An analysis of New South Wales electronic vote counting

Abstract

We re-examine the 2012 local government elections in New South Wales, Australia. The count was conducted electronically using a randomised form of the Single Transferable Vote (STV). It was already well known that randomness does make a difference to outcomes in some seats. We describe how the process could be amended to include a demonstration that the randomness was chosen fairly. Second, and more significantly, we found an error in the official counting software, which caused a mistake in the count in the council of Griffth, where candidate Rina Mercuri narrowly missed out on a seat. We believe the software error incorrectly decreased Mercuri's winning probability to about 10%-according t..