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worrier said..
but are welfare recipients over represented in the informal vote number? My guess and its only a guess would be yes due to lower level of literacy especially in the indig population? Lets face it if you dropped out of school in year 9 or turned up once a week you wouldnt have the ability to understand the voting slips.
W
I can tell you that there are plenty of intended Liberal votes ending up informal, mostly people putting a '1' in the Liberal candidate box and not filling out the rest of the form.
If you have 5 House of Reps candidates, then there are two basic formal votes allowed.
"1,2,3,4,5" or "1,2,3,4, ". (They allow one box to be empty, and say that it is considered to be your last preference.) You could also write the numbers in words, or roman numerals.
Here are the most common unintended informal votes, and it seems the LIB and ALP supporters are both equally adept at providing them.
"1, , , , ". (ie. filling out only one box.)
"X, , , , ".
"X,2,3,4,5". (Yep, it's informal, and heaps of people do it. Same if you provided a TICK instead of a CROSS.)
"1,2,3,4,6". (Is it really that hard to count to '5'?)
"1,2,4,5,6". (etc.)
"1,2, , , , ".
"1,2,3, , ".
Here are the top intended ones.
" , , , , ". (ie. blank form.)
"X,X,X,X,X".
"0,0,0,0,0".
"F,*,C,K,U". (They don't put an asterisk.)
"62,55,32,187,54". (Insert your favourite random numbers.)
"P,I,Z,Z,A". (My personal favourite.)
A surprising amount of people don't even think that it might be a good idea to put in a little effort to make their numbers legible. There's also an incredible abundance of hastily drawn phalli.