I can now declare the following candidates to be provisionally elected, in order:

  1. Xiangqi Zheng
  2. Geng Huang
  3. Tangshuang Qin
  4. Zimo Wang
  5. Siyu Liu
  6. Lubna Meempatta
  7. Sepideh Jahangiri
  8. Georgia Daly
  9. Brad Knight

The final results of the election will be announced pending the approval of the electoral tribunal. Please continue to check GSA’s blog and social media for the announcement.

Explanation of the delay in announcing results

Although voting close on Friday May 11, the declaration was delayed because I realised the counting algorithm being used was not in accordance with the GSA regulations, and the discrepancy was large enough it could affect the election of the last position.

Under the system known as Optional Preferential Proportional Voting (know in some countries as Single Transferable Vote) votes that help elect candidates are transferred on to their next preference, but at a reduced value. This is a standard feature of OPPV/STV, used in the Australian Senate, various state parliaments, the Irish and Maltese parliaments and thousands of community organisations around the world. However, there are slight differences in the way that the reduced value is calculated between many of these – for example the Senate and the Victorian Legislative Council use the same formula, but the Tasmanian parliament uses a different one, and the New South Wales Legislative Council uses a different one again. The GSA regulations are admirably specific as to the one that should be used.

I contacted BigPulse about this, and they agreed to write an new option that matches the GSA regulations, but the engineer who was able to do this did not work over the weekend, creating a delay. Once the corrected algorithm was available, I was naturally keen to check that it was now correct, and to get a second opinion for safety’s sake.

I can provide a more detailed discussion of the differences between the original algorithm and the GSA’s regulations if anyone wishes to contact me.

Contact details

Stephen Luntz, Returning Officer

stluntz@abovequota.com.au