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Yep.

You have to turn up, get your name crossed off, and both receive and hand in the papers. What you do with those papers is totally up to you....

In theory, you can:
Leave them blank, and hand them in.
Write your own selection on.
Doodle all over the forms
Write a slogan on the form.
or vote formally, it is up to you.
The only things that are illegal are not turning up, voting multiple times, and encouraging people to vote informally (hence I am not advocating any of the other options).

The government has an obligation to ensure that everyone can vote, and it is reasonable. I went to one of the voting booths the morning of the election, and I think I waited a total of 10 minutes in the line. The worst I heard of was about an hour, and that was middle of the day.
They also provide a number of non-attendance options for those who have a 'reasonable' excuse for not voting in their home area on the day. You can absentee vote at another polling booth, you can pre-vote at certain centres that are set up. You can organise a postal vote, and post the vote in, you can go into an embassy and vote, and for those who are infirm, they send officials to places like nursinng homes and hospitals.... http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/w...
They are pretty reasonable on the reasons they accept on why you can't vote on the day as well.

South Australia is very progressive on a lot of issues. In terms of a addressing baseload power issues SA has very high reserves of geo-thermal power in the form of Hot Dry Rock however the issue of funding the cable infrastructure to make that energy available as electricity has been something they have been trying to solve for a long time. From my understanding they want to establish alluminium smelters powered by geothermal energy to make it feasible.

You're probably right about them asking for problems by taking those risks however I think this is something they are aware of and endure as one of the issues they encounter in taking a leadership role.

Does the US not have the equivalent of these?
http://periodicdisclosures.aec...
https://www.parliament.qld.gov...
http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/

A recent ICAC investigation captured a sitting premier and forced his resignation over a bottle of wine...

...and it works. When everyone is enfranchised, the politicians have to have a much broader appeal. And every voter has to look long and hard at exactly who and what they're voting for.

I can recommend it. I take great interest in Politics in the US, since it effects us and the rest of the word. And it looks to me like the congress has been captured by a small number of extremely rich people and is no longer representative of the will of the people. This can only happen when only a limited number of people vote, and they can be heavily influenced by massive donations towards media advertising, and when certain highly motivated blocks of voters are far more likely to vote than other groups.

I'm also scandalized by way parts of the US make registering to vote so hard, and actively excluding people from voting. In Australia, if you're not in jail, you have to vote, period. No exceptions. Imagine if that was the case in the US, that it was a right that everyone had by default, regardless of having the right ID at the right time, or previous felonies etc.

The other thing we have which I can highly recommend is the Australian Electoral Commission. They're the group that runs all elections across the entire country. All of them. In a completely standardized way. So the ballot papers (yes still paper) and voting in every part of the country is exactly the same. They're not perfect - they lost a small number of ballot papers at the last election, and a part of the election had to be re-run - but still better than, say, the debacle in Tallahassee in 2000.

And our final innovation? Elections are always held on a Saturday, not a week day, which makes it dramatically easier for everyone to attend.

It took me about ten minutes to classify all of the minor parties on a rough political spectrum

Check out the policies of the Australian Independents Party. How would you classify them on a rough political spectrum?

Now go to belowtheline.org.au and see which parties they preference (AEC has now disabled their "below the line preferences" data?!) Does this affect how you would classify them on a rough political spectrum?

Now try to search news stories to understand how those preferences came to be. Now how would you classify them?

Repeat 45 times.

Aw, crap. Federal MHR ballots are not optional preferential - you've got to number EVERY box or it's an informal vote. It's going to be interesting - I'm in the electorate of Fisher http://www.aec.gov.au/election/qld/fisher.htm - 10 MHR candidates (including Peter Slipper), and 82 senate candidates. I'm going to download the CSV and try to work out my numbering before I get to the polling booth.

Polly's viciously contest the coveted top spot on the ballot ... Fortunately the order on most ballot papers in Oz are randomly selected.

Correct Our "representatives" don't actually get a say in their ballot position.

Aussies in general are reluctant to get involved in their own governance.

Historically yes, particularly when compared to how politically active citizens are in other countries. In some European & South American countries, you KNOW when an election is around the corner; mass rallies, demonstrations, strikes, etc.

However I believe this is very gradually changing in Australia, in part due to technology. For example just as negative Twitter comments sometimes force large companies to actually sit-up and pay attention to unhappy customers, the same tools are being used to force the hands of politicians. I've personally had some small success in this area.

Having said that, I don't know the veracity of the following statement, but I keep hearing that politicians will pay more attention to hand-written letters than they do to electronic communications.

In Australia, we boost voter participation by having compulsory voting. If you don't vote, you either have to provide a written explanation of why or pay a fine.
Of course, you can simply go into a voting booth and scribble on the slip and then it becomes an 'informal vote' and isn't counted.

About 3-6% of votes are informal (according to the Australian Electoral Commission: http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/informal_voting/summary.htm)

Your understanding is wrong.

In Australia we vote for candidates who represent parties. In the lower house (Representatives) the Member represents a seat (geographical area) and if the Member leaves parliament, then a by-election is held and candidates need to (re-)nominate. In the upper house (Senate) the member represents the state (twelve per state) and is elected based on obtaining a quota (1/6 of formal vote + 1). If a senator leaves parliament then their party nominates the candidate which is approved by the State Government. This is fair as a the preferential system means that a senate election for 1 candidate would be unfair.

This might sound a little confusing, but the Australian Electoral Commission has some excellent resources that explain this in more detail.

The big advantage is protest votes. For example, lets say I have libertarian leanings. In my electorate a libertarian could stand as a candidate and I could then vote for them as my first preference and use my second (or third) preference for a candidate from the major parties. This has two effects:
- The libertarian candidate can win compromises from a major candidate in return for directing preferences
- The major parties have clear evidence of how much support exists for the libertarian view
In a first past the post system, my vote is likely to be wasted unless I vote for one of the two major party candidates.

Your understanding is wrong.

In Australia we vote for candidates who represent parties. In the lower house (Representatives) the Member represents a seat (geographical area) and if the Member leaves parliament, then a by-election is held and candidates need to (re-)nominate. In the upper house (Senate) the member represents the state (twelve per state) and is elected based on obtaining a quota (1/6 of formal vote + 1). If a senator leaves parliament then their party nominates the candidate which is approved by the State Government. This is fair as a the preferential system means that a senate election for 1 candidate would be unfair.

This might sound a little confusing, but the Australian Electoral Commission has some excellent resources that explain this in more detail.

The big advantage is protest votes. For example, lets say I have libertarian leanings. In my electorate a libertarian could stand as a candidate and I could then vote for them as my first preference and use my second (or third) preference for a candidate from the major parties. This has two effects:
- The libertarian candidate can win compromises from a major candidate in return for directing preferences
- The major parties have clear evidence of how much support exists for the libertarian view
In a first past the post system, my vote is likely to be wasted unless I vote for one of the two major party candidates.

I agree with the parent, that's unacceptable to the level of incompetence.

Here in Aus, it takes me maybe 5 minutes to get in, vote and get out, if I'm unfortunate and the line is long. I don't think I've ever seen it over 5 or so people. Then again, we use simple paper ballots where you can either select your party and have them allocate your preferences (we vote preferential, not first-past-the-post) or you can explicitly identify each and every preference of every available candidate if you want the Ultimate Democratic Experience (TM). More info here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/

The system is good. It's fast if you want that or exhaustive if you want that, it's hard to mess up and it's robust. I like it. There's none of this stupid electronic voting that can be tampered with and there's no wait times from hell that you guys in the US seem to suffer.

The biggest crime I've noticed with our voting system is that the voting-day sausage sizzle BBQ seems to be disappearing from polling booths. You used to be able to get a free sausage on bread on the way out of the polling booth but I'm seeing less and less of that. It makes getting up hungover on a Saturday that much more difficult.

There is no provision for proxy voting in Australia (federally at least).

Well the reason for that is that the average aussie doesn't know or care about politics, but mandatory voting exists here. So, every election they get out their crayons to draw penises on the ballot, or flip a coin to decide who to vote for.

Informality rates are around 5%, that includes both ballots spoilt by accident and those deliberately spoil. Average?!

There are perhaps 1-2% who care enough to decide properly ...

That figure should be 75-80%. See, I can pull bogus figures out of my arse too!

... hence most aussie elections go down to the wire 49-50 between labor and liberal.

Non sequitur.

I say that as someone who lives here :D

Clearly residency does not equate with being well informed. Lemme guess ... your name is not Anthony Green?

Rob Oakeshott. He was one of the three independents on whom the results of the hung parliament depended. Lyne (his electorate) has been a National stronghold, regularly polling around Nationals 63% to Labour 36%, two-party preferred. Oakeshott was an ex-National member, turned independent. He knew his electorate, knew they'd voted him in on a conservative platform, but he still backed the formation of a Labor minority government.

Katter has said his decision to back Labor was only because both the other independents had already done so, making any action of his futile. If Oakeshott had actually represented the wishes of his electorate, the outcome would have been very different.

In Australia, everybody votes and (obviously) everybody pays taxes. The candidates that you actually vote for, get paid $2.31191 (+CPI) per vote that they get, and only if they get at least 4% of the total votes (eg Final 2010 federal election payment to political parties and candidates.
Would you really complain if $2 of your taxes went to the candidate that you actually voted for?

Yes the sample Australian Senate ballot paper pic is a bit small :)
http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm

Immunisation isn't free in your country? I find that shocking that the state does so little to protect children from disease.

In Australia you voting is compulsory. Not voting gets you a fine. You are of course free to spoil your ballot paper or just leave it blank.

see here http://www.aec.gov.au/FAQs/election_advertising.htm#blackout

"This three-day blackout effectively provides a "cooling off" period in the lead up to polling day, during which political parties, candidates and others are no longer able to purchase time on television and radio to broadcast political advertising"

This entire story and headline is slanted to portray what the thais are doing as chinese style censorship when it is nothing of the sort. Many western countries including australia do the exact same thing

Australian polling stations are manned by, electoral officials and members from leading political parties who all monitor the election process http://www.aec.gov.au/ (Federal, there are also state electoral commissions). Add to that elections do not take place on a weekday but on a Saturday ensuring the majority people have much easier access to polling stations not only to vote but also to remain their all day to promote their political party (hand out how to vote pamphlets) or to actively monitor the polling process.

Whilst online voting sounds neat and high tech, it rather defeats the whole process. Voting is all about people, who is seeking to be elected, those that support them and those willing to vote for them. It is the most important social act in a democracy, in fact it is the very seed from which the whole democratic forest grows.

In Australia voting is compulsory and you will be fined for failing to vote and failing to register to vote, logically, as it is the most basic elemental responsibility of every citizen of democracy. Being compulsory also places the onus upon government to ensure voting is fully accessible, whilst electronic voting facilitates this, it would however detract from the important social nature of the democratic contract.

This of course doesn't even touch the inherent risk of mass corruption of election by digital means is far easier, than a multi layered people and paper trail. Taking people from any part of the democratic process seems, well, pointless.

Besides the Greens, Labour, the coalition of Liberal, Nationals, the Liberal Nationals, the Country Liberals, there are 4 independents. Definitely a two party system here. Of course there are two strong opposing groups because of the dichotomous nature of politics. Besides the point that major parties are major for a reason (generally popular).

And there are only 150 seats in the house of reps not 564. How can you trust or support a website that is completely wrong like that?

Out of 564 seats in the IRV-elected House of Representatives, ONE was won by a third party in the last AU election

Official Election results. or By party

Besides the Greens, Labour, the coalition of Liberal, Nationals, the Liberal Nationals, the Country Liberals, there are 4 independents. Definitely a two party system here. Of course there are two strong opposing groups because of the dichotomous nature of politics.

Interesting that only this website of yours says NatLib and there are only 150 seats in the house of reps not 564. How can you trust or support a website that is completely wrong like that?

There's nothing to agree or disagree with here. This is just objective statistical fact.

quite, and you are in the wrong. Ps, did you read the wikipedia cited articles about IRV and it not leading to strategic voting in practice?

Out of 564 seats in the IRV-elected House of Representatives, ONE was won by a third party in the last AU election

Official Election results. or By party

Besides the Greens, Labour, the coalition of Liberal, Nationals, the Liberal Nationals, the Country Liberals, there are 4 independents. Definitely a two party system here. Of course there are two strong opposing groups because of the dichotomous nature of politics.

Interesting that only this website of yours says NatLib and there are only 150 seats in the house of reps not 564. How can you trust or support a website that is completely wrong like that?

There's nothing to agree or disagree with here. This is just objective statistical fact.

quite, and you are in the wrong. Ps, did you read the wikipedia cited articles about IRV and it not leading to strategic voting in practice?

Surely Scrutineers work just as well - http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/scrutineers.htm

Of course the election is run by an independant of the parties organisation in that case as well.

I will *never* understand the way elections are run in the US. From having them on a weekday, to not just hand counting votes (there's no preference flows, it's so simple to put them in piles...), to political parties running the show, to having elections every two years so that campaigning never stops,

You mean like the official Group Voting Tickets?

No, you are only meant to fill in one box above the line. If you put a mark in more than one box it won't make any difference to your vote, or it may be marked as informal. (I say may, because my sources aren't clear on what happens if you fill out more than one box). What are you talking about is what Bob Brown of the Greens party is suggesting would be a better system, but its not what we have at the moment. Sources: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/framelodgmentattachments/DEC4F8A1D65DEBBCCA25776B001D4AC4

No. If you fill out all boxes above the line you have voted incorrectly and the ballot will possibly not be counted depending on how badly you failed to follow simple instructions, the mood of scrutineers, the closeness of the ballot etc. In the best case the ballot will be treated as if only the "1" was present. Voting - The Senate

The vote doesn't count if you don't mark it correctly, not sure about your specific example. Anyone that's interested in the specifics should have a look at the Australian Electoral Commission's website

Oh, except within 6 metres of the polling place, as per another AEC backgrounder.

The AEC's backgrounder says not. It's illegal to _force_ or _bribe_ people to vote informally (or in any other way) though.

go with a pre-decided list that the main parties have reached through secret preference deals

They're not secret. http://www.aec.gov.au/election/downloads.htm#gvt

You have your choice in the upcoming election with a choice of up to 25 parties for Senate and House of Representatives (Upper and Lower house respectively).

There's websites like my website ShockSeat's Federal parties list that'll give you some basic information about parties. Or you can try Wiki's list of Political parties in Australia. Or simply look up the party names, almost all of them have websites and see what they have to say.

My last comment for those who feel demoralised at 'duopoly' of major parties and considered not voting; if you don't vote, then Australia would still continue to be represented by voters. Don't complain that you're not represented for the next 4 years.

Why the hell would you elect someone you don't know? Did you know there's 21 federal parties such as the Liberal Democratic party? Non-custodial parents party? Here's a list of Political parties in Australia or officially from your independent electoral site: Current register of Federal parties

Our system is far better than USA with Preferential voting and Proportional representation. I'll give a quick example:

• Awesome party: 25% votes
• Excitement party: 35% votes
• Plain party: 40% votes

Guess who wins with USA's system? Plain party. With Australia's system, and Awesome party transfers 25% to Excitement party, Excitement party gets elected at 60%. A really good example in real life is 2007 Federal Election: South Australia

The independent electoral system works here. There's information provided if you simply google their websites. The media seems to not wish to report minor parties (probably because a few of them seem quiet). Voting for some unknown because you think you have no idea is just bloody stupid.

There's also a website to promoting awareness of other parties (Disclaimer: My website). There is:

• Federal parties list
• Issues Want to know party positions of MySchool.edu.au? It's there.
• Safe Seat One of the political articles.
• About [ShockSeat] I'm tackling the ridiculous apathy and there's a youth study that shows non-normative intentions are on the rise. Non-normative means non-peaceful protests.

I'm currently having trouble trying to get information from federal parties themselves. If you have any influence, ask them to respond to the contacts I have sent out. It may be because I have no power, or the like. I have only received one refused response so far. It would be greatly appreciated!

I implore you, please make a valid formal vote to a party that almost if not fully represents you.

I live in Victoria and as far a I know there is only one electoral commission in Australia and that is the national one. Maybe the AEC is trialing something in Victoria?

Voting here has always been manual. You write a number in the box. I write it backwards. Gun nuts get the highest number, the greens get the lowest (which is 1), but I accept that other people go about it their own ways.

I have never seen a computer of any kind in a place where we vote. The process is obsessively manual and works very well.

According to the Australian Election Commission there are a lot more than 2 parties.
http://aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Registered_parties/index.htm

So the 68% [1] of Australians that do profess to be Christian should not partake in the federal elections? Nor have representation of their choosing? The 72.8% of people that profess a religious belief should stand aside and let themselves be dictated to by a minority?

Also, don't forget that your 28% (27.2% according to [1]) also includes people who didn't answer the religion question adequately (poor handwriting etc.), so the number of 68% Christians, should be considered the *minimum* percentage of society that expresses a belief that they're Christian (similarly for the other religions).

It's a democracy. Deal with it. Start your own party if you like, the AEC [2] would be glad to help you, that's what they're there for.

For the record, I'm a Christian and I don't vote for specifically Christian parties because they're all conservative and I'm liberal.I disagree with much of the policy of the Christian parties as it pertains to technology. I still fail to see how the Christian lobby is the problem. It's successive ministers from both parties who have shown, on a global stage, that they are utterly uneducated and inept in the realm of modern technology.

It's about technology and government, not religion.

[1] http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/bb8db737e2af84b8ca2571780015701e/bfdda1ca506d6cfaca2570de0014496e!OpenDocument
[2] http://www.aec.gov.au/

But a bigger reason for this is the fact that there are very very strict laws against corporate influence on politics in Australia. And there are similarly tough regulations surrounding what companies are allowed to do when it comes to advertising, donations, etc etc.

Unfortunately not strict enough.

Have you looked at the actual voting numbers?

The greens were the second tallied on some lower house seats last election. (surprising isn't it?)
In the lower house, they received higher than the nationals. That's not even their target, they aim for the senate.
Try Melbourne for example, with 22.8% primary, and second in two party preferred.

They frequently earn a senator in their own right, as the Senate Quota results clearly show, where in Tas they easily had a senator by direct right. Bob Brown was elected in his own right, very much so.
In every state (except NT) they were by far the highest polled minority party.

Say what you want about disliking the minority parties; but to state they lack electoral support is simply wrong.

Have you looked at the actual voting numbers?

The greens were the second tallied on some lower house seats last election. (surprising isn't it?)
In the lower house, they received higher than the nationals. That's not even their target, they aim for the senate.
Try Melbourne for example, with 22.8% primary, and second in two party preferred.

They frequently earn a senator in their own right, as the Senate Quota results clearly show, where in Tas they easily had a senator by direct right. Bob Brown was elected in his own right, very much so.
In every state (except NT) they were by far the highest polled minority party.

Say what you want about disliking the minority parties; but to state they lack electoral support is simply wrong.

Have you looked at the actual voting numbers?

The greens were the second tallied on some lower house seats last election. (surprising isn't it?)
In the lower house, they received higher than the nationals. That's not even their target, they aim for the senate.
Try Melbourne for example, with 22.8% primary, and second in two party preferred.

They frequently earn a senator in their own right, as the Senate Quota results clearly show, where in Tas they easily had a senator by direct right. Bob Brown was elected in his own right, very much so.
In every state (except NT) they were by far the highest polled minority party.

Say what you want about disliking the minority parties; but to state they lack electoral support is simply wrong.

Actually for step three, to find your federal member of parliment you want apps.aec.gov.au/esearch

I belive the AEC are counting what are known as donkey votes, from the same site the summary in their report on electronic counting after studying it during the last US elections and elsewhere is quoted below...

"Electronic voting has received significant recent media coverage, and, with the Internet becoming more pervasive, the topic will continue to receive much attention. It must be recognised that a lot of the hype being generated is by the vendors of electronic voting systems.
There are currently a range of issues associated with the introduction of electronic voting and vote counting. Each of these needs to be identified and strategies put in place to resolve them.
The possible starting points within Australia, recommended in this report, have significant business cases for providing alternative technical options to voters in order to strengthen the democratic process.
This paper does not suggest that Australian electoral authorities should at this stage embark on a program to fully replace the easily understood, publicly and politically accepted efficient, transparent paper ballot system that currently exists."

Translation for Aussies: "Tell Diebold they're dreaminn...". Further skimming of the report shows that electronic voting has been used as a successfull option in certain circumstances, such as assisting blind people to vote in secret.

Actually ministry of justice itself described 2% failure rate as "very high" compared to ordinary paper ballot. In Finland an ordinary failure rate for paper ballots cast would afaik be around 0,5% and that includes Donald Duck and offensive drawings, which are not available to evoters.

Only half of 1%?! Wow. Finnish voters must be much more careful (or draw less Donald Ducks) than Australian voters then. Or perhaps, it's the result of compulsory voting, or that our exhaustive preferential system is a little more complicated. We get informal voting rates around the order of 5% (historical data here), so 2% looks pretty low to me.

One of the pro-evoting arguments was that we get significantly _lower_ failure rates compared to paper ballots.

Informality (failure) seems a far lesser problem than trust to me. We have a paper ballot (but are experimenting with evoting for the blind). The ballot boxes are not transported, but counted at the voting place (usually the local school), and while the votes are counted 'scrutineers' from each party stand over the shoulder of each vote counter casting an eagle eye on every vote counted, noting what the counter writes down and disputing any suspect votes for the other side. Perhaps Finland doesn't do this , which would account for our higher informality rates.

Umm, maybe you could switch to touch screens instead?

Or only use computer voting for those with special needs (people who can't see so well, so the machine can read the candidates name), and use machine readable ballot papers for everyone else.

Etc.

----

In NSW there were 79 candidates for the Senate in the last election. Australia has preferential voting. If you vote "below the line" for the Senate, you have to number every single box (from 1 to 79 in order of your preference). Most people vote "above the line" for a party, and the party distributes the preferences. Lazy bastards.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/howtovote.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/guide/snsw.htm
http://www.aec.gov.au/pdf/elections/2007/gvt/NSW_2007_gvt.pdf

I'm not sure how big the ballot papers were though. (I'm not from NSW, and I didn't vote anyway, so I didn't see a ballot paper.)

Call your local MP's office.
Write to your local MP. (Find their details here at http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/)

Call Conroy's office.
Write to Conroy.

Tell your friends and family about it, draft up a letter for their concerns too.
We need to get it as easy and quick to oppose as possible for every day Australians.

Check http://nocleanfeed.com/ for more info.

This is indeed the case. I fear that this legislation is unworkable.

May I suggest that any Australian readers voice their concerns?

It is actually quite easy to find your Federal member of Parliament. Just go to this site and search your suburb. For a list of members, here is an alphabetical list, party list, list of members by state and also an electoral list.

Once you've found your member, their contact details can be found if you follow the links.

The more people who get involved, the more that politicians will listen. Don't let lobbyist groups get away with this sort of rubbish!

Another advantage with Range or Condorcet is that you can count the ballots where they're gathered and then only transmit a small amount of data (the pairwise counts for Condorcet, or the numerators and denominators for the average for Range), instead of having to count everything at the central place as in IRV.

Yes, I can see how that would simplify vote tampering.

Though there's nothing about IRV that demands you have to rank absolutely all the candidates, the implementation you have is flawed.

As opposed to what, a bunch of corn farmers standing in a corner to choose (non-secretly) which $1B presidential candidate(s) gets a guernsey to run for an election with less than 50% turnout?

In Australia we don't choose to vote (it's compulsory), but we do choose to queue for the National Tally Room on election night - even though there's no beer!

Well, according to the AEC 3.95% of the votes were informal. Moreover, in recent years the donkey vote (voting 1-whatever down the list of candidates) seems to have been less than 1%. Of course, one must also take into account that some people actually want to vote in the order the candidates are listed on the paper.

So it would appear that the total number of voters turning up and voting properly might be around the 94% mark.

I call bullshit.

Australia has complex ballots as well - potentially far more complex than yours. We do use manually-counted paper ballots. We deal with it by breaking them up into separate ballot papers, which are counted separately, and indeed into separate elections as well. So we have separate federal, state, and occasionally even local elections, along with separate referendums where required.

A federal election has two separate ballot papers. One for electing the local member of parliament, and one for the senate.

In the case of the MP ballot, all voters are required to cast a vote for each candidate, in order of preference. That means that this ballot contains a list of around ten candidates, numbered starting from 1 for the first choice. This is the simplest of the two.

Here is what it looks like

The senate ballot contains a list of everyone running for a senate seat. There are two options - vote for a single party and use their choices for the rest of the senate seats, or number each runner in order of preference.

Here is that one looks like. Bear in mind that the real one is much larger, and has many more options than that sample.

Every citizen is required to vote. Voter turnout is therefore somewhere higher than 99%. Since everyone must vote, we have a system designed to make every vote count. In the case of the MPs, your vote eventually ends up going to one of the two major parties anyway - as each candidate is eliminated, their votes are reallocated according to voter preference. In the case of the senate, the guy with the most votes gets a seat, and their votes are reallocated among the remaining candidates according to voter preferences, and this repeats until all candidates are eliminated.

This is all done manually.

I call bullshit.

Australia has complex ballots as well - potentially far more complex than yours. We do use manually-counted paper ballots. We deal with it by breaking them up into separate ballot papers, which are counted separately, and indeed into separate elections as well. So we have separate federal, state, and occasionally even local elections, along with separate referendums where required.

A federal election has two separate ballot papers. One for electing the local member of parliament, and one for the senate.

In the case of the MP ballot, all voters are required to cast a vote for each candidate, in order of preference. That means that this ballot contains a list of around ten candidates, numbered starting from 1 for the first choice. This is the simplest of the two.

Here is what it looks like

The senate ballot contains a list of everyone running for a senate seat. There are two options - vote for a single party and use their choices for the rest of the senate seats, or number each runner in order of preference.

Here is that one looks like. Bear in mind that the real one is much larger, and has many more options than that sample.

Every citizen is required to vote. Voter turnout is therefore somewhere higher than 99%. Since everyone must vote, we have a system designed to make every vote count. In the case of the MPs, your vote eventually ends up going to one of the two major parties anyway - as each candidate is eliminated, their votes are reallocated according to voter preference. In the case of the senate, the guy with the most votes gets a seat, and their votes are reallocated among the remaining candidates according to voter preferences, and this repeats until all candidates are eliminated.

This is all done manually.

No way to tell if the guys collecting and tabulating the ballots were paid to alter the results.
 
That's been thought of, but I think you're probably trolling by bringing it up. I'll bite anyway since I'm sure some people do think this is a valid concern.
 
I'm not sure how it works in other countries but here in Australia each party can send scrutineers to polling places. After polling closes, the scrutineers stand around looking at ballots as they are counted to make sure it's done right. Of course though, they will ignore informal votes for their party while pointing them out those for other parties. That's why you need scrutineers from every party there. Take a look at the scrutineers handbook for more details of what they do before, during and after polling.

And you can always go back and recount the paper votes a second time if need be.

Paper voting is old and well proven technology. Only a fool would choose an unproven technology just because it's new or marginally faster.