Articles from The Tally Room

We rely on independent mapmakers to draw electoral boundaries at each redistribution. There is an extensive process of public consultation, and there are rules about how seats can be drawn, but ultimately the mapmakers have quite a lot of discretion about how they apply guidelines, and where they draw the lines.

6:00 – Polls have just closed in the Kiama by-election. This state seat is on the south coast of New South Wales, and was vacated by Gareth Ward shortly before he was expected to be expelled from the Legislative Assembly after his conviction and expected sentencing.

Results should start to come in before 7pm tonight. I’ll be live-blogging here. In the meantime, you can read my guide to the by-election here.

The first round of public submissions for the Queensland state redistribution were published last week – about three weeks after they were submitted to the Commission. So I thought it would be useful to examine what they say, with a particular focus on the major party submissions.

There are four rounds of submissions:

We now have a quiet period following the federal election and the Tasmanian election, and I’m using it as an opportunity to complete my election guides for the elections next in the queue.

The South Australian election guide has already been published for some time, but today I’ve published my Victorian election guide.