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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 $3.60 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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