The Tally Room

Victorian premier Daniel Andrews will be stepping down today as premier and as Member for Mulgrave, a seat he has held since 2002. This means a by-election will be held for that seat soon, likely before the end of the year. My guide to Mulgrave is...

I have been fascinated recently with voting systems for local government, and how they change - in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. New Zealand also has an element of choice in their local government electoral system. Each council gets to choose from one...

Ben is joined by Paul Kildea and Andre Brett to discuss the history of Australian referendums. We discuss the historical origins of referendums at both the state and federal level, the dynamics of referendum campaigns, how different states tend to vote, the voters' bias...

The process of redrawing local council wards for next year's New South Wales council elections is now quite advanced, with the councils due for a change having mostly decided on draft boundaries and put them out for public commentary, ahead of an early October...

The Western Australian Labor government has been recently going through a process of changing the structures of local government elections in the state. The process involves the replacement of first-past-the-post with preferential voting (including with the single transferable vote where more than one councillor...

9:45 - All election day booths have now reported, and the Liberal primary vote is on 57%, and the two-candidate-preferred vote is on 70.6%. The turnout so far is about 48% of the total enrolment, with a substantial early vote yet to come. I'm...

Ben is joined by psephologist Henry Schlechta to discuss two issues of democratic reform in Victoria: the arguments around abolishing group voting tickets, and the implementation of single-member wards for urban Victorian councils. Sadly this isn't a story of Victoria improving its electoral systems...

The second draft of boundaries for the next Northern Territory assembly election was published late last Wednesday, and it's taken me until now to complete my analysis of the new boundaries. The first draft was made redundant by a large surge in enrolments in remote...