Kiefel
CJ
Bell
J
Keane
J
Nettle
J
Gordon
J
Edelman J
10.
the Divisional Office to the National Tally Room"32. Again, it was not in dispute
that both of these recommendations are given effect in the Commission's
established practice for conducting the count of the first preference votes and the
Indicative TCP Count.
Lack of factual foundation
30
The plaintiffs' contentions about the Indicative TCP Count process,
which underpinned both their statutory and constitutional challenges, lacked a
factual foundation. It is convenient to address each in turn.
No demonstrated effect on electoral choices
31
It was an agreed fact that there was no practicable means, in the time
available before the 2019 election, to quantify the extent or likelihood of the
effect, if any, on the electoral choices of voters who become aware of the identity
of the TCP Candidates in any Division, or the results of the matched polling
place projection or the Indicative TCP Count in any Division, if the voters had
not already voted and when polls were still open in the Division in which they
were electors.
32
Instead, the plaintiffs referred to and relied on three published articles33,
each of which concerned overseas jurisdictions – the United States of America,
France and Denmark. The plaintiffs submitted that the studies recorded in these
articles supported a proposition that voters who were yet to cast their ballot may
be influenced by the release of election results elsewhere or by the publication of
opinion polls or exit polls while voting booths remain open, sometimes referred
to as the "bandwagon effect". Taken as a whole, the articles do not assist the
plaintiffs.
32
JSCEM, Conduct of the 1990 Federal Election Part II and Preparations for the
Next Federal Election, Interim Report: Counting the Vote on Election Night
(1992) at 22 (Recommendation 5).
33
Morton and Williams, "Information Asymmetries and Simultaneous versus
Sequential Voting" (1999) 93 American Political Science Review 51; Morton et al,
"Exit polls, turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment"
(2015) 77 European Economic Review 65; Dahlgaard et al, "Research Note:
How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour" (2017) 40 Scandinavian Political
Studies 330.
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