothing about that meeting, but this: “I can recall paedophilia was never mentioned.” Mulkearns “would have given some reason” to the meeting but only a general one. Had he mentioned paedophilia, Pell said he would have remembered.

He said Mulkearns had lied to him by instead proposing Ridsdale for a prestigious job that seemed “incompatible” with having to be removed for abusing children. “Some of us were kept in the dark,” he said.

But Pell’s problem is that not all were. At the meeting were at least two consultors who knew very well why Mulkearns was moving Ridsdale.

Pell points out — correctly — that others at the meeting deny the real reason for Ridsdale’s removal was discussed.

But Pell has not explained convincingly why he never asked hard questions about why Ridsdale was being moved on so unusually often.

Again, Pell reverts to his familiar faith in the old lines of command: “As always, the lead was given by the bishop and the presumption was that the bishop was telling the truth. I was happy to take the bishop’s word that it was appropriate for (Ridsdale) to be shifted.”

And is this, then, the best that his defenders can now say of Pell? That he really was just following his orders, not seeking to find those abused children who so needed his care?

How Pell’s supporters would have choked on one of his final answers yesterday about the responsibility of priests to the children being molested by his colleagues. “He has a moral responsibility to do what is appropriate to his position.”

Really? Nothing more?

Royal commission head Peter McClellan seems not to accept Pell did even that.

He said he would have expected Pell to want to know the reasons for Ridsdale’s move from Mortlake.

And he gave a warning that will shake Pell: “If we were to come to the view that you did know (of Ridsdale’s crimes), you would be culpable, too, wouldn’t you? So we have to determine a very serious issue, don’t we?”

Very serious indeed, because Pell swore on a Bible to tell the truth. Now a royal commission seems poised to consider whether this prince of the Catholic Church is a liar.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/andrew-bolt-retreats-on-his-criticism-of-cardinal-george-pell/news-story/28599aa3bdf9a1529188ff5fc6bca396 posted:

Columnist Andrew Bolt has stepped back from his harsh criticism of Cardinal George Pell in his most recent column, after regretting he had “joined the pack” of critics.

In his syndicated column for News Corp Australia today, Bolt, who has secured an exclusive interview with Cardinal Pell at the conclusion of his testimony, wrote Pell had “uttered words that will stain his reputation forever” and the “rightly aggressive” royal commission now “seems poised to consider whether this prince of the Catholic Church is a liar.”

Pell’s testimony: day three

This morning on Sky News, for which Mr Bolt is reporting as a special contributor in Rome, he said he felt “embarrassed because I think I’ve joined the pack attacking Pell.”

“I joined that attack on George Pell, as you’ve just read, and I think for the first time in my life I’m trending positive on Twitter as a result,” he said.

“In retrospect, if you look at those comments of his, he spoke incredibly poorly but to think he didn’t care about abused children, which is so widely agreed to what his words suggested, is actually false,” Bolt told Sky News.

“I think I owe an apology and I’ll go back to being hated on Twitter,” he added.

Last night, The Australian revealed Bolt, who has empathised with Cardinal Pell through the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, had been given access by the Catholic Church for a one-hour interview with the highest-ranking Australian in the church’s history, to be broadcast live-to-air on Sky News at the conclusion of his testimony this week.

This morning on Sky News, Bolt softened the hard line of his column, reassessing Pell’s comment that one major case of repeated abuse “wasn’t of much interest to me”, noting “what he seems to have said, meant to say, was that he had no reason to look at what was happening in that parish of Inglewood by Gerard Ridsdale and as a result, those things slipped his mind.”

Bolt agreed Cardinal Pell was “incurious” and “I don’t believe he was plugged into his community as he should have (been).”

“Where the exaggeration has occurred is in thinking that he knows of abuse and he doesn’t care,” Bolt argued. “And that fits a stereotype. You’ve just got to think, I guess, in retrospect, really is that seriously contended a man like him (who) devoted 50 years to this church hears of abused children and he doesn’t care? You’ve got to really think he’s a sociopath, as some people clearly do, and I think that’s highly improbable.”

Guardian Live Coverage posted:

In December 1993 a meeting was held by senior figures in the church to “identify means of protecting assets in the event of successful litigation following allegations of sexual abuse”, Furness says. Pell was present at that meeting.

Furness: “You recall at this time, 1993, that that was an active issue in the church, how to protect its assets if it is successfully sued in child sexual abuse claims?”

Pell: “... that certainly wasn’t the only consideration but that certainly was a consideration.”

Furness: “This item in the minutes suggests that, at that stage, all that was being considered was how to protect diocese assets in the effect of successful litigation?”

Pell: “I don’t think that is a justified conclusion, either about myself or the other participates but it was very important to know where we were about the money.”

Guardian Live Blog posted:

Furness finishes by asking Pell; “Do you accept any responsibility for a failure to act upon credible information which was indicative of risk and instead requiring proof of allegations and the involvement of police before being willing to act?”

Pell: “I would, ah, accept that the executive authorities did – were deficient in that way and, as for myself, I perhaps might have pushed a bit harder but I certainly went to the man who had the last word, explicitly asked him what the situation was and was told that there was not sufficient evidence to remove [abusive priest Peter Searson].

“I did not query that, and I believe I did not have sufficient evidence to query it so, in those terms, I believe that I have acted responsibly.”

Furness: “Cardinal, is there anything that you did as auxiliary bishop that touched upon priests and allegations, rumours or concerns of child sexual abuse by those priests, that you consider wanting or deficient in any way?”

Pell: “I think the matters you raised about ascribing resignations to ill health, that is one area of regret. Other than that, I don’t believe there is.”

Furness: “Thank you Cardinal. I have nothing further.”

WhiskeyWhiskers posted:

So is it editorial policy at every Australian newspaper that journalists have to mention twitter drama at least once somewhere in a story?

Antony Green posted:

The brief inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) has released its report into the Senate electoral law changes included in the government's Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016.

The report recommends, and the the government has agreed to, amend the legislation to allow optional preferential voting below the line.

The ballot paper instructions will now state that voters must complete at least six preferences above the line, or at least 12 preferences below the line. Voters will be free to continue numbering as many preferences as they like beyond the minimum number specified.

A savings provision will allow ballot papers with at least 6 below the line preferences to be formal, catering for people who confuse the above and below the line instructions.

The amendment makes the legislation much fairer in allowing ballot papers marked below the line to be treated equally with above the line votes under formality rules. A 1-6 vote above the line corresponds to at least 12 preferences below the line, which will be the proposed instructions for a formal below the line vote.

Amoeba102 posted:

"John Howard: The greatest PM of our time" - Terry Barnes is a policy consultant, former senior Howard government adviser and a weekly columnist for The Drum. He worked on Coalition health, aged care and carers policies for the 1996 election campaign.

That's from the Drum

Amoeba102 posted:

What happens to your vote if you preference micro parties only? Does it slip off into the void?

quote:

How does this affect the allocation of the final seats - will it be , get above the quota and the excess runs off, then first past the post once preferences are exhausted?

Vladimir Poutine posted:

I'm not even exaggerating here, there was an opinion piece in The Advertiser the other day criticising cyclists and at the every end of it it said "[author's name] is claiming to be an Adelaide teenager".

Goffer posted:

It gets voided, which is basically the only problem with the reform

Endman posted:

I don't see it as much of an issue, since that voter's ballot has been fulfilled to the extent they numbered and no further. Parties shouldn't be able to send your vote to the far reaches of idiot kingdom when they reach the end of your numbered boxes; it makes way more sense to void it than the potential problem of sending your vote to someone you don't like just because there was a preference deal you had no input on.

Amoeba102 posted:

But if you cared that much, you'd have voted below the line.

Speaking of quotas, how do they decide what to do with the excess votes? Assuming below the line voting, where your first preference got a quota, but the second preference is maybe someone in a different party.

Amoeba102 posted:

Right so, I guess they keep eliminating parties at the bottom and preference or chuck out votes depending on the ballot being exhausted or not, and the last X people remaining get the X remaining seats. Makes sense.

Amoeba102 posted:

Speaking of quotas, how do they decide what to do with the excess votes? Assuming below the line voting, where your first preference got a quota, but the second preference is maybe someone in a different party.

Antony Green posted:

Whenever a candidate is declared elected, any votes in excess of the quota are distributed as preferences. The problem is, how do you decide which votes are part of the quota and so remain with the candidate, and which are surplus and distributed as preferences?

Consider the case of Bass at the 2010 election. On the first count Liberal candidate Michael Ferguson had 15,911 votes. The quota was 10,617 votes, which meant that Ferguson had a surplus of 5,294 votes. Which votes were to be distributed and which were to remain with Ferguson as part of his quota?

In Hare's original scheme, used for the Senate until 1983, and still in use for the New South Wales Legislative Council, a random sample of 5,294 ballot papers would have been selected from Ferguson's total and distributed as preferences. 10,617 ballot papers would have been set aside as Ferguson's quota and 5,294 distributed as preferences.

Tasmania's system is known as Hare-Clark because Andrew Inglis Clark adopted a more accurate method of distributing the surplus. Under Hare-Clark, all of Ferguson's 15,911 ballot papers were distributed as preferences, but the ballot papers were distributed at a reduced value, known as the Transfer Value. The Transfer Value is defined by the following formula.

code:

Transfer Value = (Surplus Vote) divided by (Last Ballot Papers Received)

In Ferguson's case, the last ballot papers received were the 15,911 first preferences. The surplus vote is the total vote of the candidates minus the quota. So here the Transfer Value is [(15911 - 10617) / 15911] = 0.332726.

(Note that in a Hare-Clark count a Vote is equal to a Ballot Paper times its Transfer Value, so a total of Votes is a total of Ballot Papers times the Transfer Value.

All of Ferguson's ballot papers are examined to determine the next preferences, and a tally made of next preferences by candidate. The ballot papers are then transferred to the next candidate, but the value of those ballot papers as votes is equal to the number of ballot papers times the Transfer Value.

11,110 of Ferguson's ballot papers had second preference for Gutwein, so he received 11,110 ballot papers times the transfer value, that is 3,696 votes. The same calculation applies for every bundle of Ferguson's next preferences.

This method is formally called the 'Gregory Method', but more commonly the 'Last Bundle method', as only the last bundle of votes that put the candidate over the quota are examined to calculate the transfer value and determine preference flows. This is best explained with reference to Peter Gutwein, whose total was put over the quota on the distribution of Ferguson's surplus.

Gutwein had 9,060 first preferences, but these are not re-examined when Gutwein reached his quota. The only ballot papers examined are the 11,110 ballot papers (3,696 votes) received from Ferguson that put Gutwein over the quota. Gutwein's surplus was 2,139 votes, so the transfer value on his surplus is this value divided by the last bundle of ballot papers received. That is (2,139 / 11,110). The only votes distributed as part of Gutwein's surplus are the last bundle received, which is ballot papers that began with the sequence 1 Ferguson, 2 Gutwein.

In applying Transfer Values, some fractions of votes are created. These are ignored by the count, added to a balancing value in the count called "Loss by Fraction". Later in the count the loss by fraction total may fall as bundles of votes at equal transfer value are amalgamated.

A difference between a Hare-Clark count and the Senate should be noted here. The Senate system does not use the Last Bundle method. In the Senate all ballot papers held by a candidate at the point they reach a quota are examined to calculate transfer value and distributed preferences.

open24hours posted:

They should have made below the line voting and numbering all boxes mandatory.

Amoeba102 posted:

Okay, they actually do something smart with it.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

That's a really good idea if you want the number of informal ballots to skyrocket.